Pushkin house music festival 2020

The inaugural Pushkin House Music Festival opened with The Russian Carnival on 28th January 2020, a concert in the exceptional acoustic of the historic baroque church St John’s Smith Square in Westminster. Glazunov’s Carnival, Op. 45, Medtner’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor, Op. 50, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5 were played by the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra, with Alexander Karpeyev as piano soloist, conducted by James Blair MBE.

The wonderfully intimate recital room at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury Square allowed audiences to get close to the artists for Festival recitals. On 30th January, Tatiana Sarkissova led a masterclass in piano for students Dmitry Kalashnikov, Damur Durmanovic, and Dilyan Todorov. In the evening, young pianists Thomas Ang, Hector Docx, Mikhail Dubov, Thomas Knight, Martin Malmgren, Maria Razumovskaya, Veronika Shoot, Drew Steanson and Nafis Umerkulova played pieces rarely heard in concert by composers including Lyadov, Myaskovsky, Mosolov and Shoot.

On 2nd February, Pushkin House hosted a very special Theremin Day built around the seldom-heard electronic musical instrument, which is played without touching, to mark 100 years of its invention. World-renowned theremin virtuouso Lydia Kavina led a public workshop on how to play this devilishly sensitive instrument, then in the evening performed pieces by Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and herself, among others, with accompaniment from Alexander Karpeyev on the piano.

St Paul’s Covent Garden, The Actors’ Church, was the venue on 31st January for a sparkling concert of works for voice, piano, flute and clarinet.