The Triumph of Time and Disillusion is Handel’s first oratorio composed during his trip around Italy, which became a turning point in his artistic career. Once in Rome, the 22-year-old composer quickly won admirers among the aristocrats and clergy and began getting commissions from them. At the time, there was a papal prohibition on operas in Rome — due to that, oratorios were in fashion, however, they did not differ from operas practically in anything aside from moralizing plots. Such was the plot proposed to Handel by his friend, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj; as early as in May 1707 the score of The Triumph of Time and Disillusion was completed. Many years later, having settled in London, Handel significantly revised The Triumph twice — in this way, his first oratorio is (in the third edition) at the same time his last. Still, the early version is still performed more often than others.

The libretto written by the cardinal predictably expresses the ideology of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Young blooming Beauty strives for enjoyments encouraged by Pleasure — but Time and Disillusion keep her on the righteous path. Pleasure is declared the Enemy of Truth — its true ignoble essence is conveyed through the angular and dissonant music in some arias. Beauty chooses heavenly grace instead of deceptive earthly grace, agrees to take monastic vows and suffer punishment for her irresponsible hedonism. In the final aria, she mystically contemplates Eternity (in the symbolically appropriate key of E major) and contemplates mortality, the ephemeral nature of pleasure, and the futility of all things.

Handel composed the oratorio at the peak of his musical imagination and ingenuity. Later, he repeatedly transferred arias from it to his other compositions — for example, the aria of Pleasure Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa became a hit Lascia ch'io pianga in the opera Rinaldo. The music of "Triumph" is so permeated with sensuality that, in fact, refutes the concept of a humble refusal of pleasure, which it is meant to illustrate. This is a frantic, full of vital energy, virtuoso composition extremely demanding of performers. It is written in the style of concerto grosso, which was in its heyday at the time; Handel demonstrates his perfect command of the genre, in no way inferior to his Italian colleagues (the most famous of whom, Corelli, conducted the orchestra at the premiere). The instrumental interlude from Act I, an early example of an organ concerto, depicts a beautiful young man playing the organ in the halls of Pleasure. Researchers consider this piece to be a possible self-portrait of the author, a "sweet Saxon", a favourite of the Roman nobility.

In recent years, The Triumph of Time and Disillusion has been regularly performed in Russia. A new version will be presented by the troupe of the Nizhny Novgorod State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. The musical director and conductor of the production is Dmitry Sinkovsky, one of the leading Russian experts in early music. The director of the production is Elizaveta Moroz, who staged her interpretation of the opera Carmen in the Nizhny Novgorod Opera at the beginning of the year. She is known to the audience of the Diaghilev Festival through the performances Moira FM and SPORY'N'ya / *ergot presented in the last year festival programme.

The Triumph of Time and Disillusion is Handel’s first oratorio composed during his trip around Italy, which became a turning point in his artistic career. Once in Rome, the 22-year-old composer quickly won admirers among the aristocrats and clergy and began getting commissions from them. At the time, there was a papal prohibition on operas in Rome — due to that, oratorios were in fashion, however, they did not differ from operas practically in anything aside from moralizing plots. Such was the plot proposed to Handel by his friend, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj; as early as in May 1707 the score of The Triumph of Time and Disillusion was completed. Many years later, having settled in London, Handel significantly revised The Triumph twice — in this way, his first oratorio is (in the third edition) at the same time his last. Still, the early version is still performed more often than others.

The libretto written by the cardinal predictably expresses the ideology of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Young blooming Beauty strives for enjoyments encouraged by Pleasure — but Time and Disillusion keep her on the righteous path. Pleasure is declared the Enemy of Truth — its true ignoble essence is conveyed through the angular and dissonant music in some arias. Beauty chooses heavenly grace instead of deceptive earthly grace, agrees to take monastic vows and suffer punishment for her irresponsible hedonism. In the final aria, she mystically contemplates Eternity (in the symbolically appropriate key of E major) and contemplates mortality, the ephemeral nature of pleasure, and the futility of all things.

Handel composed the oratorio at the peak of his musical imagination and ingenuity. Later, he repeatedly transferred arias from it to his other compositions — for example, the aria of Pleasure Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa became a hit Lascia ch'io pianga in the opera Rinaldo. The music of "Triumph" is so permeated with sensuality that, in fact, refutes the concept of a humble refusal of pleasure, which it is meant to illustrate. This is a frantic, full of vital energy, virtuoso composition extremely demanding of performers. It is written in the style of concerto grosso, which was in its heyday at the time; Handel demonstrates his perfect command of the genre, in no way inferior to his Italian colleagues (the most famous of whom, Corelli, conducted the orchestra at the premiere). The instrumental interlude from Act I, an early example of an organ concerto, depicts a beautiful young man playing the organ in the halls of Pleasure. Researchers consider this piece to be a possible self-portrait of the author, a "sweet Saxon", a favourite of the Roman nobility.

In recent years, The Triumph of Time and Disillusion has been regularly performed in Russia. A new version will be presented by the troupe of the Nizhny Novgorod State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. The musical director and conductor of the production is Dmitry Sinkovsky, one of the leading Russian experts in early music. The director of the production is Elizaveta Moroz, who staged her interpretation of the opera Carmen in the Nizhny Novgorod Opera at the beginning of the year. She is known to the audience of the Diaghilev Festival through the performances Moira FM and SPORY'N'ya / *ergot presented in the last year festival programme.

"The Symphony of Psalms" is one of the most influential works of the 20th century and the most famous of Stravinsky's opuses on a religious theme. Stravinsky's composition has little in common with classical symphonies of the 19th century – as a representative of modernity he was looking for a new expressiveness in it, restrained and devoid of romantic sentiments. The search took him deep into the past, to Bach and the masters of the early Baroque - Giovanni Gabrieli and Schutz with their "Sacred Symphonies". Stravinsky removes "emotional" violins, violas and clarinets from the orchestra, increases the number of wind instruments to get an archaic, organ sonority, and suggests using children's voices instead of women's in the choir. The instruments and voices participate on equal terms in his complex contrapuntal fabric, in the notes one finds typical Renaissance and Baroque madrigalisms – sound illustrations for words and visual images.

The relationship between the spiritual and the secular in the "Symphony of Psalms" is well reflected in the wording of its dedication: "Composed for the glory of God for the Boston Orchestra on the occasion of its 50th anniversary". Having received an order for a concert composition, Stravinsky used it to reflect on the topics that worried him, and interpreted the publisher's request to "compose something popular" in his own way. Having no intention to adapt the music to the mass taste, he used psalms – "poems of praise, but also of anger and judgment, and even curses" – as a well-known ("popular") primary source. The "Symphony of Psalms" freely refers to the musical styles of three Christian denominations at once, without trying to fit the church usage. At the same time, it remains a personal and rather direct religious statement, in which, by Stravinsky's standards, there is surprisingly little irony.

