Easter Festival concert dedicated to Japan quake victims

MOSCOW, May 4 (Itar-Tass) - Valery Gergiyev dedicates Wednesday's
concert of the 10th Moscow Easter Festival to the victims of the recent
devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The concert will be held in
theTchaikovsky Hall .
The renowned conductor and artistic director of this prestigious
festival that opened here on Easter Day, April 24, has included Requiem
by Giuseppe Verdi and music by contemporary composer Felix Kruglikov (USA)
in the concert program.
The Symphony Orchestra and Choir of the Matyinsky Theater under the
baton of Gergiyev, and soloists such as Viktoria Yastrebova (soprano),
Olga Borodina (mezo soprano), Sergei Semishkur (tenor), and Ildar
Abdrazakov (bass) are among participants in the concert.
Moscow Easter Festival concerts are given in 38 cities of Russia and
abroad. Festival organizers lay emphasis on performances in the regions.
The Festival is held with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow
and All Russia. The festival's program is illustrative of a wonderful
wealth of choral art, both church and secular. A Bell- Ringing Week
demonstrates the outstanding art of bellringers and the skills of bell
foundry craftsmen. According to tradition, performances are given not only
in major concert halls but also in hospitals, children's homes, and
educational establishments.
The Easter Festival is to come to a close at the Moscow International
House of Music. A gala concert is to be given on the Poklonnaya Hill on
the May 9 VE-Day. Last year's concert, according to the Moscow city
government, drew a 250,000-strong audience.

.FC Speaker to discuss wider coop'n in Bratislava Wed.

BRATISLAVA, May 4 (Itar-Tass) - Sergei Mironov, Speaker of the
Federation Council (FC) upper house of the Russian parliament, will
discuss the development of cooperation between Russia and Slovakia,
parliamentary contacts, in particular, here on Wednesday.
The FC Speaker, who arrived here on Tuesday for an official visit, is
to hold talks with Richard Sulik, Chairman of the National Council
(parliament) of the Slovak Republic, and Prime Minister Iveta Radicova.
He is also to have a conversation with President Ivan Gasparovic.
The programme for the visit provides for contacts with compatriots at
the Russian science and culture center, and a speech before students and
faculty members of Jan Amos Komenski University.
Considerig that the tour is being made on the eve of the VE Day, the
official part of the visit will begin with the laying of wreaths at the
monument to Soviet servicemen the liberators on Slavin Hill.
The visit to Slovakia is being made within the scope of efforts " to
further our interparliamentary contacts", Mironov told Itar-Tass.
Russia-Slovakia relations are notable for high dynamism of the
political dialogue and economic cooperation. Russia now ranks third among
Slovakia's trading partners after Germany and the Czech Republic. During
the global downturn period, bilateral trade turnover decreased. However,
last year it already regained its previous positions to run at $7,000
million (a 47.2 percent increase as compared with that in 2009).
Economic relations between Russia and Slovakia are based on
interaction in the fuel-and-energy sector. Nuclear power engineering is
also an intensive and promising area of cooperation. Russia currently
supplies nuclear fuel for Slovak nuclear power stations (NPS).
Meanwhile, Bratislava is also interested in attracting Russian
companies to the modernization of national atomic power industry,
including the construction of new power units of Slovak NPS.
As f ar as interregional cooperation is concerned, it is maintained
most actively by Moscow and St Petersburg, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the
Chuvash Republic, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Vologda, and Lipetsk regions. A
representative office of the Republic of Bashkortostan has been
functioning in Slovakia since 2006.
On the whole, analysts estimate trade-and-economic cooperation between
Russia and Slovakia as "strategic partnership based on equality and
pragmatism, and as a model of mutually beneficial interaction between
Russia and Central and Eastern European countries on the basis of new,
market-determined principles".