St Pete Music Olympus festival presented in NY with great success

NEW YORK, April 10 (Itar-Tass) - The international Music Olympus festival, which is annually held in St. Petersburg, was presented with great success on the stage of New York's Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening. The audience applauded the winners of the contest -- young soloists from Russia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Sweden and France -- for encores. They performed music of Russian and West European composers and opera arias. The American public applauded the ensemble of Russia contrabass virtuoso Igor Yeliseyev, Belgian violinist Mark Bushkov and French pianist Remi Geniet, the performance of rising music star Vassilena Serafimova from Bulgaria for her virtuoso percussion performance of classic compositions, and Swiss mezzo soprano Nathalie Mittelbach. In the concert programme were compositions of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Georges Bizet, Johannes Brahms, Joseph Haydn, Iannis Xenakis, Maurice Ravel and other composers. The music festival for American listeners was organized by the St. Petersburg-based foundation Music Olympus, which holds "White Nights" festivals in the city on the Neva. It was held in 1996 for the first time and at once received the world music community's highest recognition, foundation president Irina Nikitina told Itar-Tass. Presentations of Music Olympus winners have been held in the Carnegie Hall since 2007. New York concerts promote the foundation's global objective to establish and develop a dialogue through music as a universal language. The Carnegie Hall concerts are held with support from the world public forum Dialogue of Civilizations. This year, the presentation of festival winners has been included in the Russian-American History Month programme in the state of New York. Learn more on itar-tass.com