Stravinsky calls "Perséphone" a melodrama, but it's not about a sentimental love story – rather, he means a special form of "reading to music", a common practice at the beginning of the 20th century. From a theatrical point of view, this is a composition of a mixed genre, which combines singing and recitation, an antique choir and lullabies, pantomime and statuesque mise en scene. "Perséphone" was created by order of Ida Rubinstein as a ballet – but it does not resemble the usual dance performances. Its syncretic form refers rather to the "ballets" of Monteverdi's time, in which there was sometimes much more singing than dancing.

In "Perséphone" Stravinsky yet again composes the ritual of spring – albeit not exactly the same as in "The Rite of Spring". Here the music is softer and more lyrical, the orchestra rarely plays in full force, and the myth underlying the plot is not Proto-Slavic, but Antique. Greek mythology and culture in general are extremely important for Stravinsky: resurrecting the pre-Romantic artistic ideal in his work, he restores the attitude to the Antiquity as a model, a living practice, and not as history.

In Stravinsky's and Andre Gide's version, Persephone turns out to be a proto-Christian figure – a child of the gods who voluntarily descended into the underworld out of pity for the souls suffering there and resurrected to a new life under the final stanzas of the choir, in the text of which researchers see references to the parable of the wheat grain from the Gospel of John (12:24). Into the image of Persephone, doomed to wander between two worlds, Stravinsky could also put the personal experiences of an artist standing (like all artists) on the border between aesthetic pleasure in an ivory tower and the bitter reality of daily human suffering.

"The Symphony of Psalms" is one of the most influential works of the 20th century and the most famous of Stravinsky's opuses on a religious theme. Stravinsky's composition has little in common with classical symphonies of the 19th century – as a representative of modernity he was looking for a new expressiveness in it, restrained and devoid of romantic sentiments. The search took him deep into the past, to Bach and the masters of the early Baroque - Giovanni Gabrieli and Schutz with their "Sacred Symphonies". Stravinsky removes "emotional" violins, violas and clarinets from the orchestra, increases the number of wind instruments to get an archaic, organ sonority, and suggests using children's voices instead of women's in the choir. The instruments and voices participate on equal terms in his complex contrapuntal fabric, in the notes one finds typical Renaissance and Baroque madrigalisms – sound illustrations for words and visual images.

The relationship between the spiritual and the secular in the "Symphony of Psalms" is well reflected in the wording of its dedication: "Composed for the glory of God for the Boston Orchestra on the occasion of its 50th anniversary". Having received an order for a concert composition, Stravinsky used it to reflect on the topics that worried him, and interpreted the publisher's request to "compose something popular" in his own way. Having no intention to adapt the music to the mass taste, he used psalms – "poems of praise, but also of anger and judgment, and even curses" – as a well-known ("popular") primary source. The "Symphony of Psalms" freely refers to the musical styles of three Christian denominations at once, without trying to fit the church usage. At the same time, it remains a personal and rather direct religious statement, in which, by Stravinsky's standards, there is surprisingly little irony.

Stravinsky calls "Perséphone" a melodrama, but it's not about a sentimental love story – rather, he means a special form of "reading to music", a common practice at the beginning of the 20th century. From a theatrical point of view, this is a composition of a mixed genre, which combines singing and recitation, an antique choir and lullabies, pantomime and statuesque mise en scene. "Perséphone" was created by order of Ida Rubinstein as a ballet – but it does not resemble the usual dance performances. Its syncretic form refers rather to the "ballets" of Monteverdi's time, in which there was sometimes much more singing than dancing.

In "Perséphone" Stravinsky yet again composes the ritual of spring – albeit not exactly the same as in "The Rite of Spring". Here the music is softer and more lyrical, the orchestra rarely plays in full force, and the myth underlying the plot is not Proto-Slavic, but Antique. Greek mythology and culture in general are extremely important for Stravinsky: resurrecting the pre-Romantic artistic ideal in his work, he restores the attitude to the Antiquity as a model, a living practice, and not as history.

In Stravinsky's and Andre Gide's version, Persephone turns out to be a proto-Christian figure – a child of the gods who voluntarily descended into the underworld out of pity for the souls suffering there and resurrected to a new life under the final stanzas of the choir, in the text of which researchers see references to the parable of the wheat grain from the Gospel of John (12:24). Into the image of Persephone, doomed to wander between two worlds, Stravinsky could also put the personal experiences of an artist standing (like all artists) on the border between aesthetic pleasure in an ivory tower and the bitter reality of daily human suffering.

The symphonic evening with the musicAeterna Orchestra is dedicated to Italy depicted in Tchaikovsky's compositions. The most cosmopolitan of the Russian composers of the 19th century, Tchaikovsky travelled extensively throughout his life in Europe, by 1880 having managed to visit the Italian Peninsula three times. The very nature of his talent is more "Italian" than "German": Tchaikovsky appreciates open-hearted emotions and expressiveness of melody, saturates abstract symphonic genres with theatrical drama, and values success with the public higher than the approval of critics. The concert programme encompasses three of his opuses related to Italy musically or in terms of the plot.
 
The symphonic fantasy "Francesca da Rimini" coexists in Tchaikovsky's creative biography with "Swan Lake" and "Eugene Onegin" - all three compositions are united by the theme of the doomed love. The composer came about with the conception of "Francesca" on his way to Bayreuth for the premiere of "The Ring of the Nibelung"; Tchaikovsky later agreed with critics about Wagner's influence on his score. In the story of Paolo and Francesca, the composer is interested in its dramatic potential in the first place. Tchaikovsky is not prone to abstract searches for sound colour, he is emotionally involved in the chosen plot, emphasizing in it the acuteness of the conflict and the depth of feelings of the characters. Saint-Saens placed "Francesca" musically above Liszt's "Dante Symphony", and cellist Karl Davydov, to whom the author would later dedicate his "Capriccio Italien", called the fantasy "the greatest work of our time." 

In December 1879, Tchaikovsky found himself in Rome during the carnival and, impressed by what he saw, decided to compose "something of the kind of Glinka's Spanish fantasies." A few months later, the score of the "Capriccio Italien" was ready. It indeed succeeds to Glinka's Spanish diptych in many ways – from the details of form and orchestration to the general treatment of the "national" in the vein of entertaining exoticism. Tchaikovsky in "Capriccio" looks at the Mediterranean with a tourist gaze: this is a paradise land where there are no sorrows, struggles and dramas, and sounds radiate joy, light, and serenity. "There is hardly any other composition in Russian classical music which contains not a single atom of gloom," as one of the reviewers summed up after the premiere.
 
