Previews

William Blake at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

William Blake (1757-1827), the English Romantic poet and painter is a significant figure in both literature and the visual arts. For Moscow and Russia, this is the first ever show by the artist, though Blake is well known here. The show features a series of Blake’s engravings and other works of graphics acquired by the Tate Gallery last year. By the way, the recent colaboration between the Pushkin Fine Arts and the Tate promises some joint projects celebrating Benjamin Britten’s anniversary both in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2013.

The exhibition, which will be held in the museum’s main building, will display about one hundred pieces of graphics by William Blake and other artists whom Blake influenced enormously. Those are Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Coley Burne- Jones, Samuel Palmer, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, Johann Heinrich Füssli, from altogether seven of Britain’s biggest collections. Presented in one exposition, those works unveil the artist’s artistic evolution and comprehend his genius. The colLabouration of the curators from the Tate promises to make the exhibition a vivid artistic event in Moscow.

Quod Est Veritas?

Nikolai Ghe (1831 - 1894) is a symbolic figure for Russian visual arts of the second half of the 19th century. The fall and rise of his career embodied in many ways the course of the 19th century in Russia. His grandfather emigrated to Russia in the late 18th century after the French Revolution. In 1850 Nikolai Ghe entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He graduated from it seven years later with a Gold Medal and a scholarship which provided him a major journey across Europe, where he actually lived and worked for almost ten years. He visited Germany, Switzerland, France and in 1860 settled in Italy. In 1863 he was appointed professor of historical painting at the Imperial Academy, with a brief of painting just one canvas, The Last Supper. His later works did not meet with the same enthusiasm. He bought a house in the country far from his home Kiev, and did not paint for many years. A meeting with Leo Tolstoy would make an artistic impact on Ghe, who became a follower of Tolstoy’s philosophy. His portraits, series with the Bible themes and landscapes are treasures of the Tretyakov GalleryMoscow. His painting “Quod Est Veritas?” depicting Christ and Pilate gave the name to the exhibition.

C’est la Vie

Zhenya Lyubitch is a vocalist and composer from St. Petersburg, who gained fame mainly due to her participation in the French band, Nouvelle Vague. They are kings of song covers, but they do it in a French, delicate way: they invite soloists to the recording of a song only on the condition that they have never heard the track before, so that there is a guarantee that it will sound unrehearsed.

Zhenya participated in the band’s recent album “Couleurs Sur Paris”. With the help of Nouvelle Vague, Lyubitch has become an independent performer, too, revealing her talent as a composer. Together with French

December 8, 19:00 House of Music, Svetlanovsky Hall

singer Nicolas Comment, she recorded a single, “Nous Etions Dieu”, and captured French hearts. Her composition for Stephane Pompougnac from France: “Morning Flow” is in the top 20 of the iTunes bestsellers. In France, Lyubitch recorded her latest album with songs in French, English and Russian. It is this album that the singer will present in Moscow. The programme is called “C’est la Vie”.

Chamber Music from Salzburg

Camerata Salzburg is a chamber orchestra from Austria. At home, the orchestra has a reputation of being the best performers of chamber classical music. They value their status, and the selection of their musicians is very strict. Today, musicians from more than twenty different countries play in the orchestra. “In search of perfection” is the orchestra’s artistic credo. They not only maintain the musical traditions Salzburg has been known for since Mozart’s time but their playing is “so inspiring that the audience can feel the joy of playing musical instruments themselves”,

November 19, 19:00 Svetlanovsky hall, House of Music

according to their Swiss newspaper Zürcher Zeitung. Camerata Salzburg are frequent guests at Mozart festivals all over the world and give about eighty concerts per year in Europe, Asia and America. They visited Moscow when Mozart’s 250th jubilee was celebrated. This year, they have selected Mozart’s early compositions, when he lived in Salzburg in the 1770s, plus the famous “night serenade”, a symphony and two concerts, with Russian Alexander Gindin being a piano soloist.