2012 Gergiev Festival Mikkeli for the 20th time
In the first year – 1992 – the Mikkeli Music Festival, founded by the renowned musicologist and critic Seppo Heikinheimo, was mainly a Chamber Music Festival. After it has been taken over in 1993 by world-famous conductor Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Theatre from Saint Petersburg, it had turned to a big festival, featuring symphonic music and operas. To celebrate the 20th Gergiev Festival Mikkeli the Mariinsky Theatre will bring back opera to Mikkeli, for the first time since 2007. Giuseppe Verdi’s early masterpiece, the opera “Attila”, will be performed in a concert version on the 5th of July in Mikkeli’s Wooden Church.
The title role will be sung by Ildar Abdrazakov, one of the most sought-after singers of the world, who performed Attila recently at the Metropolitan Opera New York and in Saint Petersburg, assisted by a brilliant cast. This exciting opera has been given in Finland only two times before. For this festival, which could be named “Gergiev and Friends”, Maestro Gergiev invited favourite artists of the Mikkeli Festival’s audience for the symphony concerts, conducted by him: pianists Denis Matsuev (playing Liszt and Strauss), Miroslav Kultyshev (Grieg), Alexander Toradze (Prokofiev) and violinist Sergey Khachatryan (Tchaikovsky).
These solo concertos will be surrounded by treasures of Russian music. Of special interest will be the concert on July, the 4th, in which Rainer Honeck, concert master of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, will play and conduct popular music by Mozart and the Strauß family – both fun and serious. There will be some additional concerts: the Mariinsky Wind Quintet will play in the Cathedral, cellist Sergei Roldugin, who runs the House of Music in Saint Petersburg, will give a recital with pianist Miroslav Kultyshev, and the Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre will sing Russian Folk Songs. In these additional concerts more “rising stars” can be heard. The only 24 years old basso Anatoli Siuko from Belarus, who had won in 2009 the prestigious Klaudia Taev Singing Competition in Pärnu / Estonia and was singing in summer 2011 the title role in Verdi’s “Attila” in Estonian Theatres, will sing Russian and Belcanto arias and songs. Mikkeli-born pianist Terhi Dostal, who in 1994 had played under the name Terhi Jääskeläinen Grieg’s Piano Concerto under Gergiev, will come back for a recital in Mikkeli. And young pianist and composer Johannes Piirto, who last August opened the new Music Centre in Helsinki, playing a composition of his own, will give a recital in the church of Hirvensalmi. Without any doubt a highlight of the XX. Gergiev Festival will be a song recital of one of the most popular Finnish artists, soprano Soile Isokoski with her piano partner Marita Viitasalo.