PROGRAMME
Pyotr Glavatskikh: «The Arrival of the Ship»
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The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838)

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Theme and Variations in D minor, Op. 18b (1860)

Nikolai Medtner (1879–1951)
Three Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 42 (1914)
Pieces No. 2 and No. 4 from Six Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 51 (1928)
Pieces No. 3 and No. 1 from Four Fairy Tales for Piano, Op. 26 (1912)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Sarcasms, Op. 17 (1914)

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)
Selected keyboard sonatas

6+

Varvara Myagkova returns to the Diaghilev Festival with a new solo program — a romantic collage that moves from Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Brahms’s Theme and Variations to the “Russian fairy tales” of Medtner. The program closes with a surprising contrast: Prokofiev’s sharp and witty miniatures in Sarcasms paired with elegant Baroque sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.

The pianist’s goal is to uncover and highlight the visible and hidden connections between works from different styles and eras: “By bringing together pieces that seem so different and unrelated, I’ve not only shared my entire artistic experience, but also couldn’t ignore the voice that runs through them — a voice that is passionate, engaged, and full of selfless devotion. I want to rediscover these works as if they were freshly written today. We are not just inheritors of these notes. They live within us from the moment they were created to this very moment.”

Varvara Myagkova rose to fame thanks to the spread of her recordings and interviews on social media. Since 2019, the solo career of this Moscow Conservatory graduate — who spent many years working with a children’s choir — has taken off rapidly. Today, she performs in top concert halls and at major music festivals across Russia. Her repertoire is vast, ranging from Bach to contemporary composers writing in the style of “new simplicity,” some of whom have written pieces especially for her.
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Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

Performers:
Dmitry Borodin, violin
Andrey Roszyk, violin
Dinara Muratova, viola
Vladimir Slovachevsky, cello
Andrey Baranenko, piano

Programme:

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Piano Trio in A minor, M. 67 (1914)
Modéré
Pantoum: Assez vif
Passacaille: Très large
Finale: Animé

Marko Nikodijević (b. 1980)
String Quartet No. 2 (2019)
Introduzione
Ruvido e animato
Tango. Oscuro e minaccioso
Vivace
Adagio mesto

Intermission

Marko Nikodijević
Prelazak preko noćnog plavetnila / “Crossing the Night Blue”
for piano quintet (2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57 (1940)
Prelude: Lento – Poco più mosso – Lento
Fugue: Adagio
Scherzo: Allegretto
Intermezzo: Lento
Finale: Allegretto



6+

The soloists of the musicAeterna orchestra present a new chamber music program featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich, and the prominent contemporary Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević.

The concert is built on the principle of growing musical texture and density — from trio to piano quintet. It opens with Ravel’s Piano Trio, a virtuosic cycle, a brilliant example of mature composer’s style. The music blends Basque rhythms unfamiliar to the Western ear with exotic structures inspired by Malay poetry, combining sharp instrumental clarity with deep emotional resonance. This performance also celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth.

The program concludes with Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, a work that was met with great acclaim at its 1940 premiere. It mixes Bach-like polyphony with folk-style melodies reminiscent of Mussorgsky’s operatic language. The lyrical and dramatic elements are seamlessly fused, while the dark, aggressive undertones so common in Shostakovich’s music are almost absent. Musicologist Levon Akopyan quotes British critic Gerald Abraham’s description of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which fits the quintet as well: “This is Shostakovich after the devils have been driven out.”

Between these two 20th-century chamber classics are two works by our contemporary, Marko Nikodijević: the String Quartet No. 2 and a poetic piece for the piano quintet titled Crossing the Night Blue. Nikodijević’s music — energetic, vivid, and often influenced either by historical traditions or techno-inspired sounds — is well known to the audience of the Diaghilev Festival.
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The Great Hall of the Perm Philharmonic

 A musical fantasy inspired by the writings of Khalil Gibran

Idea by Pyotr Glavatskikh
Directed by Vasily Pospelov
Lighting design by Nikita Chernousov

Performers:
Pyotr Glavatskikh – percussion
Shriya Saran (India) – narration and dance
Hindustani Ensemble
Weinberg String Quintet

On the programme:

Grigoriy Smirnov (1982)
Mirrors of Emptiness for marimba and delay effect (2008)

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927)
Suite from the music for the play Shakuntala, arrangement for string quintet by Vladimir Pol (1914)

Pyotr Glavatskikh (b. 1979)
Dedication to Khalil Gibran for solo percussion

Traditional Hindustani music
Traditional Kathak dance
Reading


16+

The Arrival of the Ship is a project by Pyotr Glavatskikh — a regular participant of the Diaghilev Festival, Moscow-based multipercussionist, composer, and producer. It is a musical homage to the Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran and his book The Prophet, written as a collection of philosophical prose poems. At the heart of the parable lies the idea of the fundamental unity of religions. Pyotr Glavatskikh’s project is also based on unification — not of faiths, but of cultural traditions and musical worlds.

Bollywood actress Shriya Saran dances in the traditional Indian Kathak style and reads excerpts from Khalil Gibran’s book in English. Ildar Khabibullin, soloist of the Hindustani Ensemble and a master of traditional Indian vocal music, performs and reads the Russian translation.

