Queen's Birthday Party in St Petersburg
This year the celebration of the Queen’s birthday in the garden of the Consulate in St Petersburg had a musical theme and a nautical flavour
HMCG Gareth Ward and the orchestra
2013 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, so an outdoor performance of the ‘Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ went down well with the 400 guests. The 60 piece orchestra from the special school attached to the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory performed to a very high standard. And it gave a rousing rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’.
In addition to the naval uniforms of some guests, representing the naval and maritime community of the St Petersburg, the garden of the Consulate was filled with models of Sunseeker yachts (produced in Poole), giving the visitors a flavour of modern British design and technology. The original yachts were moored a little way away in the Gulf of Finland and some lucky guests got a chance to test them out the following day.
Peter Dyson, David Hicks and HMCG Gareth Ward singing in a choir
Toast to Her Majesty the Queen (Leningrad Region vice-governor for external relations Aleksandr Kuznetsov and HMCG Gareth Ward)