New Horizons festival

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The New Horizons festival is one of the new festivals initiated by Valery Gergiev, Artistic and General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre.

The festival strives to promote the performance of living composers and 20th century composers whose music is rarely performed and little-known in Russia. Moreover, the stage welcomes not only acclaimed faces but also talented young performers. Looking at the today and tomorrow of world music is the festival’s credo. The festival has become one of the Mariinsky Theatre’s most promising initiatives, giving a new impetus to the popularisation of contemporary classical music in St Petersburg.

Valery Gergiev has said of the festival’s mission that “We don’t want scores to lie on the shelves of music libraries gathering dust when they are worthy of a place on the stages of the world’s great theatres. Work to restore the colossal legacy of the great 19th and 20th century Russian composers to the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre is now almost complete.

Today we are starting to bring to life the most complex and demanding projects, things I could only have dreamed of twenty years ago. Our work on Shchedrin’s The Enchanted Wanderer, Lolita and Dead Souls and Smelkov’s The Brothers Karamazov is an extremely important part of our life as an artistic ensemble. I am certain that in two or three years the works of living composers will form a significant part of the Mariinsky Theatre’s repertoire.”

The Festival’s programmes have already included world premieres of symphonies by the composers Vyacheslav Kruglik and Sergei Slonimsky, the Russian premieres of works by György Kurtág and György Ligeti have taken place and there have been performances of works by Galina Ustvolskaya, Vladimir Martynov and Arvo Pärt among others.