Brief history of the festival

Before providing traditional description of the current, to some extent, anniversary festival, we will allow ourselves a brief overview of the memorable events that took place previous years.
I am talking about unforgettable meetings with outstanding chamber performers not only from our country, but also from near and far abroad. Fully justifying the status of an international festival, the Silver Lyre has managed to introduce listeners to outstanding representatives of 21 countries over fourteen years – Austria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Great Britain, Hungary, Germany, Georgia, Israel, Spain, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovakia, the USA, Turkey, France, the Czech Republic and Japan. Moreover, many of the foreign artists have been our guests more than once. Meetings with the Berlin Philharmonic Ensemble and the Frankfurt Chamber Orchestra, the Czech and Slovak Chamber Orchestras, the German baroque ensemble L’Arte del Mondo and baroque orchestras from Italy and Azerbaijan will forever remain in the memory of connoisseurs of chamber genres. Such world-famous ensembles as the Czech piano trio "Guarneri Trio Prague", the American "Pacific Trio" and the German "Bamberg Trio" left unforgettable impressions on the listeners, along with the string quartets "Faure" (Germany), "Modigliani" (France) and "Hugo Wolf" (Austria); the Austrian ensemble "Amarcord" and the English vocal sextet "King Singers", the American jazz string "Turtle Island Quartet" and the Austrian quartet "Alban Berg". Forever in our memory are the meetings with solo pianists - the Fazil Say (Turkey), the David Fray and the Mariam Batsashvili (Georgia); the American cellist Amit Peled, his colleagues - Marc Copp?e (France) and Laszlo Fenyo; (Hungary), violinists – Frederieke Saeijs (Netherlands), Julian Rachlin (Israel) and Gaik Kazaryan (Armenia); French harpist Xavier de Maistre and Italian singer Roberta Mamelli.
But the main mission that "Silver Lyre" managed to accomplish is to reawaken the interest in chamber music-making that had faded at the turn of the century, and consequently, to advance the chamber works of Russian and foreign composers. Undoubtedly, today’s Philharmonic playbill promoting chamber genres meets the highest demands of the enlightened St. Petersburg public.

About the festival

The Sixteenth International Festivals of Chamber Artists and Ensembles "Silver Lyre", as in previous years, offers eight concerts of various chamber ensembles and soloists. This time the festival will present musicians from Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Belarus.
As usual, the opening and closing of the festival will take place in the Grand Philharmonic Hall, and the six remaining concerts - in the Small Hall named after M.I. Glinka.
The festival will open with a concert of the young, but already widely popular St. Petersburg pianist Ilya Papoyan, whose program will include Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, Beethoven's 32nd Sonata, as well as Rachmaninoff's Fantasy Pieces and Musical Moments.
The series of concerts in the Small Hall will be opened by the Honored Ensemble of the Republic of Belarus, the Minsk State Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Evgeny Bushkov. A talented violinist and conductor, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, he did a lot to ensure that the orchestra, which the Republic entrusted to him, reached the highest level of chamber performance. The concert program includes works by Mozart, Grieg and the Belarusian composer Vladimir Kuryan.
The next evening will be devoted to the Turkish brass quintet Golden Horn Brass. Their rich musical program includes arrangements of popular works by Bizet, Mancini, Cosma, Jobim, Rodriguez and other composers, as well as Turkish folk music.
In the fourth concert of the festival, listeners will be able to appreciate the ensemble mastery of St. Petersburg musicians - pianists Petr Laul and Pavel Raikerus, as well as percussionist Artemy Znamensky. The program includes the rarely performed Bartok Sonata for two pianos and percussion, as well as Mikhail Pletnev's famous arrangement of Prokofiev's music from the ballet Cinderella.
The fifth concert of the festival, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, is called "Music of Victory". The soloist of the Mariinsky Theater Tsvetana Omelchuk and the famous St. Petersburg pianist Oleg Weinstein will perform both academic vocal and piano works by Russian composers dedicated to the past wars, as well as the most famous war songs.
In the sixth concert, listeners will get acquainted with the art of the string quartet from Serbia Rubikon String Quartet. In the program of the festival evening, Serbian musicians included Schubert's 12th Quartet, Mendelssohn's 2nd, Shostakovich's 6th, as well as Puccini's play "Crisantemi".
The seventh festival evening will be dedicated to the chamber instrumental art of St. Petersburg musicians - pianist Stanislav Solovyov, violinist Vladimir Shulyakovsky, cellist Nikita Zubarev, violist Alexander Chizhov, clarinetist Nikita Lyutikov and French horn player Igor Karzov, who will perform Brahms's 3rd Piano Quartet and the extremely rarely performed Dohnányi Sextet.
The festival will close with a concert by the Chamber St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of conductor Leo Kremer with an exquisite Mozart program, which includes the Overture to the opera Don Giovanni, the Concert Symphony for Violin and Viola with Orchestra (soloists Lev Klychkov and Denis Gonchar) and the famous G minor Symphony No. 40.