New concert hall in the village of Repino. What does the concert hall that Gergiev built at his dacha look like?

Instead of a dacha, Gergiev built a new concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater. Photo – Sergey Konkov

The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev, at his own expense, is building a new concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater in Repino on a site intended for his dacha.

The volume of investment is estimated at 150 million rubles. The first concerts will take place in the summer, but you will have to pay for exceeding the area.

In Repino, the construction of a new chamber concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater for 100-150 people is being completed. The hall is being built at 18 Pesochnaya Street, on a plot of 9.5 thousand square meters.

The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev received this land on a long-term lease for the construction of a two-story cottage back in 2005, but apparently revised his plans for using the site. The work, apparently, is being carried out entirely at Gergiev’s expense. Investments in construction are estimated at 150 million rubles.

The hall is almost completed, and the first concerts in it may take place this summer as part of the White Nights festival. At the same time, the Mariinsky Theater itself stated that they had not heard anything about the concert venue in Repino.

The road to music

“Gergiev is now using his own money to build a concert hall in Repino, where Shostakovich, Sviridov, Solovyov-Sedoy and other great musicians lived. Construction is being completed at an accelerated pace, and the hall will open soon. There will be excellent acoustics, and this is the main thing in the hall.”

We also heard about the concert hall being built in the Property Relations Committee (PRC). They said that according to the agreement with Valery Gergiev, the area of the constructed buildings should not exceed 570 m2, but he had already built 2.5 thousand m2, which means he would have to pay for adjustments to the plan.

At the same time, the committee does not know whether the complex under construction will come under the management of the Mariinsky Theater or become the property of its general director. The KIO emphasized that the object may well be registered as private property.

Repino, Pesochnaya st. 18. Photo – Anton Vaganov

Interestingly, the Mariinsky Theater recently approached Smolny with a request to pave the sandy Krugovaya Street in Repino, which connects Primorskoe Highway and the concert hall building, and also to organize landscaped pedestrian paths along it. This was reported to the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP), which received the theater’s appeal. At the same time, the Kurortny district administration stated that they know nothing about the concert hall being built in the district.

Hall plus dacha

Now the construction site on Pesochnaya Street in Repino is surrounded by a blue construction fence with a sign indicating where trucks should deliver materials. As one of the construction employees said, the construction fence will soon be replaced with a high enclosing area.

In addition to the chamber hall for 100-150 seats, the complex includes a two-story administrative building, a two-story cottage for guests, and a swimming pool. According to the workers, the customer Valery Gergiev set a deadline for completion of work for May 2017.

The cost of building the facility with finishing and equipment is about 150 million rubles, according to Ilya Andreev, vice president of Becar Asset Management Group. Elizaveta Conway, director of the residential real estate department at Colliers International in St. Petersburg, gave a similar assessment. According to her, investments in one building on the site could amount to 30-40 million rubles, however, the amounts could be higher, since they depend on the engineering content of the building and internal planning solutions.

Built, built and almost built

Until 2005, at 18 Pesochnaya Street in Repino there was a trade union rest house named after Gorky, and during the writer’s life there was his dacha here. The holiday home consisted of several buildings, including a sports pavilion and administrative buildings. After the fire, only ruins remained.

Valery Gergiev received a long-term lease on the site in 2005. The order on this was signed by the governor of St. Petersburg. Then this post was held by Valentina Matvienko. According to the agreement, the conductor sent $150 thousand (8.4 million rubles at the current exchange rate) to the city budget as an investment. Moreover, construction was supposed to be completed in 16 months.

However, the reconstruction dates were repeatedly postponed. In October 2008, the commissioning of the facility was postponed to December 2009. As the then head of the construction committee, Roman Filimonov, explained, the reason for the missed deadlines was the protracted process of connecting to the power grid. But even after several years, work at the site remained frozen. As you can see from Google map images from 2013, there was a blue fence at the site, behind which nothing happened.

In 2014, Valery Gergiev turned to Governor Georgy Poltavchenko with a request for another postponement to July 2015. Then the deadline was postponed again - to December 31, 2016, the KIO reported.

Repino is considered a territory where the most influential and wealthy St. Petersburg residents buy country houses. The cost of one hundred square meters of land in this area, according to experts, ranges from 500 thousand to 1 million rubles.

What does the concert hall that Gergiev built at his dacha look like?

