The Moscow Synodal Choir performed at a festival in RomeThe 24th Festival of Sacred Music and Art took place in Rome and the Vatican from 7 to 12 November

The choir under the artistic direction of Alexei Puzakov performed a concert at the
Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the Campus Martius in Rome.
Conductor Mikhail Kotelnikov: “Our visit to Rome is a musical offering to the Lord, to
whom we sing the glory with our art. The singers were overwhelmed with emotion
after the concert in this stunningly beautiful Baroque church with its superb
acoustics. We spoke to the Italian audience in the language of music, a common
language with which we can speak about what unites us — shared Christian spiritual
traditions of East and West. No doubt, today’s concert undoubtedly helped to build
bridges that unite our cultures and traditions, as well as introduced local audiences
to the finest examples of Russian sacred music and the Moscow choral school. It is a
pleasure to see so many guests from Italy and Russia at the concert.”
The evening opened with the famous echoes chant From My Youth. The concert
also featured works by 19th- and 21st-century composers—Tchaikovsky,
Rachmaninoff, Degtyarev, and others.
The Moscow Synodal Choir, founded in 1721 and reemerged in 2010, participated in
the festival for the third time. The festival traditionally takes place in autumn, and the
2025 edition was dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance composer
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
The tour was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the
Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Vatican, the Federal State Budgetary
Cultural Institution ROSCONCERT, and the Department for External Church
Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.