On 20 July 2023 – the third Thursday of the month, when concessionary categories of visitors are able to enter the Hermitage free of charge – the first concert was held as part of the Musical Promenades project that the Hermitage is implementing jointly with the Art-parkING Centre for Modern Technologies in Art.
The concert was devoted to the exhibition “Tsars and Knights. Romancing with the Middle Ages” that is currently running in the Main Museum Complex. The duo of Igor Lisov and Taras Drak played rare early instruments that accorded with the theme of the exhibition and the Renaissance era –flute, citole, lute and mandolin.
The concert programme was made up of works by the outstanding 16th-century lutenist-composers John Dowland, Hans and Melchior Neusidler, the exquisite melodies of the Frenchman Claudin de Sermisy and the Spanish musician Diego Ortiz, famed for his pieces for the viola and harpsichord and his vocal religious music, as well as works by the Flemish music-publisher and composer Tielman Susato.
The concert could be enjoyed not only by visitors to the Main Museum Complex, but by all who wished. The music helped our guests to spend the time waiting for the museum halls to open pleasantly and to put themselves in a suitable mood to view the displays.
The next concerts in the Musical Promenades programme will take place on 17 August and 21 September 2023. The performances last around 40 minutes, finishing at 11 o’clock.
The Musical Promenades project holds concerts with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation in museums, libraries and museum-and-park ensembles in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region on the initiative of the Art-parkING Centre for Modern Technologies in Art.
Photographs: Svetlana Ragina, State Hermitage Museum
