11 April 2013
OUTSTANDING RUSSIAN VIOLINIST VADIM REPIN TO TAKE PART IN CULTURAL PROGRAMME OF ALEKHINE MEMORIAL INTERNATIONAL CHESS SUPER-TOURNAMENT
Vadim Repin, one of the world’s most famous and popular musicians, will give a concert at the opening of the Alekhine Memorial Chess Super-Tournament, which will take place on 20 April in Paris. Vadim Repin will join with pianist Nikolai Lugansky to perform a programme of works by Sergei Rachmaninoff for piano and violin.
“It’s a great joy to perform some rare works composed by Rachmaninoff for piano and violin, in this year, the 140th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the opening of the tournament in memory of the great chess master”, said the musician. “Rachmaninoff’s lifetime, like that of Alekhine, coincided with a period of incredible historical shocks, and this was reflected in both their art and their life, which were at the same time spectacular and tragic. Despite spending a considerable part of their lives outside Russia, they both felt an unbreakable link with their homeland to the end of their days. The power and sincerity of Rachmaninoff’s music still excites and delights millions of people who listen to it, captivating them with its beauty and the truly Russian breadth of its melodies.”
Like Nikolai Lugansky, Vadim Repin has long been a fan of chess. Speaking of his decision to support the Alekhine Memorial, Vadim Repin said: “Chess has always been very popular among musicians: one recalls the match between Oistrakh and Prokofiev which took place at the Moscow Conservatory, and Prokofiev’s friendship with Botvinnik and Capablanca. Dmitri Shostakovich was a big fan of chess. There are lots of examples – in the musical world chess has always been seen as part of the culture.”
The Alexander Alekhine Memorial, organised by the Russian Chess Federation at the initiative and with the support of entrepreneurs Gennady Timchenko and Andrei Filatov, will feature the world’s best chess players – world champion Viswanathan Anand, former champion Vladimir Kramnik, World Cup holder Peter Svidler, Levon Aronian, Boris Gelfand and other outstanding grandmasters.
This major international sports and cultural event will take place in Paris and St Petersburg – two cities with close ties to the maestro – between 21 April and 1 May 2013.
Contacts for journalists: Mark Gluhovsky
Alekhine Memorial
press officer
tel. +7 (915) 412 7709, m.gluhovsky@gmail.com
Information for media Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Outstanding Russian composer, pianist and conductor. Graduate of the Moscow Conservatory. Lived in Russia until December 1917, and then abroad (France, USA). Rachmaninoff retained a deep spiritual connection with his homeland until the end of his life. The composer’s work was profoundly Russian, entirely governed by Russian imagery, tonal echoes of Russian melody and the traditions of the Russian musical classics in organic combination with the best achievements of Western European music.
He was born on 20 March 1873 in a noble family. At the age of nine years he was given a place at the St Petersburg Conservatory in the junior piano class. In 1885 he transferred to the Moscow Conservatory. It was in the senior department of the conservatory that Sergei Rachmaninoff first met Pyotr Tchaikovsky, who was to say: “I predict a great future for him.” At the age of 18 he completed his piano studies brilliantly. A year later, in 1892, he graduated from the conservatory in composition. For his final exam Rachmaninoff presented the one-act opera Aleko (based on Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies), which was staged in the Bolshoi Theatre a year later. The musical world greeted him as a mature artist. From the age of 19 Rachmaninoff worked as a composer and performer, and from 1900 he performed concerts in Russia and abroad.
Rachmaninoff’s Moscow period ended in 1917 – the composer and his family did not return to Russia after a foreign tour. In 1918 he moved to America, where he achieved the greatest ever success for a foreign performer on US soil. After leaving his homeland, to the end of his days he experienced a profound inner drama. “When I left Russia I lost my desire to compose. Without my homeland, I lost my self…”, he would say. Rachmaninoff remained a Russian composer to the end of his life. During the Second World War Rachmaninoff gave several concerts in the USA and sent the proceeds to the Soviet Army Fund. “I believe in total victory”, he wrote.
Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Born in Moscow on 19 October 1892, the first Russian World Chess Champion Alexander Alekhine was the son of a State Duma deputy, marshal of the Voronezh nobility, and the owner of huge black-earth estates in Central Russia. Alekhine graduated from the St Petersburg School of Law in 1914. That same year, he became one of the world’s strongest chess players, placing third at the prestigious St Petersburg chess tournament, after the then-reigning World Champion Emanuel Lasker and before the future Champion José Raúl Capablanca.
