MOSCOW, May 6 /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry is upset that British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond did not like the Russian music concert in Palmyra, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

Philip Hammond described the performance as an attempt to distract attention from the ongoing suffering of millions of Syrians.

"As for Mr. Hammond, it is certainly sad that he did not like it. We ran off our legs to please him. We did everything for that, and not because he is knowledgeable in music - now we know that he does not know a good thing about it all - but because everybody is interested in what he said about the concert. His other comments are of no interest to anybody," the Russian diplomat said.

The Mariinsky theater symphony orchestra under the baton of maestro Valery Gergiyev gave a concert in the famous Roman theater in Palmyra on Thursday. Cellist Sergei Roldugin, the artistic director of the St. Petersburg House of Music, and violinist Pavel Milyukov, a Tchaikovsky music concert laureate, took part in the performance.

Gergiyev calls concert in Palmyra a call for peace, concord

According to maestro Valery Gergiyev, the Mariinsky artistic director and the conductor of the orchestra, Thursday's concert signalled a call for peace and concord and an appeal to all peoples in the world to pool their efforts in the fighting with the evil of terrorism.

The music included in the concert "mirrors our heartache, indignation and protest against barbarism and violence, against the savage monsters who destroyed the invaluable monuments of world culture and organized mass executions here."

Along with it some items on the programme "express a feeling of huge optimism and hope".