About
The 4th Vivarte Chamber Music Festival will be held at the Vrubel Hall in Moscow from May 26 to June 2.
The theme of this year’s festival is related to one of the most anticipated TG spring exhibitions: an Edvard Munch retrospective. This is the first time ever that his paintings, known for the overwhelming power of emotion and strikingly innovative artistic language, will be displayed in Russia on such a scale. The festival organizers have decided to pick up the momentum: Vivarte artistic director Boris Andrianov is planning to bring together a whole constellation of renowned Norwegian and Danish musicians – as a matter of fact, rare guests on the Russian classical music scene – and the subject of the festival's exhibition program is slated to be Russo-Scandinavian connections in the visual arts.
The 4th Vivarte installment will be attended by musicians who have already become the project’s friends: Julian Rachlin, Sarah McElravy, and Itamar Golan, as well as Dmitry Sinkovsky and his La Voce Strumentale ensemble. A number of Scandinavian musicians will perform at the Vrubel Hall for the first time: pianist Christian Ihle Hadland (Norway), Henrikke Rynning (viola da gamba, Norway), violist Lars Anders Tomter (Norway), and the Carl Nilsen quintet (Denmark).
One festival evening will be set aside exclusively for piano music performed by Ekaterina Apekisheva, a Russian-British pianist and a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Another first-time Vivarte participant is the well-known British-Norwegian violin virtuoso Charlie Siem, who manages to juggle two successful careers – that of a classical music performer and of a fashion model.
Vivarte will close with a new version of Dmitry Illarionov’s "Dreams in the mirror: Satie visions", a project that combines contemporary transcriptions of Erik Satie's music with light and video experiments.
- The festival is organized by the U-Art Foundation jointly with the State Tretyakov Gallery.
- Artistic director: Boris Andrianov
- President of the festival: Iveta Manasherova
About the Vivarte festival
In the second half of the 19th century, the house of the merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov was one of the centers of the cultural life of Moscow. The welcoming owner, the tireless collector of works of Russian fine art, included famous artists, writers and musicians of that time, including I.S. Turgenev, P.I. Tchaikovsky, A.G. Rubinstein, N.G. Rubinstein, I.E. Repin, I.N. Kramskoy, V.M. Vasnetsov, V.G. Perov, V.D. Polenov and many others.
At the initiative of his wife P.M. Tretyakova Vera Nikolaevna, who played the piano beautifully, friendly musical meetings were regularly held in the house. The Tretyakov daughters also participated in them (the eldest of them, Vera Pavlovna, later became the wife of the pianist and conductor A.I. Ziloti, who was cousin to S.V. Rakhmaninov). A wonderful continuation of these traditions is today's concerts in the Vrubel Hall. A characteristic feature of musical evenings in the Tretyakov Gallery - now the state art gallery - is the warm atmosphere of the art salon, where the ideas of the synthesis of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) find their most vivid embodiment.
Unique in content and design, the Vrubel Hall with a piano located on the stage is one of the best concert venues in Moscow. Like P.M. Tretyakov, artist Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel was closely connected with the world of music, and his wife was an outstanding singer Nadezhda Zabela. The main decoration of the Vrubel Hall today - the famous panel "Princess Daydream", embodying the idea of eternity of art - was once transferred to the museum by the Bolshoi Theater. Next to it are Vrubel’s sculptural chamber suites on the themes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas “Sadko” and “The Snow Maiden”, the walls feature an exposition of various paintings and drawings by the artist: visitors can admire all aspects of his work.
The VIVARTE International Chamber Music Festival, which inherits the glorious traditions of the Tretyakov House, is the brainchild of a wonderful team of like-minded people. The authors of the idea and co-organizers of the forum are the world-famous cellist Boris Andrianov, the creative forces of the Tretyakov Gallery and the cultural and charity foundation “U-ART: You and Art” Iveta and Tamaz Manasherovyh — well-known philanthropists who support contemporary art in its various manifestations and who set their goals "Create something positive, good and right." Like the Tretyakov, the Manasherovs created and constantly expand a unique collection of paintings by artists of the twentieth century, finding in it an important "cultural context of the era", and in their activity - "touching the living history of the present."
VIVARTE Festival features an original concept. In his laconic name, the glorification of art is also played out (Viva l'arte! - it. “Long live art!”), And its vitality, demand, authenticity (L'arte viva - it. “Living art”). The festival’s poster contains a variety of chamber ensembles in an academic format, and a fascinating “Musical Promenade”. Festival participants are famous musicians from different continents and young rising stars of world performing art. However, music is only part of the plan.
Each concert program is accompanied by an exhibition of one painting from the Tretyakov Gallery's storerooms with a commentary to it by leading gallery staff. Works selected for display are rarely shown to the general public. They will inspire artists and listeners. Artists will also be able to share with the public their impressions of what they saw and then express their emotions in music.
Unusual is the end of the festival - “Musical Promenade”, where the artistic director of the festival Boris Andrianov and his colleagues will give some impromptu open-air concerts. This idea echoes, on the one hand, promenade concerts in European parks that allow you to listen to music and stroll at the same time. Another association is the famous cycle of plays by M.P. Mussorgsky's “Pictures from the Exhibition” (where the play “Promenade” / “Walk”, depicting the visitor of the vernissage moving from one picture to another) and his stage life as one of the best examples of the interaction of arts in history are held by refrain.
For example, Vasily Kandinsky, fascinated by the ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk, undertook an experiment in 1928, presenting the audience with “Pictures from the Exhibition” by Mussorgsky with moving decorations, light-color “score” and pantomime at the Friedrich Theater in Dessau. The balance he found between abstraction and a specific image made it possible to hear Mussorgsky’s music in a new way, to move away from the uniqueness of its original source (the composer was inspired by the work of artist Viktor Hartman). Today, at the concerts of the VIVARTE festival, music and painting, born in different artistic contexts, meet and, as if pushing the boundaries of their environment, open up new horizons for the listener. Minister of two muses, Lithuanian composer and artist M.K. Ciurlionis wrote about this: “There are no boundaries between the arts. Music combines poetry and painting and has its own architecture. Painting can also have the same architecture as music, and express sounds in colors. ”