Valery Gergiev has a personal concert hall in Repino, which the maestro built for his own 150 million rubles at his own dacha. Previously, it was opened only for Vladimir Putin, Alexei Kudrin and other VIP friends of the Mariinsky. Yesterday Fontanka visited there, and now it will show you Gergiev’s dacha and tell you how to get there.

A little background. Valery Gergiev received a plot of land in Repino on Pesochnaya Street, 20a for summer cottage construction back in 2005. For more than ten years, mysterious construction had been going on there, and a little over a year ago, on June 1, 2017, we finally learned from Alexei Kudrin that instead of a dacha, the head of the Mariinsky Theater had a concert hall.

The official opening of the private concert hall took place during last year's St. Petersburg Economic Forum - President Vladimir Putin personally visited the brand new stage, decorated with light wood. Then the opening took place in the strictest secrecy: it was not announced in advance, and afterward complaints appeared online that security required people to hand over their phones at the entrance (except for the most important guests, like Alexei Kudrin, who immediately posted photos on social networks).

Since then, several concerts have been held in Repino for friends of the Mariinsky Theater, its employees and VIP guests. Naturally, there was no talk of any permanent schedule: these are still private properties, and even without them, the Mariinsky, to put it mildly, has room to expand: in addition to three buildings in St. Petersburg, the theater oversees two venues in Vladikavkaz and one in Vladivostok. However, if the maestro decides to change the status of his dacha by somehow joining it to the Mariinsky structure (which is quite likely), concerts may become regular.

And so, on June 25, the director of the Mariinsky Theater decided to open terra incognita for ordinary St. Petersburg residents.

Information about the gift that Valery Gergiev wished to give to his subscribers appeared on the eve of X-Day on social networks in the maestro’s accounts. Everyone was invited for free - all they had to do was leave their names in the comments to the post. Not everyone managed to get into the established limit of 120 people, but representatives of the Mariinsky Theater reassured that there would still be chances to visit the unusual space.

The hall, meanwhile, turned out to be high-class. The cost of its construction a year ago was estimated at 150 million rubles, and these were Valery Gergiev’s own funds (which is approximately equal to the amount indicated in his annual income statement for 2016, posted on the Ministry of Culture website). The acoustics were handled by the Japanese specialist Yasuhisa Toyota, who worked on the acoustics of the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall, and the external appearance was carried out by the French architect Xavier Fabre.

The building was erected a five-minute walk from the shore of the Gulf of Finland, deep in the dacha area. The hall is not surrounded by many-meter-long blank fences, as often happens with the villas of rich people, it is not hidden: on the boards it is written in paint: “Pesochnaya, 18” - and arrows are drawn on how to get there. Opposite there is a banner with portraits of artists performing in the theater.

Construction work on the site is still underway: on the reverse side, finishing of buildings and landscaping of the territory is underway, there is still no water in the decorative pond with a bridge thrown over it. But even now, alpine slides, wooden terraces, an ornate path and, of course, pine trees delight the eye. Although the area free from development is small (the area of the site is 9.5 thousand square meters).

The building is not flashy in appearance, it is asymmetrical. His style - both outside and inside - is close to “Scandinavian”: calm natural colors, simple geometric shapes, natural materials, wooden furniture. The only architectural decorations are accent windows on one wall, a large panoramic window behind the stage, and enlarged facsimiles of the composers' signatures on the third floor balustrade. On the ground floor there is a spacious bathroom adequate for the number of seats in the hall, a small wardrobe with a wall-length mirror and a cafe counter (not yet open). The balconies of the concert hall can be reached both by stairs outside and by wooden stairs inside. The acoustics allow you to hear not only music from them, but also speeches from the stage (which is also true in the opposite direction: the creak of even one person’s steps during a performance can be heard throughout the entire hall).

Valery Gergiev, personally, as a hospitable host, came to welcome the public to his home - and among the guests in the front row were Alexander Sokurov, Fabio Mastrangelo and Rudolf Furmanov. And he introduced the musician whom he invited to perform that evening - the blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsuji. The musician, who had performed the day before in the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theater itself, actually repeated his program: Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, Gershwin... And encores, at the end of which Sokurov thanked the 29-year-old pianist in Japanese. The musician, with his playing and soulful feeling of his works, so surpassed any expectations that even the men in the hall cried, not embarrassed to admit it at the end of the concert. To play “Moonlight” - in general, not even a minor composition - so that it evokes such strong emotions is a unique talent.

