The Concert

In Moscow, the former conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra Andrey Simonovich Filipov is presently the janitor of the theater. Andrey felt in disgrace with the Communist Party thirty years ago for protecting the Jewish musicians and was no longer allowed to conduct an orchestra. One night, Andrey reads a just-received fax while cleaning the office of the Bolshoi's director Leonid Vinichenko and he hides the document. He learns that the Chatelet Theater in Paris has just invited the Bolshoi Orchestra to perform a concert in Paris within two weeks. Andrey shows the fax to his friend and musician Aleksandr 'Sasha' Abramovich Grosman that drives an ambulance and he decides to reunite fifty-five former musicians of Bolshoi to travel to Paris and perform The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He invites the Communist leader and former KGB Ivan Gavrilov to manage the orchestra and he requests the solo of the prominent musician Anne-Marie Jacquet and to stay in Paris for three days. When they arrive in Paris, Andrey meets Anne-Marie while the musicians wander in the city, partying and raising money. The unprofessionalism of the Russian musicians forces Anne-Marie to call off the concert; but Sasha convinces her to come to the theater. Meanwhile Andrey grieves the incident with the violinist Lea thirty years ago and hides a secret from Anne-Marie. What is the connection between Andrey and Anne-Marie?