During the Moscow Spring A Cappella Festival, which is to be held in the capital from April 27 to May 9, 20 free tours covering the most famous musical addresses of Moscow await their participants. The program includes 10 routes, 5 of which are premieres. “The Musical Pearl of Ostankino” tour will introduce you to the history of the park, the manor and its inhabitants; it will also give you an opportunity to see the places memorable due to Isaac Levitan’s canvases. The “Musical Povarskaya” tour is a way to get acquainted with Moscow’s unique musical quarter. The route “From Malaya to Bolshaya Bronnaya: from Eshpai to Richter” will enrich the tourists with little-known facts from the lives of the musicians who lived in these central Moscow streets. The “Musical Traditions” program is built around the names of such great musicians as Tchaikovsky, Shalyapin (or Chaliapin, as the name of the famous Russia singer is sometimes spelt), Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky. And the “Melodies of the Old City” tour will take you to the areas that used to be the outskirts of Moscow. The tours are organized by the “Walking in Moscow” project guides. Anyone can take part in the tours: to do it, you are only to register on the site moscowwalking.ru

The tours will tell you about the musicians who lived and worked in Moscow, about their creating musical works; you will also see the places where the characters of the famous operas lived.

Fyodor Shalyapin’s fans and all those interested in the Silver Age culture are invited to the colonnade of the Bolshoi Theater (Teatralnaya metro station) to enjoy the tour “My Silver Age. Shalyapin”. Bella Voronova, the guide, will tell the tourists about the life and work of the first People’s Artist of Russia. The tourists will learn about the triumphal “Russian seasons”, about Shalyapin’s complicated immigration period and about his family members’ uneasy fates. The tours start on April 27 at 12:00 AM and on May 8 at 03:00 PM. The tour duration is 2 hours.

The tour “A Life-Long Song: from Vertinsky to Hvorostovsky” will be held by Alexey Thomas-Mart, a scholar studying the history of religions. It will begin on April 27 at 12:00 AM and on April 30 at 12:00 AM in the Necropolis of the Novodevichy Convent and will last for an hour and a half. During the tour the tourists will be told about Scriabin and Schnittke, Shostakovich and Khachaturian, Hvorostovsky and Vertinsky, as well as about many other musical geniuses who are no longer with us.

The tour “My Silver Age. Diaghilev” will be conducted by the guide Bella Voronova. This tour starts on April 28 at 01:00 PM and on April 5 at 01:00 PM in the public garden in front of the Bolshoi Theater (Teatralnaya and Okhotny Ryad metro stations). The tourists will learn many interesting facts about the artistic movement “The World of Art” and the triumph of “The Russian Seasons” in Paris, they will also listen to stories about the role of mysticism in the great entrepreneur’s fate.

The first-time tour “Musical Povarskaya” will introduce you to the history of the unique musical quarter of Moscow. The guide Tatyana Yefremova will wait for all those interested in the tour on April 28 at 02:00 PM and on May 2 at 02:00 PM at the exit from Barrikadnaya metro station. She will tell the tourists how Yelena Gnesina’s talent and enthusiasm helped to create in Moscow a whole quarter where musicians’ and teachers’ destinies closely intertwined. During the tour, the conversation will center around the architecture of the quarter as well as about Gnesinka graduates’ works – “Dance with swords” by Aram Khachaturian, Vladimir Dashkevich’s music for the film series about Sherlock Holmes and many other well-known musical pieces. The duration of the tour is 2 hours.

The premiere tour program “From Malaya to Bolshaya Bronnaya: from Eshpai to Richter” will begin in Novopushkinsky public garden (Pushkinskaya metro station). Within an hour and a half, with the help of the guide Tatyana Yefremova, the tourists will learn a lot about the great musicians and the intricacies of their creative process. For example, you will become familiar with the background of the legendary song “Seryozhka from Malaya Bronnaya”. Bronnaya ulitsa was somewhat famous in the musical world, as the great pianist Svyatoslav Richter lived there: the owner of the apartment and his guests – the well-known musicians, poets, artists and actors – played music at any time. The tour starts on April 29 at 02:00 PM and on May 3 at 02:00 PM.

The “Musical Traditions” premiere tour will begin on April 29 at 03:00 PM and on May 3 at 05:00 PM at the monument to Pushkin (Pushkinskaya metro station) and will last two hours. The guide Bella Voronova will tell the tourists the life stories of the great Golden and Silver Age figures – from Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky, she will take her listeners to the addresses associated with the names of the great Russian singers, composers, theatrical personalities and prominent cultural figures, merchants – patrons of the arts. The tourists will hear Shalyapin’s voice, Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Mussorgsky’s music and learn how Moscow’s musical traditions were set up.

“The Musical Pearl of Ostankino” premiere tour is to begin on May 1 at 02:00 PM and on May 4 at 02:00 PM, it will last 1.5 hours. The guide Tatiana Yefremova will be waiting for all those interested in the program at the final stop of trams No. 17, 11, 25, Ostankino (VDNKh metro station). During the tour, she will tell the tourists about the “Ostankino” estate and its magnificent park, its owners and the famous theater. The tourists will find out how music led to the marriage of Nikolai Sheremetev, the high-born groom, to the serf actress Praskovya Kovalyova. During the tour, the visitors will be able to see the miraculously preserved Life-Giving Trinity Church and the park alleys, which were immortalized on Isaac Levitan’s canvases.

The “Musical Heart of Moscow” tour lasts 2.5 hours. It will begin at the exit from Arbatskaya metro station (the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line, the Khudozhestveniy Cinema exit) and will end on Kudrinskaya Square (Barrikadnaya metro station). The musicologist and guide Yulia Dmitryukova will show the tourists the oldest places associated with the great composers and their works. Near the building of the Moscow Conservatory the tourists “will read” quotes from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s works on the fence of the monument to the composer. And during the tour fragments from the works by Rakhmaninov, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Pakhmutova will help to illustrate the stories of their lives. The tour starts on May 1 at 02:00 PM and on May 4 at 06:30 PM.

“The Capital’s Musical Notation: from Prokofiev to Magomayev” tour will begin on Theater Square at the fountain near the Bolshoi Theater (Teatralnaya metro station) on May 2 at 02:00 PM and on May 5 at 01:30 PM. The musicologist Yulia Dmitryukova will introduce the tourists to the history of the Imperial Bolshoi Theater and private opera houses, will show them the places in Moscow where, back in the XIX century, public concerts of classical music were held; she will also take them to the houses where Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Muslim Magomayev and many other renowned musicians lived.

Those who will choose the “Melodies of the Old City” premiere route will be met by Julia Dmitryukova on May 7 at 07:00 PM and on May 8 at 03:00 PM at Mayakovskaya metro station, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall exit. The tour will last an hour and a half. The itinerary covers the fortifications of Zemlyanoy Gorod – the today’s Garden Ring (Sadovoye Koltso),Vorotniki, Miussi and Novaya Dmitrovskaya Sloboda. The tourists will hear about the history of the Moscow Philharmonic and its main stage – the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, find out where the rehearsals of Savva Mamontov’s Moscow Private Russian Opera were held and where Fyodor Shalyapin’s apartment was located; they will also learn many other interesting facts.