All news

Young musicians from Vienna and Russian Siberian city plan joint concert program

Austria was not a random choice for the joint program, as Vienna is the musical capital of the world

VIENNA, August 14. /TASS/. The Mikhail Glinka State Conservatory in Russia’s Siberian city of Novosibirsk and the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts plan performances of a joint orchestra for 2018, when Russia and Austria will have the cross year of music, the president of the Open Sea Cultural and Educational Programs Foundation, Mikhail Simonyan, told TASS on Monday.

From August 13 to 27, the International Summer Academy of the Vienna University is underway in the Austrian town of Semmering (Lower Austria), where its leading professors give master classes to almost 300 students from 40 countries of the world.

Students from the conservatory of Russia’s Novosibirsk take part in this program for the first time. The project was initiated by the Open Sea Foundation with the support of the Russian ministries of culture and foreign affairs.

"Five best students from our conservatory have gone to Austria for practical training. In September, professors from the Vienna conservatory will go to Novosibirsk where they will be giving classes for three weeks. I think this is an excellent project, as it will be interesting for our colleagues from Vienna to learn that culture in our country is not only about Moscow and St. Petersburg, but people can play in Siberia as well," Simonyan said.

He said Austria was not a random choice for the joint program, as Vienna is the musical capital of the world. "We have an idea now to create next year a youth orchestra that would involve students from the Vienna and Novosibirsk conservatories. It can give several concerts in Austria and then a tour of Russia can be organized - involving Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg (Urals), Kazan (Tatarstan) and Novosibirsk," said maestro Simonyan, who himself plays the violin in masterly fashion.

In the course of the joint project, young talented Russian musicians will get a chance to take lessons from Austrian professors.

According to Russian Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky, first contacts between the two musical schools have been successfully established, and a joint educational program is at the start of a long road. "We will have two cross years in succession - the year of music in 2018, and the year of youth exchanges between Russia and Austria in 2019," he said. "We strongly hope that this project will be among the strong points within these two years," the ambassador said.