Schedule for Divertissement String Ensemble of St Petersburg. Artistic director – Ilya Ioff 2022

Composer: Franz Schubert
Composer: Alfred Schnittke
Artistic Director: Ilya Ioff
Composer: Gustav Mahler

Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra

There are ensembles that focus on purely academic music and there are ensembles that lean towards the entertaining. The ensemble DIVERTISSEMENT can do it all - "from Bach to Chaplin", as even the most severe of critics admit. The orchestra was founded in 1990. Its first director was violinist Elena Komarova. In the 1998-1999 season, she was succeeded by violinist and conductor Ilya Ioff. The ensemble's repertoire, not limited by stylistic and genre frameworks, combines Divertissements by Mozart and Bach's Brandenburg Concerti with music by Brahms and Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg's Transfigured Night and Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No 1, jazz and stage works - an impressive list that allows the ensemble to run its "named" season ticket series at the Small Philharmonic Hall. Today Divertissement has a demanding concert schedule, and its performance style showing refined, subtle taste has won well deserved acclaim from Russian, European and American audiences.