The VII International Chamber Music Festival VIVARTE will be held from 27 to 29 May at the Tretyakov Gallery. This year it is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Diaghilev, the legendary genius and discoverer of talents who influenced tastes, fashion, theater  and fine arts of the last century, which largely determined the perception of Russian culture in the West. Traditionally, all three festival  evenings will take place in the space of the Vrubel Hall.

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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the house of the merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov was one of the centers of Moscow's cultural life. The hospitable host, a tireless collector of works of Russian fine art, included well-known artists, writers and musicians of that time, including I. S. Turgenev, P. I. Tchaikovsky, A. G. Rubinshtein, N. G. Rubinshtein, and E. Repin, I. N. Kramskoy, V. M. Vasnetsov, V. G. Perov, V. D. Polenov and many others.  

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At the initiative of P. M. Tretyakov’s wife, Vera Nikolaevna, who played the piano beautifully, friendly musical meetings were regularly held in the house. The daughters of the Tretyakovs also took part in them (the eldest of them, Vera Pavlovna, later became the wife of the pianist and conductor A. I. Siloti, who was the cousin of S. V. Rachmaninoff). Today's concerts in the Vrubel Hall are a wonderful continuation of these traditions. A characteristic feature of musical evenings in the Tretyakov Gallery - now a public art gallery - is the warm atmosphere of the artistic salon, where the ideas of art synthesis find the most vivid embodiment.  

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The Pearl-blue Vrubel Hall, having acquired a stage and a piano after a recent reconstruction, quickly gained popularity as a well-equipped concert venue. Like P. M. Tretyakov, the artist Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel was closely connected with the world of music, and his wife was the outstanding singer Nadezhda Zabela. The main decoration of the Vrubel Hall today - the famous panel "Princess of Dreams", embodying the idea of the eternity of art - was once transferred to the museum by the Bolshoi Theater. Next to it are Vrubel's sculptural chamber suites based on the themes of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas Sadko and The Snow Maiden. On the walls there is an exposition of various paintings and drawings by the artist: visitors can admire all aspects of his work.  

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The VIVARTE International Chamber Music Festival, which inherits the glorious traditions of the Tretyakov House, is the brainchild of a wonderful team of like-minded people. The authors of the idea and co-organizers of the forum are the world-famous cellist Boris Andrianov, the creative forces of the Tretyakov Gallery and the cultural and charitable foundation "U-ART: You and Art" by Iveta and Tamaz Manasherovs, well-known patrons who support contemporary art in its most diverse manifestations and consider it their goal "to create something positive, good and right." Like Tretyakov, the Manasherovs have created and are constantly expanding a unique collection of paintings by artists of the 20th century, finding in it an important "cultural context of the era", and in their work - "touching the living history of modernity".  

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The U-ART: You and Art Foundation and the Tretyakov Gallery have long-term cooperation. Among the joint projects are Oscar Rabin's retrospective "Three Lives" (2008), the exhibition "Lado Gudiashvili. Parisian years. 1920-1925" (2009). In 2016, the foundation established a scholarship program for museum researchers.

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The VIVARTE festival is distinguished by an original concept. Its laconic name plays on both the glorification of art (Viva l'arte! - it. "Long live art!"), and its vitality, relevance, authenticity (L'arte viva - it. "living art"). Each concert program is accompanied by an exhibition of exhibits from the funds of the Tretyakov Gallery with a commentary on it by leading gallery staff. The seventh festival is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Diaghilev.

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At the concerts of the VIVARTE festival, music and visual arts meet, born in different artistic contexts, and, as if pushing the boundaries of their environment, open up new horizons for the listener. The servant of the two muses, the Lithuanian composer and artist M. K. Čiurlionis wrote about this: “There are no boundaries between the arts. Music combines poetry and painting and has its own architecture. Painting can also have the same architecture as music, and express sounds in colors.