At the end of the evening, the maestro promised that this meeting in a chamber format would mark the beginning of a number of similar ones - “including on this site.” Later, on the sidelines, in response to Fontanka’s clarifying questions: “Well, when?” and “where can listeners watch for announcements?” Gergiev made it clear that at first these meetings would remain spontaneous, and a full-fledged opening was still to come.

“We will complete all the work and then make an announcement,” he assured. - Our process continues, and any object must first be completely completed - for the safety of visitors. Of course, there will still be open concerts here. We’ve already had 300, 400 people here - we just give concerts to friends of the theater, this is a non-profit platform.”

In other words, if you want to go to Gergiev’s dacha, be friends with the Mariinsky Theater. At least on social networks.

Alina Tsiopa, Fontanka.ru

The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater, beloved by St. Petersburg residents, Valery Gergiev, at his own expense, is building a new concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater in the village of Repino, Kurortny district, on a site that was previously intended for the maestro’s summer house.

As Business Petersburg reports, construction of a new chamber concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater is nearing completion in the picturesque village of Repino. It will be located on Pesochnaya Street on a plot of 9.5 thousand square meters. This land was leased to Valery Gergiev on a long-term basis in 2005 for the construction of a two-story cottage. Probably, the plans of the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater changed and he decided to build not a cottage on the site, but a concert hall for his favorite theater at his own expense.

The hall is almost completed, and the first concerts there could tentatively take place in the summer of 2017 as part of the White Nights festival. According to the conductor of the Mariinsky Theater Renata Salavatova, Repino is an ideal place to build a branch of the theater, because such great composers as Shostakovich, Sviridov, and Solovyov-Sedoy once lived in the village. This is a highly musical “praying” place. In addition, the hall, which seats one and a half hundred spectators, has excellent acoustics.

The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev, at his own expense, is building a new concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater in Repino on a site intended for his dacha. The volume of investment is estimated at 150 million rubles. The first concerts will take place in the summer, but you will have to pay for exceeding the area.

As “DP” learned, the construction of a new chamber concert hall of the Mariinsky Theater for 100-150 people is being completed in Repino. The hall is being built at 18 Pesochnaya Street, on a plot of 9.5 thousand m2.

The hall is almost completed, and the first concerts in it may take place this summer as part of the White Nights festival. At the same time, the Mariinsky Theater itself told DP that they had not heard anything about the concert venue in Repino.

The road to music

Unlike the administration of the Mariinsky Theater, its employees are aware of the construction of a new concert hall in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. For example, in April, in an interview with the Kazan publication Realnoe Vremya, Mariinsky Theater conductor Renat Salavatov said: “Gergiev is now using his own money to build a concert hall in Repino, where Shostakovich, Sviridov, Solovyov-Sedoy and other great musicians lived. Construction is being completed at an accelerated pace, and the hall will open soon. There will be excellent acoustics, and this is the main thing in the hall.”

We also heard about the concert hall being built in the Property Relations Committee (PRC). They told “DP” that according to the agreement with Valery Gergiev, the area of the buildings constructed should not have exceeded 570 m2, but he had already built 2.5 thousand m2, which means he would have to pay for adjustments to the plan. At the same time, the committee does not know whether the complex under construction will come under the management of the Mariinsky Theater or become the property of its general director. The KIO emphasized that the object may well be registered as private property.

Interestingly, the Mariinsky Theater recently approached Smolny with a request to pave the sandy Krugovaya Street in Repino, which connects Primorskoe Highway and the concert hall building, and also to organize landscaped pedestrian paths along it. “DP” was told about this by the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP), which received the theater’s appeal. At the same time, the Kurortny district administration stated that they know nothing about the concert hall being built in the district.

Hall plus dacha

Now the construction site on Pesochnaya Street in Repino is surrounded by a blue construction fence with a sign indicating where trucks should deliver materials. As one of the construction employees told “DP”, the construction fence will soon be replaced with a high enclosing area.

Built, built and almost built

In 2014, Valery Gergiev turned to Governor Georgy Poltavchenko with a request for another postponement to July 2015. Then the deadline was postponed again - to December 31, 2016, the KIO told “DP”.