2003 sees an extraordinary crossing of paths in the life of Valery Gergiev. As he reaches his own milestone of 50, the city with which he is most closely identified, St Petersburg, celebrates 300 years since its founding by Tsar Peter the Great.

Gergiev himself will celebrate 25 years at one of the city’s greatest cultural institutions — the Mariinsky Theatre — the last 7 as general director of both the Opera and the Ballet companies. In early summer, the Theatre will once again play host to leading performers from around the world at the annual Stars of the White Nights Festival, launched by Gergiev and now in its 11th year. The 2003 event will be the biggest yet, with three months of performances from many of the world’s greatest companies, and a high-profile gala on 11th May attended by heads of state, royalty and world leaders from business, politics and the arts.

Musically, the focus falls on the enormous legacy of work from composers closely associated with St Petersburg, including Prokofiev (in the 50th anniversary year of his death) and Shostakovich. In addition, the Ring cycle will be performed at the Mariinsky in its entirety for the first time in almost 100 years. In January 2003, Universal Classics will survey Prokofiev’s life and works with a compactoteque release, and in March, will issue a new recording by Gergiev, the Kirov and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestras of Shosthakovich Symphony no. 7 "Leningrad" (the Symphony no. 8 is already available).
Launching the year of celebration is a new release of three of the best-loved and most exotic works in the St Petersburg repertory, all recorded for the first time by Valery Gergiev with the Kirov in November 2001. The key piece in the collection is Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite, Sheherazade, based on the tales of The Arabian Nights. Joining it are Borodin’s popular In the Steppes of Central Asia and an orchestrated version of Balakirev’s oriental fantasy, Islamey.





During the year, Gergiev himself will be travelling the globe, from Los Angeles to Beijing, to lead the Kirov on tour and fulfil one of the busiest schedules in music today, while still directing the company’s activities back in St Petersburg, championing its cause in Russia and beyond, and driving ahead plans for a new theatre alongside the historic Mariinsky. He sees 2003 as a landmark year for the city and the company in raising their profiles on the world stage.

"The 300th anniversary of St Petersburg will be a big opportunity for all of us, but it is a marker post in our history, not its end. We aim to have the best party of the year — in the world. But partying is one thing, creating is another. We should enjoy it but we have to create things that will last. That will be my wish for 2003."


Anniversary year
The focus of celebrations in 2003 at the Mariinsky Theatre will be the three-month-long Stars of the White Nights Festival (6 May–6 August), which will be the biggest yet since its launch in 1993. A gala evening on 11 May will launch the festival and will be attended by 40 to 50 heads of state and broadcast on many TV networks in Europe, America and Japan. The World Orchestra for Peace, founded by the late Sir Georg Solti, and which draws on principal players from the world’s great orchestras, will form for only the fourth time, to be conducted by Gergiev. Other festival performers will include the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; from dance, The Royal Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet; and from the world of opera and music, Lorin Maazel, James Levine, Christoph Eschenbach, Plácido Domingo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Vadim Repin, Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel.

"Bush, Chirac, Blair, all EU leaders, HRH Prince Charles, royalty from Holland and Spain, and stars from Hollywood all hope to come", says Gergiev. "It will be a serious artistic project to reflect the history of St Petersburg and the fantastic cultural investments of the past and the Tsars."

The Mariinsky’s festival year opens the previous month with the annual Moscow Easter Festival (27 April–10 May), launched by Gergiev in 2002 with the backing of the Russian leadership and the Patriarch. This year, the Kremlin will open its doors for a Kirov production of Boris Godunov, which Gergiev expects 10,000 to attend.

"The Easter Festival is not repeating White Nights but bringing together the best people from the Mariinsky and Moscow. And Moscow needs a music festival," he believes. "Half a million people came to the open-air concert last year."
"I’ve created the two best festivals in Russia, and I ask myself why has no-one created them before? Maybe there was money in the country and no-one thought it was worth the effort. I was ashamed to see how paralysed my country was."


