The festival will feature a series of events covering a colourful array of programmes helping Russian visitors get a glimpse into Hungarian cultural values and Hungarian visitors living in those cities feel at home a bit. It’ll feature the applied and fine arts through classical and popular music and folk culture to gastronomy. There’ll be 17 major and numerous smaller events. The festival’s highlights will include an exhibition of the works of Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy in the Russian capital, a Victor Vasarely exhibition which is to take place in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, and other exhibitions of photographs by the world-famous Hungarian artist Robert Capa, also in Moscow.

photo: mek.oszk.hu

The festival will be held in all together 5 Russian cities: besides Moscow, inhabitants of Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Saint Petersburg and Kazan can take part in the festival held between 30 March and 30 June. An important consideration has been to hold events not only in Moscow and Saint Petersburg but also in other cities where Hungarian presence has increased. The head of Balassi Institute, that aims to promote Hungarian culture abroad, said that the festival is to take place on the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Hungarian cultural institute in the Russian capital.

photo:masterworksfineart.com

Meanwhile, a Russian Cultural Festival has started in Budapest, too. The event features concerts, theatre and dance performances and continues until April 3. The festival in the Russian Cultural Centre on Andrássy út with a photo exhibition introducing Russian architecture and cultural heritage sites. A group of Russian students has performed works of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Aleksander Zarzycki or Sergei Vasilenko and Gogol’s play „Marriage” has been performed by the Alexandrinsky Theatre of Saint Petersburg.