Valery Gergiev is to host a series of Days of Stravinsky in St Petersburg and Moscow. The concerts and performances are to take place on and around a special date — 6 April marks fifty years since the composer's death.
Throughout the day on Sunday 4 April, each and every Mariinsky Theatre venue will only be performing music by Igor Stravinsky. Maestro Gergiev will be conducting a performance of the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex featuring Ekaterina Semenchuk and Alexander Mikhailov as well as Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (with soloist Denis Matsuev). The role of the Narrator in Oedipus Rex is to be performed by Sergey Migitsko, People's Artist of Russia.
The playbill for these "Days" includes the entire anthology of Stravinsky's music currently in the Mariinsky Theatre's repertoire. Audiences will have the opportunity to see ballets from the Diaghilev period: Pétrouchka and The Firebird by Michel Fokine, Le Sacre du printemps by Vaslav Nijinsky, Les Noces by Bronislava Nijinska and Apollo by George Balanchine. At the New Stage there will be performances of one-act ballets by contemporary choreographers: Jeu de cartes and Pulcinella by Ilya Zhivoi and Symphony in Three Movements by Radu Poklitaru. At the Concert Hall there will be a staged version of L'Histoire du soldat in which ballet soloist and choreographer Alexander Sergeyev will be making his debut as the Narrator.
For one day, 5 April, the festival will move to Moscow: at the Zaryadye hall there are to be two evening concerts. The culmination of these events in memory of Stravinsky will come on 6 April with a concert at the New Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre featuring Symphony of Psalms.
In the Stravinsky Foyer of the new Mariinsky Theatre there is to be an exhibition which recreates the study of Fyodor Ignatievich Stravinsky, the composer's father and a soloist of the Imperial Opera (the foyer's windows actually afford a view of the house where the Stravinsky family once lived). Before the start of the ballet performances and the evening concerts, piano music by the composer will be performed there by young pianists — pupils, students and postgraduate students of Peter Laul.
The complete festival programme together with cast lists is available on the theatre's website.
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