Valery Gergiev at 50
Gergiev the Great: man and musician.
Valery Gergiev has a view about St Petersburg, his home for 30 years, that may explain the way he lives his life. "In this city, either you are dead or you are totally alive — in between doesn’t work."
Famous as the hardest-working man in music, Gergiev does not live by half measures. A viscerally exciting performer who appears consumed by the music he is conducting, he inspires equal commitment from solo artists and orchestral players.

In his punishing schedule, he conducts 80 to 100 performances a year with the Mariinsky in Russia while still pursuing an independent career as Principal Guest Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He is artistic director of six major festivals — the Red Sea Festival in Israel, the Mikkeli Festival in Finland, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival, the Stars of the White Nights and Moscow Easter festivals in Russia, and the Peace in the Caucasus Festival in his southern homeland. He has an extensive recording schedule and a passion for rejuvenating forgotten Russian works. It’s why his friend and benefactor, the philanthropist Alberto Vilar, says of him, "In the business world, he’s what they call the A-type. History will name him as one of the greatest people to come out of Russia".


300th Anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg
The convergence of dates in his life in 2003 puts Gergiev, and the Mariinsky, at the heart of St Petersburg’s 300th-anniversary celebrations. Reaching 50 in May, celebrating a 25-year career at the Mariinsky Theatre and 11 years of the Stars of the White Nights Festival, Gergiev sees the year as an opportunity for growth in the city and for development of the company rather than as a chance to reflect on past achievements.

"2003 will be a huge year for us, maybe bringing thousands of new people into the city. We should enjoy it but we have to create things that will last. That will be my wish for 2003.
"Compared to other cities in Europe and America, St Petersburg doesn’t have the smartest infrastructure, and my big hope is that it will be the beginning of a big move upwards in the city’s fortunes.


St Petersburg — a brief history
St Petersburg was born in a spirit of adventure, created by Tsar Peter the Great as the hub of his new seafaring power. That he chose land barely 500 miles from the Arctic Circle, which suffered snow from September to May, and much of which was fever-ridden swampland, did not deter Peter from his vision. A great moderniser, he imagined Sankt Pieter Burkh — as he named it in spring 1703 — at the heart of a modern, progressive Russia, learning from the innovations of the West.

As elegant palaces and wide streets crossed by picturesque canals sprang up from the swamps, the city quickly became the centre of his vast empire, which stretched far into Asia and south to the Caucasus. From the very start, writers, artists and musicians flocked to the city, embracing its modernity and relishing its split personality, divided between progressive ambitions and the traditional, conservative society of old.

19th-century writer Nikolai Gogol described St Petersburg as a city of spectres in which "everything’s an illusion, everything’s a dream, everything’s not what it seems".
A succession of Empresses — Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine the Great — left their mark on the city with the creation of stately palaces, including the exuberant Winter Palace, which was to be such an iconic target for the revolutions of 1917. And cheek by jowl with the grandeur was desperate poverty.

At the start of World War I, in a wave of anti-German sentiment, the city’s name was changed to Petrograd. As war tightened its grip, affecting the workers more than the rich, the Russian Revolution erupted in the heart of Petrograd in February 1917. Named Leningrad in honour of the Revolution’s instigator, the city almost immediately fell from favour as the Bolsheviks moved their capital to Moscow in 1918.

The city continued to offer a sympathetic base to intellectuals and artists who opposed the autocratic regime, while its towering past made it a glittering prize for Hitler, as his armies invaded Russian in 1941. Through the bitter siege between 1941 and 1944, the people of Leningrad burned books for warmth, ate vermin to survive and melted snow to drink. At least 640,000 people died before the siege was lifted. In 1991, the city was renamed St Petersburg and a new era of regeneration began. In 2003, as the city reaches its 300th birthday, work is still in progress.