In dialogue with the classical North Indian Hindustani tradition are works by the legendary philosopher and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan. In 1913, he lived in Moscow for seven months, performing Indian classical music and spreading his original philosophical ideas. Russian musicians helped him publish the collection Songs of Hindustani, which included Indian melodies arranged for piano. Some of them, in arrangements for string quintet, became part of the mystery ballet Shakuntala, staged by Alexander Tairov in 1914. Alongside fragments from this ballet, the program includes Grigory Smirnov’s Mirrors of Emptiness and a new percussion piece by Pyotr Glavatskikh inspired by Gibran’s writings.
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Chamber concert МCME

17.06 tu 21:00
Chamber concert МCME

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Naseer Shamma. Ethnic Music Concert
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Esperia

22.06 su 15:00
Esperia

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Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall

Performers:
Konstantin Efimov, flute
Oleg Tantsov, clarinet
Mikhail Dubov, piano
Evsevy Zubkov, percussion
Evgeny Subbotin, violin
Olga Demina, cello

Programme:

Georges Aperghis (b. 1945)
Graffitis for solo percussionist (1980)

George Crumb (1929–2022)
Eleven Echoes of Autumn for flute, clarinet, violin, and piano (1966)

Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021)
Pocket Symphony for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello (1999–2000). Russian premiere


12+

MCME — the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble — is a regular participant of the Diaghilev Festival. Founded in 1990 as an independent professional group, it was the first Russian ensemble devoted exclusively to promoting 20th- and 21st-century music and supporting living composers. The ensemble has premiered over a thousand Russian and world works, led major educational projects, released more than 50 albums, and received prestigious awards.

In this new program, MCME performs works by three iconic figures of the Western avant-garde, all linked by the spirit of instrumental theatre — where the process of creating music becomes a spectacle.

French composer of Greek descent Georges Aperghis is best known for his large-scale music theatre works. His concert piece Graffitis is essentially a one-man theatre: the percussionist plays and simultaneously delivers an emotionally charged text in which microfragments from Goethe’s Faust disintegrate into syllables, blurring the line between speech and musical sound.

In Eleven Echoes of Autumn, American avant-gardist and instrumental theatre pioneer George Crumb explores new timbral possibilities of flute, clarinet, violin, and piano. The result is a kind of “sound-theatre” where the protagonists are the mesmerizing and eerie sounds conjured from classical instruments.

American composer Frederic Rzewski departs from his usual political and social themes in Pocket Symphony, instead creating a purely musical “theatre of styles” — a witty, almost comedic play with stylistic and linguistic patterns drawn from both European classical and non-classical music traditions.
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Diaghilev House

Naseer Shamma – Arabic Oud





 Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission

16+

The main figure of the ethnic music concert at the Diaghilev Festival 2025 will be Naseer Shamma — a brilliant master of the classical Arabic oud. One of the most renowned solo oud performers in the world, Shamma was born, educated, and became famous in Iraq, but has long been a true "citizen of the world." He freely crosses borders — both geographical and stylistic.

In his compositions, Shamma brings together classical Arabic traditions with the harmonies and rhythms of Spanish folk music and European classical music. His poetic pieces, often inspired by Sufi ideas, are full of thematic contrasts and incredible virtuosity. Expanding the technical possibilities of the oud, he has developed a new type of instrument with additional strings.

Naseer Shamma actively performs around the world — in major concert halls across Asia, Europe, and North America — both solo and with various ensembles, from small groups to full-scale Arabic orchestras. He has received more than 70 prestigious awards. In 1999, he founded the Bayt al-Oud al-Arabi ("House of Arabic Oud") in Cairo — the first school fully dedicated to the oud as a solo instrument. Today, the school has branches in Abu Dhabi, Alexandria, Baghdad, Khartoum, Riyadh, and Mosul.

Shamma is also deeply involved in humanitarian work. He is a UNESCO Artist for Peace, a Goodwill Ambassador for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and, since 2023, a WHO Health Champion.

At Diaghilev House, Naseer Shamma will perform his own compositions: A World without Fear, Ishraq, From Assyria to Seville, Departing Moon (also known as The Moon Fades), and Garcia Lorca.
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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Concert-Performance

Musical Director and Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Director: Anna Guseva
Chief Choirmaster: Vitaly Polonsky
Choreographer: Anastasia Peshkova

Performers:
musicAeterna Choir
soloists of the musicAeterna Orchestra
musicAeterna Dance company

18+

The concert-performance Esperia, featuring the musicAeterna choir, orchestra soloists, and dance company under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, continues a long-standing tradition of the Diaghilev Festival: the program will remain a mystery until the end of the evening.

This concept of “pure perception” — where the audience experiences the performance without prior knowledge — is especially important for this piece. Esperia is a kind of modern mystery play, touching the deepest human emotions and hopes through sacred music from different styles and eras, subtle choreography, and carefully crafted lighting.
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Esperia

22.06 su 22:00
Esperia

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House of Music (Shpagin Factory, Building A)

Concert-Performance

Musical Director and Conductor: Teodor Currentzis
Director: Anna Guseva
Chief Choirmaster: Vitaly Polonsky
Choreographer: Anastasia Peshkova

Performers:
musicAeterna Choir
soloists of the musicAeterna Orchestra
musicAeterna Dance company

18+

The concert-performance Esperia, featuring the musicAeterna choir, orchestra soloists, and dance company under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, continues a long-standing tradition of the Diaghilev Festival: the program will remain a mystery until the end of the evening.

This concept of “pure perception” — where the audience experiences the performance without prior knowledge — is especially important for this piece. Esperia is a kind of modern mystery play, touching the deepest human emotions and hopes through sacred music from different styles and eras, subtle choreography, and carefully crafted lighting.
all tickets sold out more