Yuri Bashmet about the Fourth Winter International Festival

People’s Artist of the USSR, violist and conductor Yuri Bashmet held a press conference at TASS, where he presented the Winter Festival and a concert dedicated to his 70th birthday. The event will take place in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall on January 24.

The Fourth Winter International Arts Festival under the artistic direction of Bashmet started on January 11 in Moscow, it will last until February 11 and end with a gala concert in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The central event of the concert program this year will be the anniversary of the maestro.

This year in Moscow, the festival will cover 14 concert evenings and 7 theater and concert venues in the city. Premieres will take place at the capital’s review, including the performance-concert “Love Story” on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov on January 27, as well as the production “The Living and the Dead. Soldiers are not born”, which will be held on February 5 at the Moscow Drama Theater named after N. V. Gogol.

The XVI Winter International Arts Festival in Sochi, which will be held at the resort from February 15 to 27, will open with a joint performance by Yuri Bashmet and Valery Gergiev.

“We will have a joint concert in Sochi at the festival (with Gergiev). And what exactly, I can’t tell, ”Bashmet said at a press conference in TASS.

Director General of the Russian Concert Agency Dmitry Grinchenko said that Gergiev will perform at the opening of the show. “Valery Abisalovich arrives in Sochi for the opening to conduct Styx” (composition by Gia Kancheli. – V.S.),” he added.

The journalists were also informed that the German musician Justus Frantz would take part for the first time in the Winter Arts Festival, which takes place annually in Sochi under the direction of Yuri Bashmet. Musicians from India and Cuba will also perform there.

Yuri Bashmet leads the Moscow Soloists Chamber Ensemble, the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra, the All-Russian Youth Symphony Orchestra, as well as several international music festivals in Russia and abroad. Bashmet’s talent as a violist made this instrument independent. Thus, the Russian musician was the first to give solo concerts in the main halls of the world: in the Vienna Musikverein, in the New York Carnegie Hall, in the La Scala Theater in Milan, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, in the Leningrad Philharmonic, in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, in Tokyo Suntory Hall.

After the press conference, Bashmet invited journalists to a photo exhibition that opened in front of the TASS building in Moscow. The project is dedicated to the anniversary of the world-famous violist and conductor, who will turn 70 on January 24. This is where the expanse was for photographers who captured frames of an emotional reaction to the photographs of Maestro Bashmet himself.

Vladimir Sabadash.

Photo by Yuri Pokrovsky