A chamber concert featuring the Rachmaninov Trio and Alexander Lemeshev, a famous St. Petersburg glass harmonica (crystallophone) player, took place at the White Hall of the Sheremetev Palace in St. Petersburg on December 1, 2016, as part of the joint cultural and educational project of Gazprom and Germany’s VNG-Verbundnetz Gas. The musicians played compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Mendelssohn.
“This concert is part of a large concert series,” said the pianist Viktor Yampolsky, leader of the Rachmaninov Trio. “We had a chance to expose German enthusiasts of chamber music to outstanding works of Russian composers, those who are widely known and those who are rarely performed.”
The project is based on two symmetrical creative concepts, comprising concerts and master classes by renowned Russian and German performers in both countries.
The first part of the project – German Classics in Russia – began in May 2016 with concerts and master classes hosted by state conservatories of Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Astrakhan, and Saratov. Audiences were treated to instrumental and vocal pieces by such great German composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms.
The second part of the project – Russian Seasons in Germany – took place in the autumn of 2016. Masterpieces of Russian chamber music by Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich were performed in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Dusseldorf, Hagen, and Dresden.
The final concert will be held this December in Moscow.