The fantasy overture "Romeo and Juliet" is the only major symphonic composition by Tchaikovsky that does not have an opus number. Tchaikovsky could consider the overture not entirely his composition - since Balakirev's role in its creation, in fact, is teetering on the verge of co-authorship. It was Balakirev (to whom the overture is dedicated) who offered Tchaikovsky the plot, the tonal plan, the main images and even specific pictorial solutions ("fierce Allegro with saber strokes"), and his criticism forced Tchaikovsky to compose whole sections of the form anew, from the entrée to the outro. In "Romeo and Juliet" Tchaikovsky for the first time found his personal formula of symphonic drama: fatal images of doom, sharp contrasts, emotional waves, lyrics isolated and detached from the surrounding storms, tragic denouement of conflict, and ambiguous triumph. And also for the first time in his life he ascended to the top of melodic expressiveness - in the famous theme of love, which Rimsky-Korsakov later recognized as "one of the best themes of all Russian music."

Nocturnal enigma concerts at the Perm Art Gallery are one of the Diaghilev Festival traditions that define its atmosphere. Under the gallery dome amidst Permian gods — the unique wooden sculptures — music sounds: what kind of music it is becomes known only after the programme has been performed. In the meantime, the twilight in the hall gradually gives way to light, and immediately after the concert the audience can come out on the Kama River bank to meet the dawn.

The "Baroque Gala" does not attempt to cover the entire century and a half era in one evening. The concert programme offers us just one, but an extremely important perspective: an insight into the Italian branch of the High Baroque and its two main achievements — opera seria and instrumental concert style.
Opera, or melodramma seria, was a moralistic, sublime, and cruel art. In its plots there acted rulers, gods, and heroes, love conflicted with honour and duty, and virtue was always rewarded. In the first half of the 18th century, such operas were staged all over Europe, from London to Lisbon and St. Petersburg — almost exclusively for the entertainment of a narrow circle of the highest nobility. Monarchs competed with each other in the wealth and luxury of their court theatrical productions. Star performers — singers, castrati and prima donnas, earned as much as the Hollywood actors, and commoners, whose taxes, labour, and sometimes blood paid for all this splendour, happened to beat famous artists when they met them in the streets.

Virtuosos encouraged composers to write music that was increasingly sophisticated technically; in some arias, vocal coloratura would not fall short of the frantic sound cascades of violin parts in complexity. The singers also were required to be able to improvise. Changing the melody when repeating it, showing off in cadences — all this was and still is a model of vocal prowess and one of the main subjects for the listener of baroque music. The soloist in the opera was obliged to show a wide range of emotions, for which the composer provided him with a proper number of arias in various moods — fury, heroic pathos, love lyrics, sorrow, and exhilaration. As a result, three-part arias da capo (almost all the numbers in the concert are of this type) turned out to be the most important vocal form of the time; composers of Handel's or Scarlatti's level composed more than a thousand such arias each in the course of their career.

A German who spent most of his life in England, Handel was at the same time one of the major representatives of the Italian style, and his works naturally occupy the central place in the evening's programme. Arias from his operas were written during the triumphant London period, when a superstar trio — castrato Senesino, Francesca Cuzzoni, and Faustina Bordoni sang in the performances of the Royal Academy of Music headed by Handel. These give way to arias from English-language oratorios written later, when Italian opera in England went out of fashion and was cast into oblivion for a couple of centuries. Its style and methods, however, continued to live in a new guise — in the aria of Deyanira from the oratorio "Hercules", Handel transforms the da capo form into a dramatic scene and anticipates the scenes of madness from the bel canto operas of the 19th century.

Besides arias, the only purely instrumental compositions in the programme also belong to Antonio Vivaldi. Among them there is a concert from the collection "L'estro armonico" — perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music in the 18th century. And next to them there are the arias of the composers of "the second rate", whose music, in fact, is no weaker than the music of recognized stars: its harmonic experiments are no less bold, the vocal parts are no less puzzling, and the orchestra sounds with the same lyrical or wrathful force. Italian music is direct and sensual; it resists distanced listening and irresistibly draws us into its emotional orbit. Perhaps this is where the secret of its popularity is hidden, the popularity that is not ceasing even now, 300 years later.

At the Diaghilev Festival–2023, the musicAeterna4 vocal ensemble with the participation of the Greek instrumentalist, master of the classical Cretan lyra Yiorgos Kaloudis presents a new programme of Western European music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its title, taken from the song of the great English composer John Dowland "Come Again ... Sweet Love", elegantly alludes not only to the main theme of the programme — earthly love as a reflection of heavenly love — but also to its circular structure.

The vocal cycle opens with the earliest Western European hymns whose authorship we know: these are “Kyrie Eleison” and “O Virtus Sapientiae” of Saint Hildegard von Bingen – a visionary, a writer, an extraordinarily independent composer and an active abbess of the 12th century. Other early polyphonic medieval works are anonymous: the very institution of authorship was of no importance to the monks-musicians who combined new motifs, texts, and rhythms with old, well-known Gregorian chorales or folk melodies. We know their motets and virelais by the names of the codices — manuscripts in which they were recorded (often between other records of the monastic household needs and, as a rule, much later than these works had been created). The Spanish Codex Las Huelgas, the Catalan Ell Llibre Vermell, the French Codex Montpellier, forgotten for hundreds of years and found in the 19th century, serve as inexhaustible sources of music of the 13th century, in which the spiritual and the secular were often mixed literally, vertically (when three or four voices simultaneously sang three or four different texts, including spiritual hymns on Latin, and love songs in national languages).

The polyphonic and one-voiced compositions of the most important medieval author that is known to us — the poet and composer of the 14th century Guillaume de Machaut — serve as a kind of bridge to a new era, when it became customary to sign musical works with the name of the composer. However, the opuses of "folk" origin – popular songs and dances, like the famous English ballad "Greensleeves" or the French tourdion “Quand je bois du vin clairet” — still remained anonymous and allowed the publication of many textual and musical variations. As for the opuses of John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, Orlando di Lasso or Claudin de Sermisy, published in collections or transmitted in handwritten lists, such liberties were no longer permissible.

Reaching the pinnacle of Renaissance polyphony, the musicAeterna4 concert programme turns back to Guillaume de Machaut and anonymous music of the 13th century, as if saying: "Come again ...". Thus, the medieval sound supported by the tangy timbre of the Cretan lyra in the hands of Yiorgos Kaloudis will be fixed in the focus of the performers' attention and in the listeners' memory.

musicAeterna4 is an a capella vocal ensemble created in 2012 by the artists of the musicAeterna choir who have mastered not only academic, but also pop/jazz vocal technique. Their repertoire is based on original arrangements of folk songs (Russian, Gypsy, Greek, Tatar, Spanish, etc.), works by contemporary composers, arrangements of jazz and blues compositions from Broadway musicals and movie soundtracks.

