A Thousand and one Concerts: An International Festival, 2004. A Tribute to the 10th Anniversary of the State Hermitage Orchestra

On 30 January 2004 the Hermitage Theater was the venue for a press conference devoted to the anniversary of the State Hermitage Orchestra and a dress rehearsal of G. Sarti's opera Armida e Rinaldo which has its premiere performances in the theater on 31 January and 1 February 2004.

A festival has been organized by the State Hermitage, the Hermitage Music Academy Foundation, the Government of St Petersburg, the Committee for Youth Policy and Interaction with Social Organizations, the Grand Hotel Europe, and the air carrier Lufthansa.

The festival runs from 31 January to 15 February 2004 in the State Hermitage, the Hermitage Theater, the Smaller Hall of the Philharmonic, the St George Hall of the Winter Palace, and the Big Italian Sky-light Hall of the New Hermitage.

Ten years go, on 14 February 1994, the St Petersburg Camerata Orchestra became the house orchestra of one of the world's largest museums, the State Hermitage.

Over the years, the Orchestra has performed more than 900 concerts on the stage of the Hermitage Theater, in halls of the museum, and also in its splendid courtyards. At the initiative of the State Hermitage Orchestra a special museum musical program called The Hermitage Musical Academy was created in 1997.

The Hermitage Orchestra has recorded more than 30 disks and played on tour in all of the countries of Europe, in the USA, Japan and Korea. On 14 February 2004 the Orchestra performs its one thousandth concert. For this event the Orchestra has invited its closest friends: the conductors Saulus Sondetskis (Lithuania), Mikhail Sinkevich (Russia), Mats Liljefors (Sweden), Andreas Spoerri (Switzerland), Eisuke Fujimo (Japan); soloists Michel Letec (France), Ivan Monighetti, Nigel Shor (Great Britain), Jennifer Smith (Great Britain), and Ioachim Moser (Austria) Thanks to its long time collaboration with these musicians, the Hermitage Orchestra has become one of the best orchestras in Russia.

The festival is presided over by director of the State Hermitage Mikhail B. Piotrovsky and the great contemporary composer Krzysztof Penderecki.

This one thousand and first concert, as special in its way as the thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, opens the second decade of the Orchestra, which a kindly fate allows it to enter bearing proudly the name of the State Hermitage, a token of the cultural rebirth of Russia.

Participants at the gathering

Sergey Yevtushenko, composer and director of the Hermitage Music Academy Foundation and the Hermitage Orchestra at the press conference