On February 23-24, the soloists of the Opera Centre under the direction of Galina Vishnevskaya will take part in the Festival dedicated to one of the main events of 2006 – the 100th birthday of D. Shostakovich. The Festival will take place in the capital of Azerbaijan – Baku – and it is held on the initiative of Mstislav Rostropovich. Maestro, who is the artistic director of the Festival, will take part in the Festival programme himself conducting in turn the State Academic Symphonic Orchestra of Russia and the Gadjibekov Azerbaijani State Symphonic orchestra.
Among the participants of the Festival, there are such well-known musicians and collectives as Victor Tretiakov (violin), Farkhad Badalbeily (piano), the Borodin Quartet, and the Shostakovich Quartet. The soloists of the Opera Centre will perform two vocal cycles of Shostakovich: Natalia Levitina will perform “The Satires” on the poetry of S. Chernyi dedicated to Galina Vishnevskaya and Irina Dubrovskaya, Olga Alekseeva, and Oleg Dolgov will perform the cycle “From Jewish people poetry”. Also within the Festival there will be shown the film “Katerina Izmailova” (1966) with Galina Vishnevskaya starring.