On May 2, 2023, Valery Gergiev turned 70. One week later, Russia celebrated Victory Day—a Soviet holdover holiday commemorating the country’s 1945 victory over National Socialism. Gergiev spent that day leading the Mariinsky Orchestra in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, closing out the 22nd annual Moscow Easter Festival—a marathon of concerts (often two in one day) that runs for over three weeks across dozens of Russian cities. In previous years, he would balance these performances out with concerts in Munich, New York, and London. Now, besides his concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow, he leads orchestras at venues like the Kamaz truck and bus factory in Tatarstan, or in the small village of Chorny Otrog, the Ural foothills hometown of late prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. He did recently return to China, where he is nicknamed “brother-in-law” (the pronunciation of his name and the Chinese word for “brother-in-law” are similar), for the first time since the start of the pandemic. That tour, however, was not without incident: According to CNN, audiences at Gergiev’s concerts in Beijing faced heightened security, with “books and paper, especially those with notes or that could be written on,” examined thoroughly to ward off any surprise protests.
Unlimited access to our