Alekhine was playing at a tournament in Germany when WWI broke out. He was arrested and thrown into a German prison; upon his return to Russia, he signed up as a volunteer with the Red Cross. Alekhine was twice contused on the Galician Front, carried the wounded from battlefields, was decorated several times and was nominated for the Order of Saint Stanislaus with Swords. He became the first Chess Champion of the USSR in 1920, before leaving Soviet Russia in 1921 for France, where he became a citizen in 1925.
In 1927, Alekhine defeated the “invincible” José Raúl Capablanca in a match for the World Champion title. He dominated the chess world for several years after that, winning major tournaments at a big advantage over his rivals.
In 1935, he lost a match to Max Euwe, only to defeat the Dutch Grandmaster two years later in a return match and to remain undefeated until his death. In 1939, during the chess Olympics in Buenos-Aires he called for the German team to be disqualified because of the German attack on Poland. After the Olympics he performed charity games, with funds going to the Polish Red Cross. In 1940, he joined the French army, which brought many complications to his life in occupied France.
Alekhine died in Portugal in 1946, on the eve of an announcement that his World Championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik would take place after all. Alexander Alekhine was the only World Chess Champion to die undefeated.
The Russian Chess Federation is a membership-based, voluntary, all-Russian public association made up of chess federations of the republics, territories, regions, federal cities, autonomous regions, and autonomous districts. It operates throughout the Russian Federation, its goal being to develop chess in Russia and to represent the interests of chess players who are members of the Federation both in Russia and abroad.
The Louvre Museum is one of the world’s largest museums, covering an area of 160,000 m2. The exhibition halls themselves occupy 58,000 m2. Its collections have more than 300,000 items. The Louvre was the first museum to open its doors to the general public in 1793. Every year, more than 10 million people visit the Louvre. The museum’s collection consists of departments for the Ancient East, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, Artefacts, Sculptures, Fine Art, Graphic Art, and Islamic Arts. In February 2013, the Louvre museum signed an agreement with Russian businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Andrei Filatov to open an exhibition of Russian art in France’s most prestigious museum.
The State Russian Museum, the country’s first state museum of Russian fine arts, was founded in 1895 in St. Petersburg by decree of Emperor Nicholas II. It was officially opened to visitors on 19 March (7 March by the old calendar) 1898. The Russian museum’s collection currently includes over 400,000 exhibits and covers all historical periods and development trends of Russian art, all main types and genres and areas of over more than 1,000 years (from the tenth to the twenty-first century). The main exhibition is housed in the Mikhailovsky Palace and the Benoit Building, which forms part of the palace ensemble. In addition to the Mikhailovsky Palace, the Benoit Building and the Rossi Wing, the museum complex includes the Marble Palace and the Stroganov Palace, the Mikhailovsky (Engineering) Castle, as well as unique garden and park ensembles – the Summer Garden and Summer Palace of Peter I and the Mikhailovsky Garden.
Gennady Timchenko has been Chairman of the Economic Council of French and Russian Businesses of the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIFR) since December 2011. His family has been involved in charitable work both in Russia and abroad for more than 20 years. The Key Foundation, which works to help families with adopted children, was set up in 2007. The Neva Foundation was founded in 2008 in Geneva to support scientific and cultural cooperation projects between Russia and Western Europe. The Ladoga Charitable Foundation was created in 2010 to support the older generation, children’s sport and the revival of Russian spirituality.
Andrei Filatov is an entrepreneur and a member of the Economic Council of the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIFR). He is actively involved in philanthropic work and is financing a number of humanitarian programmes. He set up an art fund to trace and collect works of Russian and Soviet artists from the period 1917–1991 which have been taken out of Russia. The fund aims to promote awareness of this artistic period through the publication of catalogues and the organization of exhibitions. Andrei Filatov supported an exhibition of works by the Russian émigré artist Nikolai Fechin at the State Tretyakov Gallery and is currently preparing an exhibition of Mikhail Nesterov to mark the 150th anniversary of this outstanding master of Russian painting.
Impressive.