The second concert from the series "Live echo of the battles of the past" took place in the Kremlin

On March 18, 2025, the second concert from the series "Live Echo of the Battles of the Past", dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory, was successfully held at the State Kremlin Palace with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives. The event was organized by the Artes Cultural Charity Foundation. The project's partner is the International Union of Pop Artists.

The program of the evening included Sergei Prokofiev's cantata "Alexander Nevsky" and Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3. The works, recognized as reference examples of patriotic music, were performed by Yulia Mennibayeva (mezzo-soprano), Ivan Bessonov (piano), the Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Artistic director and chief conductor Ivan Nikiforchin, and the A.A. Yurlov State Academic Choral Chapel of Russia (artistic director and chief conductor – People's Artist of Russia Gennady Dmitryak) and the Academic Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army named after A.V. Alexandrov (the head and artistic director of the ensemble is Honored Artist of Russia Colonel Gennady Sachenyuk). The evening was hosted by the Honored Artist of Russia Ekaterina Guseva.

Sergei Prokofiev's cantata "Alexander Nevsky" was performed in the first section of the concert. The story of the birth of this great music is connected with the film of the same name by Sergei Eisenstein, who invited the composer to write music for it. The historical film was a huge success, and Prokofiev decided to create a cantata based on film music. He devoted several months to this work, completely reordering what he had written and putting together coherent sections of the vocal-symphonic cycle from disparate musical fragments. As a result, the cantata (Op. 78) consists of seven parts.: "Russia under the Mongol yoke", "The Song of Alexander Nevsky", "Crusaders in Pskov", "Get up, Russian people"!, "Ice battle", "Dead Field" and "Alexander's Entry into Pskov". Its premiere performance took place on May 17, 1939 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and since then it has firmly entered the repertoire of the best Russian musical groups.

In the second movement, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (Op. 90) was performed. It was written in 1909 and is one of the most famous and frequently performed works of the composer in the world.

"This concert is special in many ways,– emphasizes pianist Ivan Bessonov. – One can endlessly talk about the extraordinary completeness with which the soul of the piano is revealed here, about the amazing symbiosis that arises between the piano and the orchestra, about the end-to-end development that leads over 40 minutes in its continuous history.… But it seems to me that the main thing in this music is a feeling of all–encompassing, all-consuming happiness and love, love for people, for life, for nature, this is the desire for light that accompanies the fate of every person with a counterpoint and which Sergey Vasilyevich was able to embody in sounds with such clarity and inner strength, which is characteristic, perhaps only his genius."

The guests of the Kremlin Palace, among whom there were veterans of war and labor, participants of the SVR and their family members, were greatly impressed by both the first and second sections of the program. The audience enthusiastically discussed what they had heard and readily shared their reviews about the concert.