Concert with music by Shostakovich was canceled in the Savior on Spilled Blood Church due to complaints of "blasphemy"

Music festival "Arts Square" is taking place in St. Petersburg. One of the concerts on his schedule was a concert in the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, where Dmitry Shostakovich's music was to be performed - 10 poems for the choir on verses by revolutionary poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, shortly before the scheduled date, the concert was canceled.

The reason was the campaign launched by activists who appealed to “Russian Orthodox people, monarchists, conservatives, traditionalists” with an appeal “to unite and prevent this outrage”, - Fontanka reports . Otherwise, according to the authors of the publications, the Savior on Spilled Blood will repeat the fate of Notre Dame. “Only church music can be performed in the temple,” activists said. (In reality, the Savior on Spilled Blood is a branch of the St. Isaac's Cathedral memorial museum.) The performance of Shostakovich's music in the place where Alexander II was mortally wounded was compared by activists to "some moronic teenagers frying sausages on the Eternal Flame" club "at the Piskarevskoye cemetery".

Representatives of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society, which is hosting the festival, said that they did not know about the cancellation of the concert, and they were waiting for an explanation of the reasons. In turn, the administration of St. Isaac's Cathedral commented: “The concert was canceled for technical reasons. There will be no more comments in this regard".