Yiorgos Kaloudis is a cellist, classical cretan lyra performer, improviser, composer. As a classical Cretan lyra player, Yiorgos Kaloudis has released seven albums, and performed solo concerts at the Megaron Hall in Athens, at festivals of early, academic, and jazz music in different European countries and in Russia, collaborated with orchestras including the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the Lege Artis Chamber Choir in St. Petersburg, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Thessaloniki. At this time, with the scientific supervision of the University of Crete, he works on the musical research project: “Publication of a teaching method of Classical Cretan Lyra and application of modern technological means in its interpretation”. Among Kaloudis' creative partners are mezzo soprano Irini Tsirakidis, pianist Dimitra Kokkinopoulou, actress of ancient drama Sophia Hill, as well as the ensembles Thesis Trio and musicAeterna4.

Jazzayris is a musical project featuring several North African musical styles based on the richness of Algerian traditional music and its various styles – from Algiers to Oran via Mostaganem and Adrar. Hassan and Khalil act as ambassadors of their country. Their project is designed to awaken memories of the ancient myths of Algeria, expressed in countless stories of happiness and grief, joy and passion.

Artur Gazarov is a Moscow percussionist, a long-term collaborator of Leonid Agutin, an adept of world music and Latin American jazz styles. Khalil Ruazmi plays saxophone, drums, guitar and a guembri — Maghreb bass lute, which is chiseled out of a log, covered with camel skin and supplemented with three strings of goat veins. Hassan Belkacem Benaliua plays mandolin, violin and qanun, an Arabic zither whose origin dates back to Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. Ruazmi and Benaliua are both from Algeria (their cities are only 80 kilometers apart, an hour by car), but they first met in Moscow, where they arrived to master the "western" musical practice. Ruazmi is studying jazz in the Russian capital. Benaliua is honing his cello technique: two years ago he won the Prokofiev International Competition.

The music played by the trio could most accurately be defined as world fusion — a free mix-up of various musical forms with a similar ethnic flavour. It is unlikely that any nation will agree to recognize this music as its own, but the collective is not claiming to follow the folklore tradition in the utmost rigour. Instead, they cultivate a kind of authenticity of hybridization. The North of Africa, from Tangier to the Sahara, is part of the Mediterranean, a giant melting pot that has served as a habitat for numerous ethnic groups whose cultures were layered and intertwined with each other from time immemorial. Assyria, Rome, Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire have left their mark there. The richest culture of Muslim Andalusia has been preserved there after the Reconquista. The 20th century brought there marching brass bands and jazz influences. The transfer of this background to the Russian scene also adds a couple of colours. Apparently, music has always been created this way: the rhythms, timbres and styles that were at hand formed a new picture each time. To contemplate this ever-changing sound kaleidoscope, the musical here-and-now is an important and often exciting listening experience.

Nocturnal enigma concerts at the Perm Art Gallery are one of the Diaghilev Festival traditions that define its atmosphere. Under the gallery dome amidst Permian gods — the unique wooden sculptures — music sounds: what kind of music it is becomes known only after the programme has been performed. In the meantime, the twilight in the hall gradually gives way to light, and immediately after the concert the audience can come out on the Kama River bank to meet the dawn.

Richard Wagner is one of the most influential composers in the history of music, a cultural hero, myth, and symbol, whose work and views still remain the subject of frenzied debate. Orchestral music belongs to his most indisputable creative achievements: the technical perfection and expressiveness of his instrumentation were recognized even by sceptically minded critics. Wagner was a reformer of the art of orchestration, as well as the founder of conducting practice in its modern form.

Opera overtures form a significant part of Wagner’s symphonic legacy. To the traditional genre of the introduction to the opera, he brings new ideas that have developed in the programmatic symphonic poems of the New German School. Wagner's overture is inseparable from the opera it precedes and it is not only due to their thematic connections. Anticipating the drama, it illustrates not its external events, but the key philosophical problems behind the plot: the conflict of carnal and spiritual love in "Tannhäuser", pessimism and ever-insatiable love longing in "Tristan", the outpouring of heavenly grace into the world in "Lohengrin"… The overtures included in the concert programme form a kind of synopsis of Wagner's mature work, a brief digest of the German heroic epic, which the composer developed all his life, borrowing motifs from chivalric novels, medieval legends, ancient myths, and historical chronicles.

The introduction to "Tristan and Isolde" is preceded by a new work by Alexey Retinsky, composed in the unique genre of "an overture to overture". Retinsky is approaching Wagner in his attention to orchestral colour and the mythological nature of artistic thinking. The title of his composition – "Water Has no Hair" – refers the audience to the romantic and symbolist circle of images, from Wagner's Rhine mermaids to Debussy-Maeterlinck's Melisande.

Nocturnal enigma concerts at the Perm Art Gallery are one of the Diaghilev Festival traditions that define its atmosphere. Under the gallery dome amidst Permian gods — the unique wooden sculptures — music sounds: what kind of music it is becomes known only after the programme has been performed. In the meantime, the twilight in the hall gradually gives way to light, and immediately after the concert the audience can come out on the Kama River bank to meet the dawn.

Greek composer and researcher Yiorgos Kaloudis will appear not only as a classical Cretan lyra player and a connoisseur of ancient music, but also as a contemporary non-academic composer. The interests and experience of Yiorgos Kaloudis in the field of jazz music and electronics allow him to create atmospheric canvases close to ambient music while preserving the archaic flair.

Enigma concert. The programme will be announced at the end of the concert.

A frequent participant of the Diaghilev festivals of the past years, multi-percussionist Petr Glavatskikh presents the project "Age 300". The project is dedicated to two 300-year anniversaries at once: the foundation of the city of Perm and the creation of "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi - a composition that has become to represent the early music.

The concept of the evening is organized around the idea of time. The endless cyclical change of seasons is reflected here in the music of different eras. Traditional Perm folklore in the concert programme stands next to Baroque and modern compositions, giving a historical and cultural perspective to the current developments. Fragments from Vivaldi's "Seasons" enter into a dialogue with the percussion concerto of the end of the 20th century. The Marimba Concerto by Ney Rosauro, a Brazilian composer whose works for percussion have entered the standard repertoire, has been performed several thousand times around the world over half a century since its creation and, apparently, can be considered one of the most popular percussion compositions in history. Latin American rhythms serve as the basis for the music of the concerto - the same foundation for Vivaldi's concerto style was the Venetian rhythms of his time. The programme is complemented by solo compositions for percussion: "Black Clouds" for vibraphone by Edison Denisov, a classic of the Soviet avant-garde, and preludes dedicated to spring, autumn and winter by Petr Glavatskikh himself.

