The highly successful Britten Festival Kyiv 2004, the inaugural edition of the Kyiv Festival, was held under the umbrella of the Benjamin Britten International Violin Competition London. Its aims were not only to advertise and promote the Britten Competition in Ukraine and provide the platform on which one of the future editions of the Britten Competition could be brought to Kyiv, but also to promote British music and works of Benjamin Britten in Ukraine, to support Ukrainian music and artists and to facilitate and encourage cultural and musical cooperation between the United Kingdom and Ukraine
The leitmotif of the Second edition of the Kyiv Festival was "Ukraine - Europe" and it aimed to promote Ukraine's deeper integration into European political and cultural life whilst retaining the Festival's strong ties with Great Britain and the Benjamin Britten International Violin Competition. Kyiv Festival 2005 was held over two weeks in Kyiv’s most prestigious concert halls featuring outstanding Ukrainian and foreign artists performing unusual and sometimes little known to Ukrainian audiences repertoire. The Festival in 2005 also presented Verdi's Ballo di Maschera outside the capital city - in Lviv Opera House.
The second Festival also incorporated a unique in its kind Week of Cooperation between two distinguished music academies: the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) and the National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv) - an artistic and educational project that included an opera performance (Turn of the Screw by Britten), concerts and masterclasses.
The programme for the Third Kyiv Festival will be available on our website soon. Please watch this space.
|
