VI International Festival «Vladimir Spivakov invites…» will be held in Belarus from 3 to 9 March. It will open on 3 March with a concert of the chamber orchestra «Moscow Virtuosi» at the National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre of Belarus, maestro Vladimir Spivakov will be conducting.

— «I come to Belarus as if I were home», said the famous conductor. – There are wonderful people here, an amazing Academy of Music – I highly appreciate the work of its rector Ekaterina Dulova. I have friends here, and in general it’s just good here. As for the festival itself: it is wonderful that there are traditions. Gustav Mahler once expressed this most important idea quite amazingly: that tradition is not the ashes that are passed down from century to century, but fire. I think that’s very well said. Fire is in our heart, in burning, in the happiness of music, in communication, and in the energy that we carry, which you give.

The festival has been held in Belarus since 2010, reminded producer and organizer of the creative forum Maxim Berin:

— The festival lives and thrives in the Republic of Belarus, and in our difficult times we bring high art to the country. We were once scared, we were told that the people would not come, but thank God this is not happening – as I know, the last tickets were purchased in recent days. Interest in the festival is growing from year to year, and this year we have prepared a very interesting programme together with the maestro.

On the third of March, the opening day of the festival, the Bolshoi Theatre will host the Moscow Virtuosi Orchestra, created and directed by Vladimir Spivakov for 40 years, as well as the Bolshoi Theatre soloist Anna Aglatova.

— Anna Aglatova, like many other great musicians, has something to do with my foundation, said Vladimir Spivakov. – When she came to study from Kislovodsk as a young girl, she had no money to pay for her flat – and we helped her. Then, of course, she had the opportunity to work with an orchestra, to perform, it was also very important. The stage is a terrific teacher. She entered the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia – and was the youngest soloist there. And now she is the leading soloist. And just recently, she sang to Suzanne at the Wedding of Figaro in Paris, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées – with enormous success! Stunning criticism, she is begged to come back. And in Minsk she will be performing a little Mozart, arias from Italian operas – we did not want to do a very heavy programme. Life is hard enough, and we need – well, not a circus, of course – but some positive, as they say now. As a human being, she is an easy person, and she has no star disease. This is very important and very enjoyable.

On the fourth of March in the Great Hall of the Belarusian State Philharmonic an unusual acting project – the novel in verse «Eugene Onegin» will be read by actor Dmitry Dyuzhev accompanied by the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Belarus, conducted by Arkady Berin. Pushkin’s work will be performed to music by Sergei Prokofiev, written in the late 1930s and then banned.

— We tried to bring a project in which Evgeny Mironov and Ksenia Rappoport read Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with Baroness von Meck, but because of the employment of actors this time it did not work, but I hope that in the future the idea will be implemented, Maxim Berin said.

On 4 and 5 March, the Moscow Virtuosi Orchestra will perform in Gomel and Mogilev – with a different programme: Vladimir Spivakov will go on stage as a violinist. The maestro’s dream is to perform in Vitebsk, but to date it has not been realized. On 6 March, on the stage of the Belarusian State Academy of Music, as part of the festival, a concert of gifted young musicians from Russia and Belarus will conclude the festival with a performance by a young, but already well-known pianist Luke Debarg with the youth orchestra «Kremerata Baltica» in the Belgosphilharmonic Hall.