Together with the soloist, the Rosarium Chamber Orchestra and the creative association "Repey" take part in the concert.

Rosarium is a collective focused on the authentic performance of the 18th century music. It has been part of the Faculty of Historical and Contemporary Performance of Moscow Conservatory since the formation of the faculty in 1997 and last year presented a programme of works by Bach and Telemann at the Diaghilev Festival.

Creative Association Repey studies traditional musical culture and invents forms for its presentation in an urban environment. The soloists of Repey have mastered the South Russian style of singing, rare vocal, and instrumental techniques on Pan’s multi-barrel flutes — kugikles, paelyans, zorkas — and single-barrel flutes whistlers. All the flutes of the ensemble are made by the participants from giant umbelliferous and gramineous plants. The concert will include folklore material collected by the ensemble in expeditions around Perm Krai and the South of Russia.

The festival programme of the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (MCME) is a short overview of the ways modern composers work with verbal text. The ensemble focuses on different tactics of interaction between the text, the soloist, and instrumentalists, as well as different types of texts set to music in the compositions of the leading authors of the generation of 50–year-olds. The three works performed by MCME form a paradoxical narrative about love and death. In this narrative, "high" and "low" genres have equal say, tension is softened by irony, and kitsch turns into palpitating lyrics.

Alexey Sysoev – a Moscow-based radical composer with a background of a jazz pianist, a taste for experimental electronics and non-academic vocals – appears as the author of a 2018 composition in which a baritone and an instrumental ensemble perform traditional solo and accompanying roles. It is the text that is unconventional here. Mon aimée, ma belle Irène is the full text of the suicide letter of the Russian poet and ethnographer, a member of the French Resistance Boris Vilde from a German prison, in which the expectation of execution is comprehended from the perspective of eternity and love: "Death for me is the realization of Great Love, it is entering the true reality."

The cycle of the Cypriot composer, musicAeterna resident Andreas Moustoukis set to the verses of Guillaume Apollinaire (premiered at St. Petersburg Dom Radio in February 2023) "dresses" classical poems about the autumn of the French avant-gardist, anarchist, aesthete, and founder of surrealism in a non-academic electronic percussion sound shell: "Leaves / Trampled as one / A train / That rolls on / Life / Is gone".

In the composition of the famous Russian-German composer, a member of the group SoMa Vladimir Rannev, This is Such a Love (2014), an anonymous text from the collection "Handwritten Girl's Story" by sociologist Sergey Borisov appears on the video screen, while the soloist only sighs along with the instrumental ensemble in time with the running lines, "singing over" the motives of Romeo and Juliet in a new way: «Victor fell to his knees. He throbbed, kissed Lena's portrait, but it was not enough, in the name of love he took out poison and drank it. “I'm sorry, Lena, I'm sorry for my negligence, I'm sorry for my incomplete love, Lena! I am dying in your name..."».

"The Soldier's Tale" is a rare example of the synthesis of music and drama theatre in the chamber genre. Seven instrumentalists, reciters and dancers, whose presence Stravinsky himself considered optional, should be in constant interaction on one small stage, while each has to act strictly within the framework of their art form. Interpreting this work is always a challenge for performers.

"The Soldier's Tale" is halfway from the Russian style of Igor Stravinsky's three great ballets ("The Firebird", "Petrushka" and "The Rite of Spring") to his neoclassical masterpieces of the 1920s. In parallel with work on "The Soldier's Tale", Stravinsky was composing "The Wedding", and the folklore intonations of this great ballet are heard not only in the Soldier's violin solos — they permeate the entire score. Meanwhile, the plot, being a collage of Russian fairy tales about a soldier and the devil from the collection of Alexander Afanasiev, served as the basis for a completely international musical collage. Stravinsky ironically sided with American ragtime, then with French waltz, he parodies the Spanish paso doble, then simulates Bach chorale, and references to military brass music of the 19th century connect "The Soldier's Tale" with the opera "The Moor" — the composer's bow towards the "Golden Age" of Russian literature and music.

The author himself explained to Robert Craft: «My original idea was to transpose the period and style of our play to any time and 1918, and to many nationalities and none…. The soldier of the original production was dressed in the uniform of a Swiss army private of 1918, while the costume, and especially the tonsorial apparatus, of the lepidopterist were of the 1830 period. <...>  Our soldier in 1918 was very definitely perceived as a victim of the world conflict at the time, despite the neutrality of the plot. "The Soldier's Tale" remains my only theatre piece with reference to the present day».

Alexei Zuev is a pianist who versatilely combines the traditions of Russian and European performing schools in his work. Alumnus of the Secondary Special Music School at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, he later trained with Alexei Lubimov and Eliso Virsaladze in Salzburg and Munich, and then became an associate professor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. His career has developed mainly in Alpine Europe: he gives concerts in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Luxembourg, while his performances in Russia take place as part of the Moscow Easter Festival, the Diaghilev Festival, and other major music forums.

The concert programme represents a brief history of the piano conceived as the "king of instruments" that is able to compete with the orchestra in expressiveness and scale of sound. One of the first and most significant advocates of this concept was Franz Liszt. Beethoven's symphonies in his transcription for piano have become a manifesto of their kind, a hymn to the limitless possibilities of the instrument. Liszt created the transcriptions of most of the symphonies (including the Symphony No. 4) in the early 1860s as he sought to demonstrate the full range of advantages of new pianos with an iron frame. Another, no less significant motivation for the creation of the cycle was the promotion of Beethoven's music. As a matter of fact, for many listeners of Liszt's concert tours, his transcriptions were the only opportunity to hear Beethoven's symphony.

"Beethoven's name is sacred in art," Liszt would later write in the preface to the complete edition of the transcriptions. Liszt himself put a lot of effort into this sacralization; the universal recognition of Beethoven as the supreme god of the musical pantheon is largely to Liszt's credit, who was a world-famous virtuoso and influential intellectual. He finished the arrangement of the symphonies during the years of solitude in a monastery on the outskirts of Rome – an obvious symbolic gesture, an invitation to view the scores of the last Viennese classic as the new Holy Scripture. Liszt carefully transferred into his scores all of Beethoven's orchestral instructions, including even those that cannot be performed on the piano. The transcriptions are so demanding in terms of technique, endurance and musicality that the pianist who dares to perform them is forced to treat them with a kind of religious zeal – otherwise it is hardly possible to cope with difficulties.

Stravinsky's The Firebird was written at a time when composers reached the pinnacle of luxury and elegance in the field of symphonic colour. It is highly unlikely that the arrangement of the ballet was made by the author for public performance – rather, it was intended for rehearsals and close acquaintance with music. As was customary in those years, the score exploits the specific sound capabilities of each instrument. The piano transcription deprives the music of a good part of its colourful orchestral flair, takes the listener out of a romantic trance and offers him a more detached and clear view of things. In the piano version, the structure of the composition is clearer, the rhythms are more legible, and stylistic borrowings from colleagues (from the Mighty Five to Scriabin and Debussy) are more evident.

