Press releases

VITEBSK, 15 October (BelTA) – The International Festival of Organ Music “St. Sophia’s Bells” will offer a more diverse selection of music acts this year, BelTA learned the National Polotsk History and Cultural Museum-Reserve.

This year the audience will hear saxophone, recorder, the clarinet dating back to 1800, the torch (a wooden wind instrument of the Middle Ages and the Baroque, the forerunner of the clarinet) and Chamber Orchestra.

This year’s line-up includes the artists already familiar to the Polotsk audience such as Christoph Hauser (Germany) and Hans Christian Hein (Denmark), and also new names: Marek Stefanski (Poland), Valeria Balakhovskaya (Ukraine), Elisabeth Zawadke (Switzerland), Florian Hock (Germany), Regina Kamenshchikova (Russia). Ksenia Pogorelaya’s concert will be dedicated to the 25th anniversary of her creative activity in the Concert Hall of St. Sophia Cathedral. The organist will perform together with the Europe-Center Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rail Sadykov.

Belarus’ only festival of organ music brings together world-renowned musicians and their fans to Polotsk. Over its history the festival has seen more than 100 concerts attended by about 20,000 people, including those from other cities and regions of Russia.

The 18th International Festival of Organ Music "St. Sophia's Bells" will be running in Polotsk from 3 November to 8 December.

St. Sophia Cathedral as a museum of the history of architecture and a concert hall is part of the Polotsk National History and Cultural Museum-Reserve. It is the specimen of architecture of the mid 11th – mid 18th centuries. The museum became open to the public in 1987. Its exhibits tell the history of the most ancient stone temples built on the territory of modern Belarus, its numerous redesigns, repairs and the last restoration. St. Sophia Cathedral has the fragments of the 11th-century masonry of, almost completely intact ancient foundation, and the fresco painting of the late 11th century.

The Concert Hall in St. Sophia Cathedral was opened in 1983. It annually hosts the International Festival of Ancient and Contemporary Chamber Music and the International Festival of Organ Music "St. Sophia’s Bells".