OREANDA-NEWS. October 29, 2008. Vladimir Spivakov’s International Charity Foundation officially launched the 2008-2009 music season at the Moscow Kremlin Armoury on 11 October 2008, reported the press-centre of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The concert featured musicians from the St Petersburg branch of the foundation as well as students from several Moscow-based schools of music. The international network of PricewaterhouseCoopers audit and consulting firms was a partner in the event.

The St Petersburg musicians put on a performance that was both dazzling and diverse. Seseg Lubsandorzhiyeva sang two Buryat songs for the ethnic part of the programme. Alexander Vasilyev and Alexei Kozlov carried the audience away with their blues pieces. Sergei Redkin, a young pianist from St Petersburg, presented his own compositions (i.e. The Three Piano Preludes). The concert also featured pieces by Saint-Sanse, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovitch and other composers.

The culminating event of the concert was PricewaterhouseCoopers’ presentation of grants to recipients of the foundation’s scholarship. The beneficiaries included: Alexandra Lee (violin), Nikola and Danila Kouznetsov (piano), Artyom Naumenko (flute) and Anastasia Vorotnaya (piano). The grants are meant to enable these young talented musicians to further their own development.

Peter Gulko, the concert’s master of ceremonies and arts director of the foundation, made an opening statement where he explained how important it was to Vladimir Spivakov that the St Petersburg musicians perform at the concert, because St Petersburg was the maestro’s hometown and the place where he first took up the violin. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ representatives congratulated the young grant recipients.