The Five Fingers, composed in 1921, is an important opus despite its modest size. Its declarative transparency and sound austerity is only one step away from the future neoclassicism. There is nothing left of romantic piano practice here: there is no pedal, there are no virtuoso passages, subtle gradations of dynamics and textured depth in several layers. The piano, perhaps for the first time, is equal to itself here and no longer tries to imitate anyone. The age of rivalry with the orchestra has been left behind.

The programme of the quartet of soloists of La Voce Strumentale ensemble consists of works by Czech composers who died in Nazi concentration camps during the World War II.

Before the war, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Gideon Klein, and Erwin Schulhoff had been building successful musical careers. Haas was considered Janáček's best student and created his style at the intersection of Moravian folklore, Jewish liturgical music, jazz, and neoclassicism. Krása worked as a tutor at the New German Theatre in Prague, studied with Tsemlinsky and communicated in Paris with Roussel and Les Six. His style was distinguished by grotesque, irony, and inventive instrumentation. Klein studied with Alois Hába, wrote works on voice studies in Mozart's quartets at the university and enthusiastically read classical scores even in bed before going to sleep. Erwin Schulhoff, having served in the army in the World War I, returned from Italian captivity as a man of leftist beliefs, corresponded with Berg, wrote funny absurdist plays under the influence of Dadaists and dancing in nightclubs, and gradually moved towards social realism, even managing to compose a cantata on the text of the "Communist Manifesto".

After the German occupation of the Czech Republic they all shared the same destiny. Due to their Jewish origin, they were banned from working, and their compositions were no longer allowed to be performed on stage. Schulhoff's music was declared "degenerate" by the Nazis back in the 1930s. In 1941, he applied for Soviet citizenship and received it – but was arrested before he could leave, and died a year later in prison from tuberculosis. Haas divorced his wife in order to get her and daughter out of harm's way, tried to leave and sought help from friends abroad, but to no avail. Klein received a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but was unable to leave the country due to German anti-Jewish laws. In 1941, Haas, Krása, and Klein were sent to Terezin, a garrison town turned into a Jewish ghetto. Despite the unbearable living conditions (in 4 years 33 thousand people died there from hunger, disease, and torture), Terezin, according to the memoirs of survivors, was one of the most artistically free places in Europe during the years of war. There they wrote music on illegally imported music paper, played concerts on contraband instruments, and even staged operas.

In 1944, a propaganda film was made about Terezin ("Theresienstadt: The Führer Gives a City to the Jews"), in which Haas could be seen bowing after the premiere of his orchestral piece, and the children's choir sang the opera by Krása - the last composition he completed before his arrest. Shortly after the end of filming, the inhabitants of Terezin were sent to Auschwitz, where Dr. Josef Mengele personally supervised the distribution of the arrivals to the gas chambers. Haas was killed on October 16, Krása – on October 18. Klein died under unclear circumstances in January 1945 during the liquidation of the Fürstengrube camp.

Haas' String Quartet No. 3 was completed in 1938: an anxious, restless nervousness is mixed with subjective and emotional lyricism in it. Krása 's String Quartet was written in 1921: this is an acutely personal statement, in which the influence of the late Romantics is combined with an interest in mass commercial music, black humour, and paradoxical assemblage in the spirit of the Weimar Republic. The 1944 Partita for Strings is Klein's last composition: two weeks after completion, at the age of 25, he was sent to Auschwitz. Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet of 1923 are short and technically sophisticated exercises in parody danceability, a venerable Baroque genre of dance suite reflected in an ironic mirror.

For many years Greek cellist, composer, improviser, researcher Yiorgos Kaloudis has been exploring the possibilities of playing the classical Cretan lyra, one of the most ancient musical instruments. Combining the techniques of cello playing and the features of the traditional Cretan lyra, he upgraded the instrument by adding the fourth string (lower cello C).

In the programme comprising masterpieces of the Middle Ages and Baroque music, this ancient instrument, the ancestor of most European bowed string instruments, will sound in all its timbre beauty and variety of technical capabilities.

The classical Cretan lyra is a pear-shaped, traditionally three-stringed bowed instrument, often with additional sympathetic strings. The strings on it are clamped with nails, and not pressed with fingers to the soundboard. One of the most ancient ways of sound production gives an unusually sparse whistling tone. It was preserved intact due to the fact that this ancestor of many European bowed instruments for centuries "lived" in the local traditional culture, was played at dance parties (bells were often attached to the bow) and did not come into view of professional musicians.

Yiorgos Kaloudis delved deep into the research and practice of playing the classical Cretan lyra in 2005. Combining the techniques of cello playing and the features of the traditional Cretan lyra, he upgraded the instrument by adding the fourth string.

In the LA RÊVEUSE programme, the classical Cretan lyra appears as an ideal solo and accompanying the vocal (performed by Yiorgos Kaloudis himself) instrument for the music of the Middle Ages. At the same time, due to the author's improvements and author's transcriptions, the classical Cretan lyra brilliantly copes with Baroque masterpieces written for viola da gamba.

The programme opens with a hymn dedicated to John the Baptist. The music is attributed to the founder of the entire European musical system Guido D'Arezzo: the initial syllables of the lines of the Latin hymn Ut queant laxis – ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la – still signify the steps of the musical scale. The English song of the 13th century about saying goodbye to summer is placed side by side with a selection of famous vocal compositions by the greatest poet and composer of the Middle Ages, Guillaume de Machaut. These are followed by outstanding examples of French music of the 17th and 18th centuries – a one-part concerto for two violas da gamba (transcribed for one Cretan lyra) by Jean de Sainte-Colombe and pieces by his famous pupil Marin Marais.

Yiorgos Kaloudis is a cellist, classical Cretan lyra performer, improviser, composer. As a classical Cretan lyra player, Yiorgos Kaloudis has released seven albums, and performed solo concerts at the Megaron Hall in Athens, at festivals of early, academic, and jazz music in different European countries and in Russia, collaborated with orchestras including the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the Lege Artis Chamber Choir in St. Petersburg, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Thessaloniki. At this time, with the scientific supervision of the University of Crete, he works on the musical research project: “Publication of a teaching method of Classical Cretan Lyra and application of modern technological means in its interpretation”. Among Kaloudis' creative partners are mezzo soprano Irini Tsirakidis, pianist Dimitra Kokkinopoulou, actress of ancient drama Sophia Hill, as well as the ensembles Thesis Trio and musicAeterna4.

