23 June 2016

Valery Gergiev’s Music Festival in Mikkeli is 25-years-old!

From 27 to 30 June the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will be appearing at the XXV International Music Festival in Mikkeli (Finland). This year, the forum is dedicated to the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Sergei Prokofiev. The festival’s Artistic Director is Valery Gergiev 

The festival opens on 27 June at the Martti Talvela Hall with a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and the symphonic tale Peter and the Wolf (18:00). Here at 20:00 there will be a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (soloist – Jonathan Roozeman) and the Third Piano Concerto (soloist – Alexander Malofeyev). The evening programme will conclude with Sergei Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.

On 28 June at the matinee concert under Finnish conductor Sasha Mäkilä there will be a performance by Mariinsky Orchestra musicians including Nikita Vaganov (clarinet), Rodion Tolmachev (bassoon), Sofia Kiprskaya (harp), Nikita Istomin (trumpet) and prize-winner at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition Daniil Kharitonov, who will perform the solo in Dmitry Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto. The programme for the evening concert by the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev again features works by Prokofiev – Russian Overture, the Third Symphony and the Second Piano Concerto. Soloist – Denis Matsuev.

On 29 June there will be a performance of Four Portraits and a Dénouement from the opera The Gambler and the cantata Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Prokofiev (the solo to be performed by prize-winner at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition mezzo-soprano Yulia Matochkina), as well as Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Soloist – Alexander Toradze.

On 30 June at the Mikkeli Cathedral, which has one thousand two hundred seats, there will be a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, in which, along with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of Valery Gergiev, Viktoria Yastrebova (soprano), Yulia Matochkina (mezzo-soprano), Mikhail Vekua (tenor) and Mikhail Petrenko (bass) will be appearing.

At the close of the festival, on 1 July at the Martti Talvela Hall there will be a master-class given by conductor Sasha Mäkilä (16:00, free entry), as well as a chamber music concert by pianist Juho Alakärppä and baritone Aarne Pelkonen, who will be presenting Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise.

The playbill for the Chamber Hall in Mikkeli offers festival guests a series of lectures and chamber music concerts. On 29 June Eleonora Vindau, a soloist of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers, will present the song cycle The Nursery by Modest Musorgsky and Ukrainian folk songs. The piano will be performed by Vasily Popov. Here on the following day there will be a performance by Mariinsky Orchestra musicians Sofia Kiprskaya (harp), Nikolai Mokhov (flute) and Yuri Afonkin (viola). On 27 and 29 June, Professor Eero Tarasti of the University of Helsinki will be speaking about the works of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. Entrance to the lectures is free.

During the festival there will also be sporting activities that have already become traditional elements of the event – there will be a football match between teams from Mikkeli and the Mariinsky Theatre on 29 June at 12:00 at the Urheilupuisto stadium, which seats up to four thousand people. Entrance to the football match is free.