• Festival Brass Evenings at the Mariinsky
• Ignat Solzhenitsyn in St Petersburg
• What did happen – what will happen?

The Third music festival Brass Evenings at the Mariinsky has started in St Petersburg on Wednesday, 17 November. The festival offers to look at the beauty and richness of sound palette of brass instruments. This festival is devoted to instruments of one of the most important groups of symphony orchestra and makes it possible to listen to many of the known compositions in unusual musical arrangements that bring the most vivid images of the musical score to the forefront.

27 & 30 November will see a pair of concerts in St Petersburg featuring a pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn. The debut of the musician with the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre took place a year ago in Samara, during the festival Tribute to Mstislav Rostropovich. Ignat Solzhenitsyn frequently appears on stage both as soloist and conductor, and sometimes combines the two professions in the ancient tradition of performances of classical instrumental concertos. Previously Mr. Solzhenitsyn has performed many times in St Petersburg at the Great Hall of the Philharmonic. The two debut performances of Ignat Solzhenitsyn on stage of the Mariinsky Concert Hall are programmed to include works from the Western European classical repertoire. Aside of that, is the performance of a chamber, the Fourteenth Symphony by Dmitry Shostakovich, one of the spiritually strongest composer’s works in which he addresses important issues of human’s life, death and spiritual immortality.

This Tuesday the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre conducted by Valery Gergiev has appeared on stage of the Old Opera in Frankfurt-am-Main. We performed Naughty Limericks by Rodion Shchedrin (Concerto for Orchestra No. 1), First Piano Concerto by Pyotr Tchaikovsky (soloist – Alexei Volodin) and Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz. This was one of the shortest tours of our orchestra so far :-).

On  Sunday, 21 November, the Mariinsky Orchestra continues a subscription series Russian music from three eras, each of which concert includes works by Glinka, Shchedrin and one of the six symphonies by Tchaikovsky (performed in chronological order). This Sunday matinee concert, which will be held at the Mariinsky Concert Hall, conducted by Valery Gergiev, will be the second concert of the symphonic cycle of masterpieces of Russian music.

From 5 to 14 November the Mariinsky Ballet took a tour of South Korea. In the cities Busan and Goyang we performed works of classical ballet repertoire. This tour went under the sign of the 20th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and South Korea, and aroused the most enthusiastic reception from the audiences in Korea (we’ve got lots of nice comments and good wishes on Facebook and twitter).

In the coming days we shall present the classic ballet performances choreographed by Marius Petipa on stage of the Mariinsky Theatre – La Bayadère and Swan Lake, the signature productions of the Mariinsky Ballet, often called the House of Petipa.

On 19 November the tour of the Mariinsky Chorus in France has come to a close. The culmination of the tour were four concerts on stage of the Auditorium Maurice-Ravel in Lyon. For two evenings artists of our choir participated in the performance of Alexander Nevsky, a patriotic cantata by Sergei Prokofev, performed with the Orchestre National de Lyon. Other concerts included Vespers by Sergei Rachmaninov, as well as a range of works for choir a’capella. The concerts were conducted by the chief choirmaster of the Mariinsky Theatre Andrei Petrenko as well as guest conductor of our theater Ernst van Tiel.

On the evening of Sunday 21 November soloists of the Opera and artists of Chorus and Symphony orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre under Andrei Petrenko will perform the most spiritual work of Mozart, which became his last piece – Requiem for four soloists, chorus and orchestra.