The Diaghilev Festival closes with an alternative music concert. There are three teams in the lineup representing different sides of the current club scene: post-punk gothic by the St. Petersburg duo DK Postoronnikh, noir-electro-pop by the Moscow duo Love Object, and psychedelic dream-pop by a Perm band Half Moon Glass.

Verified guitar minimalism and cool urban lyrics: DK Postoronnikh bring genre eclecticism back to post-punk and create melancholic polyphony. Its leitmotif is the search for the crack that splits hopes one by one, leaving only bitter disappointment and fear of the future.

Love Object is a new intriguing electro-pop project of the Moscow duo Dasha Utochka and Danya Mu. Both have previously toured the world as DJs: Utochka as DJ Aktu and Mu as DJ Mucity. The imaginary world created by Love Object is populated by characters that seem to have come out of Cronenberg's films. The band's otherworldly sound is a futuristic neo-noir landscape in which strange dramas unfold, and villains use mind control to question the very meaning of the word "human" in a digital society.

Half Moon Glass are Perm based adepts of summer relaxed sound a la Tame Impala. The psychedelic dream-pop of the band, instead of catchy melodies, brings to the fore guitar flanger, analogue synthesizer sequences, chill groove, dreamy and melancholic sound. The group successfully performed at the St. Petersburg Shau Karau festival, the "Night at the Museum" party at PERMM, and many other events.

Marko Nikodijevic and Luka Kozlovacki are a techno duo of two academic composers from Serbia. Marko Nikodievich was a resident of the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, his music is performed by leading ensembles and orchestras in Europe, including musicAeterna. He is interested in nonlinear mathematics, chaos theory, and algorithmic methods of composition. Serbian-Swedish composer and sound designer Luka Kozlovacki studied sonology and algorithmic composition at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, his music is played both at the Under Bron Stockholm Club and at the Paris Philharmonic. Together, Nikodievich and Kozlovacki perform at the leading Berlin techno festivals, creating ascetic dance canvases interweaving drones and loops.  

Performance “Därdemänd” is the brainchild of a dancer Nurbek Batulla, choreographer Marcel Nureyev, director Tufan Imamutdinov, and composer Elmir Nizamov — like-minded people who founded the creative association "Alif" in Kazan in 2017. At the time, their first project was a plastic performance of the same name: as a result, it not only proclaimed the ideological principles of the alliance, but also won Nurbek Batulla a Golden Mask for performing skills. Since then, Batulla and the "Alif" brand have officially presented Tatar contemporary art and dance, which addresses the national identity and the difficult fate of the native written language ground up in the dramas of the 20th century.

At the junction of dance, performance, physical theatre, poetry, and music, "Alif" explores the connection of Tatar people with their native language, and more broadly with history and myth. The 20th century, which marked the transition from Arabic script to Cyrillic script for the Tatars, almost completely deprived them of the opportunity to speak with their ancestors. Now they communicate with them through flesh and blood, through the body – a tool that allows them to find support. For example, in the production "Әlif" Nurbek Batulla dances the Tatar alphabet through on the sand: words and phrases are formed from letters and his plastics, ancient music and vocals filled with the bitterness of lost memory echo his movements. The "Sak-Sok", where Nurbek also acts as a director, and the language of contemporary dance is mixed with breakdancing in the flickering of a strobe light, has been called an initiation rite and a search for spiritual power. The choral oratorio "Әllүki" combines five poems by the Tatar poetry classic Gabdulla Tukai under the title of a Tatar lullaby: the tragic fate of the language is narrated here with gestures of the graduates of the theatre school for the deaf "Inclusion".

In each of its productions, the "Alif" association draws the lost word from the depths of memory and returns it to the "right now" moment using the body language and dance. The starting point for all their works is the verbal impulse. The cross-genre performance “Därdemänd” was based on the poetry of an industrialist Zakir Ramiev who lived at the turn of the 20th century — the Persian word "Därdemänd", meaning "saddened", was taken by the philanthropist as a pen-name. His focus was not the euphonious beauty of rhyme, but the density of thought and meanings that could become a new vision of art. Ramiev's philosophical arguments were supported neither then, nor later, but almost 100 years after his death they turned out to be in tune with the descendants, who, led by director Tufan Imamutdinov, decided to retrieve the poet's ideas and memory.

The plastic design of the performance is organised around the improvisation of Nurbek Batulla. He explores the different qualities of movement in allusion to the poetry of Därdemänd performed by the countertenor Rustam Yavaev. It all starts with groping steps and pauses, and ends with a frenzied dance: plastic is born here and now from the musical trialogue of the violin, viola, and double bass, and inside the body of Nurbek himself, who once again is passing the initiation rite in search of the spiritual power of his ancestors.

Nurbek Batulla is a choreographer, director, and dancer. He is a graduate of the Kazan Choreographic School and the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (RGISI) in St. Petersburg. He received the Golden Mask-2018 National Theatre Award in the category "Male role / Modern dance" for his performance in "Әlif". Currently, he is the resident of the MOÑ Theatrical Venue.

Marcel Nureyev is a dancer and choreographer. He graduated from the Theatre Department of the Kazan University of Culture and Art. From 2005 to 2013 he was an artist of the dance theatre "The Road from the City", since 2010 he has been the head of the student dance theatre "Without Words". He is the choreographer and performer of the dance performance "DӨR", awarded in several nominations with Golden Mask-2023.

Tufan Imamutdinov is a director. He graduated from the Directing Department of the Russian Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS), was invited by Galina Volchek to the Sovremennik Theatre, served as a resident director of the Moscow Theatre of Nations. In 2014, he was appointed Chief Director of the Kazan Young Spectator Theatre. Presently he is the Chief Director of the Tatar State Karim Tinchurin Drama and Comedy Theatre.

Elmir Nizamov is a pianist and composer. He is a graduate of the Composition Department and the postgraduate programme of the Kazan State Conservatory. He works with national music, opera, and pop music.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

The permanent co-authors of the Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos — composer Panayiotis Velianitis and the leading actress of the Attis Theatre in Delphi Sophia Hill — present their performance Prometheus in memoriam, a project that interprets the ancient myth in a new way.

Prometheus — according to one version, the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Klymene — created humans. To help the humanity, he stole fire from the furnace of Hephaestus or, according to others, from the chariot wheel of the Sun, and brought it to people to improve their lives. He also taught them the arts and sciences so that they would become civilised.

According to the authors of the performance Prometheus in memoriam, people invented the myth of Prometheus in order to find a reflection of their actions and history in it. It was as if they were trying to exorcise the curse of mutual annihilation and suffering that they themselves cause and that overshadows the achievements of their civilisation.

