The St. Petersburg festival orchestra gave a concert under the baton of Swedish conductor Kristofer Wahlander who had founded the festival a few years ago.
The program of the first day included the Second Symphony by Jean Sibelius and the First Piano Concert by Wilhelm Stenhammer, a popular Swedish composer of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Pianist Per Tengstrand played the solo part.
An exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Russian-Norwegian diplomatic relations opened in the Russian National Library on Monday.
The festival will run for ten days. Music by classic and modern Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish composers will be performed in St. Petersburg.
The festival will mark the 200th anniversary since Hans Christian Andersen's birth and the 140th anniversary since Jean Sibelius' birth. A portrait of the Finnish classic will be presented to the big hall of St. Petersburg's Philharmonic Society. Compositions written after the fairytales of the Danish fairytale author will be performed during the festival. One of the Nordic Music concerts will coincide with the St. Petersburg Music Spring festival. Its program includes works by Russian composers based on a Scandinavian epic.
