The 7th Grand Waltz Music International Festival

On 27 June 2008 at the Hermitage Theatre a press conference was held dedicated to the opening of the Grand Waltz Music Festival.

Following the UNESCO declaration on the necessity reviving non-material heritage, the State Hermitage Museum with the participation of the Inter-regional non-governmental organization the Creative Alliance of Museum Employees of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast came up with the idea of the Grand Waltz Music Festival which would be held annually, and appointed Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum and the Chairman of the voluntary organization, the Chairman of the festival’s Honorary Committee and Yulia Kantor, whose idea it actually was, was appointed to be the festival’s artistic director.

The project unites the renowned cultural institutions of St. Petersburg and Vienna under the auspices of the State Hermitage Museum and promotes St. Petersburg culture both in Russia and abroad.

The Grand Waltz Annual Music Festival has followed the tradition of giving eleven concerts, which is the number of summers Strauss spent in St. Petersburg. This year the concerts will be held at the State Hermitage Museum, the Grand Palace at Peterhof, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, and the Rose Pavilion at Pavlovsk, the latter being the place where Austria’s great composer performed. The repertoire of Strauss’ seasons is included as part of each concert, but in addition to chamber music there are also other pieces establishing more democratic traditions that were developing around two hundred years ago.

The 7th Grand Waltz Music Festival offers the public evening concerts of symphonic, chamber and vocal music.

The following musicians will perform as part of the Grand Waltz Festival: the Dresden State Operetta soloists: Isabella Ma-Zach (soprano) and Andreas Schagerl (tenor), the Mariinsky Theatre soloists Yekaterina Semenchuk and Irina Mataeva, the renowned Austrian conductor Peter Gut, the noted Russian conductors Vladimir Ziva, Alexander Kantorov, Alexei Karabanov and Dmitry Khokhlov, the double duet Ma.Gr.Ig.Al and famous instrumentalists Sergei Stadler, Yulia Stadler, Viktor Vysotsky, as well as the State Hermitage Orchestra, the Klassika State Symphony Orchestra, the Admiralty Orchestra of the Leningrad Naval Base, the State Russian Orchestra named after Vasily Andreev and the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra.

As part of the established tradition, the Bank of Moscow with its major concern for preserving the cultural heritage of the Northern Capital was among the sponsors of the Grand Waltz Music Festival. It is the third Grand Waltz Music Festival that was jointly organized by the State Hermitage Museum and the Bank of Moscow.

The Domus Producers Centre is the official partner of the Grand Waltz Music Festival’s organizers.

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Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum and the Chairman of the Festival’s Honorary Committee

Yulia Kantor, the Festival’s Artistic Director

Alexander Volkov, Director of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Bank of Moscow

Yekaterina Semenchuk, the Mariinsky Theatre soloist

At the press conference