People's Artist of Russia Pavel Kogan will take the conductor’s stand during the diptych Leningrad Symphony at the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on 23 February 2021.

The creative skills of Pavel Kogan are already well known to music fans of Krasnoyarsk. Pavel Leonidovich performed twice as musical director and conductor of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem. This work was first performed in Krasnoyarsk in January 2020. The performance was timed to the day the blockade of Leningrad was lifted (January 27) and dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. A year later, in January 2021, Verdi's Requiem was again presented on the stage of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Thus, cooperation with Pavel Leonidovich has become a good tradition for the Krasnoyarsk theatre; in February this year, he was invited to conduct the Leningrad Symphony based on the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and Alexei Syumak. No wonder the date of the performance is February 23 - Defender of the Fatherland Day. Like Verdi's Requiem, this production is dedicated to the Great Victory anniversary.

The first act of the show also features the Requiem by the contemporary Russian composer Alexei Syumak. The Krasnoyarsk production includes excerpts from Dies Irae and Rex Tremendae. The second part of the performance is a poignant one-act ballet based on the Seventh Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. The symphony was performed on August 9, 1942, in besieged Leningrad and was named Leningradskaya. The ballet’s production director, the Artistic Director of the Opera House Sergei Bobrov wrote the libretto under the influence of the novel The Cursed and the Slain by Victor Astafiev: no one else described the horror and pain of the war as vividly and dramatically as Viktor Petrovich did.

“The topic of the performance cannot leave anyone indifferent - neither the performers nor the audience, and, of course, it’s important for me that the great music of the great composer Shostakovich is used in the ballet. It is pleasant that Artistic Director of the theatre Sergei Bobrov shows remarkable creative activity, which, of course, affects the attitude of the general public and professionals towards the theatre,” commented Pavel Kogan.