Behind the scenes... and at the heart of it all!

Without their 24/7 close attention, assistance and support, this powerful mechanism, and we can call it “festival organism”, would not have been able to function at its 120%!

Elizaveta Zdanovich

— The Malta International Music Festival is a delicious cake consisting of a bunch of bright, complex, flawlessly assembled ingredients. My role in this firework of taste, as I call it for a joke, is to be Big Mama for our assistants and their guests. We had to solve lots of problems, sometimes we faced real challenges and stress tests, when I myself and the whole team had to respond to difficult situations. But when we are together, we are strong! Do I want to repeat it all again? Definitely, yes! The festival, of course, gave us a very memorable experience, and the icing on the cake was meeting all those amazing artists and guests!

There were some funny episodes: once at night we were outdoors moving a piano from one place to another accompanied by one guard, and we were singing Russian songs. Probably, it looked like we were committing a crime! And a colleague of mine had this incident: the road to Saint Julian’s was closed and she had lunch to be urgently delivered to our guests in Valletta, and in all that mayhem she caught a taxi across town and then she spilled all the sauces and dressings on her clothes and inside the taxi.

Valeria Kotova

— The effective organization of the festival, among other factors, made this event a real musical triumph! The most interesting and exciting moment, in my opinion, comes seconds before the artist steps onto the stage, when the success of the whole concert depends, to a certain degree, on my efforts. I am talking about the attitude, concentration, atmosphere, organization. And when the show ends for the public, for us it must go on… and it does go on!

Anastasia Kuzmina

— I worked as an assistant in the press-center of the Foundation and I helped with organization of press-conferences that were held every day. It was nice meeting all the participants of this process: journalists, speakers, musicians. I was also responsible for communication with the media in Malta: from marketing e-mailing to making calls in order to invite them to a press-conference.

In addition to this, I was lucky to be an assistant to the famous Russian TV host and pianist Irina Nikitina (Kultura TV channel, “Enigma” programme). I helped at the shooting of her programme with Maxim Vengerov, I was at the concert and we together visited Gozo, an island in the Maltese archipelago.

I liked taking part in the festival: the sunny weather, classical music and nice people…

And when the show ends for the public, for us it must go on…
and it does go on!

Yana Korejba

— It was a great pleasure to take part in organization of the music festival. I met talented musicians who perform classical music. I was an assistant and aide to the violinist and conductor, a man of great vision and wisdom Dmitry Sitkovetsky, the sincere and open pianist Julia Zilberquit, the outstanding violinist and conductor Maxim Vengerov, the excellent Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and his wife Elzbieta Penderecka – she herself organizes music festivals in Poland. I had a chance not only to attend concerts, but I also saw them during rehearsals and behind the scenes.

It was so nice that all musicians were thrilled with Malta. And for me it was an interesting experience. I received unforgettable impressions from communicating with the unique artists. I am grateful to everyone who was involved in organization of the festival. I can say, we really did it!

Valeria Taran

— At this moment my feelings and emotions can be described with one phrase: the MIMF ended several weeks ago, but I still live with this amazing sensation of belonging to the wonderful moment. To be honest, I do not know who I should thank for this unique opportunity to become a ‘player’ of the great team, meet all these talented people and fall in love with Armenia.

I was a small rivet of a huge machine, which united the whole planet! I had the honour to work with the amazing musicians from the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, the most talented family of Carpenters from New York, the Russian conductor Sergei Stadler, the Italian violinist Salvatore Accardo.

What does the festival mean for each one of us and for Malta, which hosted the MIMF? 18 concerts so different from one another, composers, soloists, conductors, assistants, aides, project leaders, organizers, drivers, shooting teams, sound engineers, journalists… All these people came to this small island to organize this event, to give people a chance to plunge into the atmosphere of classical music, and to become part of everything that has been happening. Would it all work out, if at least one rivet had fallen out of this complex mechanism? I doubt it. Was it possible that it could have happened? Absolutely out of the question! Am I happy to have been part of the MIMF? Insanely! Do I miss it? You bet!

The truth is, I cannot highlight just one event or one day of the festival in order to describe it. Every moment was special and unforgettable. I can say only one thing: I hope it will be continued!