The anniversary X Music Festival To Mstislav Rostropovich runs in Samara from 15-16 October

On 15 and 16 October the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will give three performances at the Samara Opera and Ballet Theatre as part of the X Music Festival To Mstislav Rostropovich. Details will soon be released on the festival's official website (only in Russian): www.mfmr.ru.

This annual forum pays tribute to the memory of the most outstanding cellist and conductor whose artistic life was always connected with Samara.

Since the festival was established it has featured the violinists Anne-Sophie Mutter and Alena Baeva, violist Yuri Bashmet, pianists Alexander Toradze, Daniil Kharitonov and Lucas Debargue, cellist Tatiana Vasilieva, pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, tenor Simon O'Neill, soloists of the Mariinsky Opera and the Mariinsky Chorus. Festival guests have included Maya Plisetskaya, Rodion Shchedrin, Natalia Solzhenitsyna and Sofia Gubaidulina among many others.

The music festival To Mstislav Rostropovich was established on the initiative of Valery Gergiev and the Government of the Saratov Region in 2008. The first two festivals (in 2008 and in 2009) were held at the Samara State Philharmonic, the third and all subsequent festivals being hosted by the Samara Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, which reopened following a full-scale reconstruction in 2010.