Festival “Genius of the Place” - in Tchaikovsky’s homeland, in Votkinsk May 12, 2024

 

Festival “Genius of the Place” - in Tchaikovsky’s homeland, in Votkinsk May 12, 2024

United Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theaters

Conductor - Valery Gergiev

May 12, 2024 Votkinsk, Yubileiny Palace of Culture

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, fragments from the ballet “The Nutcracker”, Symphony No. 4, fantasy overture “Romeo and Juliet”, Symphony No. 5

The “Genius of the Place” is a large-scale festival of musical offerings created as a tribute to great Russian composers in their birthplaces. Its artistic director is Maestro Valery Gergiev. The festival became a laureate of the Russian “Znanie.Awards” for contribution to education in Culture and Art. e08c

The third series of the festival was held in 2024-2026 jointly with the Moscow Easter Festival, the largest Easter music festival in Russia. In 2025, Votkinsk — the birthplace of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — and Smolensk, birthplace of Mikhail Glinka, hosted joint events between the two festivals. fa52

For the Votkinsk edition, the focus is Tchaikovsky’s homeland. Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, in present-day Udmurtia, where his father managed the Kamsko-Votkinsk metal works. The festival uses the Tchaikovsky Museum-Estate, his family home, as its symbolic center. 3d89

The May 12, 2024 concert in Votkinsk was part of this program. Like the 2026 edition — when artists of the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theatres under Gergiev presented Tchaikovsky's opera _The Queen of Spades_ in Votkinsk in a version by Alexei Stepanyuk— the festival brings combined forces of the Mariinsky and Bolshoi to the composer's birthplace for open-air symphonic and operatic performances, making classical music accessible in the region where the composer spent his first eight formative years.