Panayiotis Velianitis’ sound work is based on a complex relationship between electronics, processed and “pure” field recordings, as well as recorded and edited speech. Following the structure of Aeschylus’ tragedy Prometheus Bound, the author transforms into music turning points in the history of mankind, such as, for example, the industrial and technological revolution or the economic decline of the interwar period.

The actress-performer Sophia Hill, finds herself, like the mythical Nereus, in a constant transformation. She exorcises the curse of eternal punishment of the defeated Titans and humanity itself. Her path runs on coals, it is the source that she draws her energy from, but it is also her punishment at the same time.

Panayiotis Velianitis is a composer, one of the first Greek creators of computer music. He is a member of the Contemporary Music Research Center (CMRC) founded by the composer Iannis Xenakis, and a member of the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (HELMCA). Since 1991, he has been the composer of Theodoros Terzopoulos’ productions both at the Attis Theatre and in those of other theatres in Greece and abroad. Has collaborated with leading soloists such as the Greek mandolinist Dimitris Marinos, the British trombonist John Kenny, the Russian soprano Natalia Pshenichnikova, as well as with important visual artists such as Yannis Kounellis, Kalliopi Lemos, Michalis Arfaras, Grigoris Semitekolo, Ersi Hatziargyrou, Elias Tabakeas, etc.

Sophia Hill is an actress and performer. After her graduation from Veaki Drama School, she immediately began a long-term collaboration with the Attis Theatre and Theodoros Terzopoulos, taking part in the performances based on Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Heracles by Heiner Müller, Money on the texts by Bertolt Brecht, Heracles Enraged by Euripides, Kathodos (“Way Down”) based on fragments of Euripides’ The Madness of Heracles (Heracles Enraged) and Sophocles’ Trachiniae, Hamlet, an Apprenticeship following Boris Pasternak and many others, as well as in the production of Dmitri Kourliandski’s opera Nosferatu (Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre). Sophia Hill also performed her own mono performance Rhapsody M based on Homer’s Odyssey at the Ancient Theatre of Aptera and participated in the play Clytemnestra, Chamber Music for One Instrument at the Athens Epidaurus Festival.

Oleg Nesterov, widely known as the leader of the Megapolis band and the founder of the Snegiri-music indie label, has long been interested in the curiosities of the USSR musical history. In 2014, he launched the project From the Lives of Planets dedicated to the unreleased films of the 1960s. In recent years, Nesterov has been engaged with in the “Three Degrees of Freedom project. Music > cinema > USSR”. He digs up unreleased Soviet film music and gives it a new life in the new world. As a result of the research project, books, websites, vinyl and digital music collections, exhibitions and concerts at the Lenfilm studio are produced. In 2021, Alfred Schnittke was the focus of attention, and the next hero became Oleg Karavaychuk. The project in his honour was created with the assistance of the Foundation for the Support of Cultural Projects and the Preservation of Oleg Karavaichuk's Heritage.

A kind of cult has developed around Oleg Karavaychuk, who for many years cultivated the image of an otherworldly creative genius. The textual part of "Three Degrees of Freedom" offers a key to Karavaichuk phenomenon based on the memories of the composer, his colleagues and friends, recordings of Karavaichuk's stories about his childhood and his work in cinema. The exhibition-concert provides the audience with the opportunity to focus on the music and take away pure auditory experience from the concert, cleaned from performative impurities.

The concerts of the project use acousmonium – the "orchestra of loudspeakers", invented in the late 1970s by the pioneer of art house electronics Francois Bayle and allowing flexible control of the distribution of acoustic events in space. Acousmonium is a system of fifty speakers of various shapes, sizes and frequency characteristics. The performer controls the volume of each of them, moving the sound around the hall and immersing the viewer in the dynamically changing sonic space.

The programme of the exhibition-concert will feature music from the films "The Long Farewell" and "Brief Encounters" by Kira Muratova; "Monologue", "Other People's Letters" and "Drama from Ancient Life" by Ilya Averbakh; "Urban Romance" by Pyotr Todorovsky; "Mom Got Married" and "Ksenia, Fyodor's Beloved Wife" by Vitaly Melnikov; "Summer Trip to the Sea" by Semyon Aranovich. The acousmonium will be conducted by Ilya Symphocat, a performer and composer working at the junction of electronic music, modern classical music, and minimalism. The author of the video installation is Mikhail Zaikanov, an artist and video artist, known for his works for the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre, the Oleg Tabakov Theatre, the Meyerhold Centre, the Praktika Theatre, and others.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Composer Alexey Retinsky will create a soundtrack for the silent frames of the documentary film "In Spring" (1929), going far beyond the traditional taper practice, but adhering to the principle of improvisation. According to the composer, "to give a new sound interpretation to the silence of silent cinema and to deepen the visual narrative in a counterpoint is what cinema aspired to in its early stages. Till the present day, the gap between what we see and what we hear is an unknown terra incogita, very reluctantly, but yet revealing its outlines." The performance will use electronics, sound kinetic objects by Herman Vinogradov, and other non-standard musical instruments performed by the author.

The avant-garde masterpiece "In Spring" (1929) is the debut work of Mikhail Kaufman, Dziga Vertov's cameraman, as a director. "In Spring" is Kaufman's answer to the film "A Man with a Movie Camera", which proved that unaided by titles it is still possible to express deep ideas, but doing it differently than Dziga Vertov. The work is based on observing the course of life of people and nature. The film is divided into five parts: "At the Turn", "Spring Vexation", "Life", "National Holidays", "Spring is Coming".

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.

Audio performance-promenade "Persephone. Before" is a curtain-raiser of the main event of the festival, the premiere of the stage version of Igor Stravinsky's "Persephone" and "Symphony of Psalms" performed by musicAeterna under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

The project starts with the opening of the festival and will last 9 days. Director Evgeny Malenchev and playwright Ekaterina Avgustenyak will send the participants of their site-specific project on a journey to places that are normally closed to public. The audio performances will take place in Zakamsk: the Perm Shipyard backwater, famed in photo reports and films, will become the place of an impressive journey into the ancient myth of the eternal cycle of life and death, which takes on a new meaning in the landscape of today. Dying ships, living out their last days in the midst of blooming nature – these industrial monsters that once conquered the Kama, and now drowning in its embrace – will serve as "sacred objects" on this journey..

The audio performance is based on conversations, interviews, and memoirs of Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, who largely defined the "musical face" of his age. Like Eumolpus, who expounds the content of the myth in the melodrama "Persephone", the main character of the project "Persephone. Before" will be Stravinsky himself. His meeting with Diaghilev and their quarrels, the idea and history of the creation of "Persephone", "the tragic in exile", and other vital issues will form the basis of an audio mystery in which, despite its powerful informativity, feelings will be more important than words, and the dialogue with the composer will turn into a dialogue with myth and nature.