Valery Gergiev ‘The State of Culture and the Culture of a State’

The world’s busiest conductor, Artistic and General Director of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre (formerly Kirov), Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and Principal Guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, is at the Union on the 20th of May (3-4pm).

Union Society and CURS members: free

Guest tickets cost £5. These can be bought from the Union office Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, or on the door of the event.

Valery Gergiev is also founder and Artistic Director of the Stars the White Nights Festival and New Horizons Festival in St Petersburg, the Moscow Easter Festival, the Gergiev Rotterdam Festival, the Mikkeli International Festival, and the Red Sea Festival in Eilat, Israel. He succeeded Sir
Georg Solti as conductor of the World Orchestra for Peace in 1998.

He has recorded exclusively for Decca (Universal Classics), but appears also on the LSO Live, Philips and Deutsche Grammophon labels. His vast discography includes Russian operas, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Mahler symphonies among many others.

Gergiev is not only a famous conductor but a prominent public figure. Being an Ossetin he made an appeal on television after the 2004 Beslan school massacre, against any revenge. In 2008 he came to Tskhinvali and conducted a concert near the ruined building of the South Ossetian Parliament as tribute to the victims of the war. Gergiev has worked in fund-raising for such projects as the recently
built Mariinsky Concert Hall, and intends to achieve to build a new Mariinsky Opera House as well as complete renovations of the Mariinsky Theatre historical building.

Gergiev is known as a charismatic and inspirational speaker. At the Union he will talk about music, culture and politics in Russia and the world. His great experience and high flier career promise a fascinating perspective. There will be an opportunity to ask questions.

Directions to the Cambridge Union Society Building

This is a past event now. Listen to the recording if you are interested.

Chto? Gde? Kogda?

“Chto? Gde? Kogda?” is a team erudition competition taking its roots from the homonymous Soviet TV programme which later developed into an international intellectual sport enjoyed in many parts of the world with Russian-speaking diasporas: the countries of the former USSR, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, United Kingdom, United States etc.

CU Russian Society and Trinity College Russian Society are delighted to add Cambridge to the global geography of “Chto? Gde? Kogda?”. The game is played in Russian language.

This Sunday’s tour is called the “Jerusalem Cup”.

WHEN: 2.30pm until approximately 5.30-6pm, Sunday, 16 May
WHERE: Junior Parlour, Trinity College
ROUTE DIRECTION : http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=290&subid=6
LANGUAGE: RUSSIAN

Refreshments will be provided.

The rules of the game:
The players will group into teams of 6. The game consists of 45 questions. After each question is posed, teams will have 1 minute to discuss and then come up with an answer. Each team will nominate a captain who makes the final decision on the answer for each question. Team that answered the most of questions correctly, wins.

More info:
wikipedia

chgk wiki

Film Nights for the Victory Day

These days we would like to draw your attention to the Victory Day of the 9th, May and devote most of our activities to this celebration!

This week has been declared a film week where we are eager to show you both documentary and fiction films about this legendary epoch.