Artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater, conductor, People's Artist Valery Gergiyev.
Vadim Zhernov / RIA NovostiThe world premiere of a recently discovered Stravinsky composition will be streamed on medici.tv and mariinsky.tv on Dec. 2, 10:00 pm Moscow time. The Funeral Song, lost for a hundred years, will be performed by the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Valery Gergiev as part of the 5th St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum.
The premiere of the piece will commence the Year of Igor Stravinsky, in honor of the great composer's 135th birthday to be celebrated in 2017.
The Funeral Song was written in 1908 in tribute to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky’s teacher, shortly after his death. The first, and only, public performance of the piece took place on Jan.17, 1917, at the first Russian symphonic concert in honor of Rimsky-Korsakov in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
The opus was lost during the Bolshevik Revolution. In spring 2015, as the music library was being moved in preparation for renovations at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, a collection of old sheet music was discovered, and Stravinsky’s long-lost orchestral score was found among them.
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