On 18 October, the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin Museums hosted the opening of the 10th Festival “Ambassadorial Gifts” timed to the large-scale exhibition project "The Legacy of Peter the Great and Coups d'Etat in the Russian Empire".
At the concert programme "The Guard is the Priority", the Central Military Band of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation conducted by the Honoured Artist of Russia Sergey Durygin performed marches of the oldest regiments of Russia – the Preobrazhensky and the Semyonovsky regiments, and also the Paris March created on the occasion of the triumphant entry of the Russian army into Paris on 31 March 1814, as well as the March of the Guards’ Artillery and waltz "The Mokshansky Regiment on the Hills of Manchuria".
Elena Milovzorova, Head of the Publishing and Special Programmes Department of the Moscow Kremlin Museums and Sergey Pepeliaev, Managing Partner of Pepeliaev Group LLC participated in the opening ceremony.
“Three concerts of the current year will be dedicated to the 18th century. We won’t discuss the 18th century as “the epoch of palace storms” and other difficulties. We will discuss Russian musical culture of the 18th century that began acquiring its own colour after the 17th century when it first rooted and then developed together with foreign tendencies and Italian opera. We called today’s concert "The Guard is the Priority" and it is not by accident since in Russia of the 18th century it was the guard that played the key role both in coups d’etat and life of the imperial court,” said Elena Milovzorova.
“The music of guards’ regiments best illustrates the exhibition. It is very complicated to find worthy musical framing for such events, one should have an enormous musical erudition and taste,” noted Sergey Pepeliaev.
The concert on 22 November will continue the festival with the programme "Imperial Grandchildren of Alexey Mikhailovich. Secular Music of the 18th century". The audience will listen to the works of Western European composers of the Enlightenment, who lived in Russia. Among them are Luigi Madonis who came to Saint Petersburg in 1731 and worked there all his life, and Francesco Araja – author of the first Russian opera “Cephalus and Prokris”. Apart from music, the concert will include poems by Mikhail Lomonosov, fables by Vasily Tredyakovsky, Jean de La Fontaine and Alexander Sumarokov.
The music pieces will be performed by the baroque ensemble “Soloists of Catherine the Great” and AXL Academy EARLYMUSIC under the guidance of Andrey Reshetin.
Sponsor of the Festival - Pepeliaev Group LLC
