There is something to remember

The next alternative festival will begin in the cultural center House on May 17 and will last four days. The "alternative" of this year is a jubilee, the twentieth, however, it is not quite correct to say that it celebrates its twentieth birthday: her birthday happens once a year, and the festival happened two times a year. It is also impossible to count from the date of the founding of the festival - formally the "alternative" has existed since 1988, but, in fact, its history was born earlier, in 1969. Then, contrary to the restrained discontent of the Union of Composers, a Moscow music club was created with branches of jazz, folklore, academic music. As the club was allowed in this gloomy, no longer a thawing era - a riddle. Probably, the same Jesuit mechanism worked, which occasionally allowed to release some musicians (like the Trio "GTC" ) abroad (variations on "so that all Moscow people know, // that you are not left by my mercy"). The hard -explained favor of officials is an amazing luck for many generations of musicians and spectators. Everything that was played and sounded in the club turned out to be marginal art or another, the opposition of this music of the official stage was obvious. However, time passed, by the time of the emergence of the Alternative festival, perestroika freedom was already in the way, and then the political subtext of this contrast became not so important. And, as the curator and ideologist of the event Dmitry Ukhov says in an interview , the festival became an alternative to “false myths of music”, stamps and vulgarity. The concept of opposition and, perhaps, the struggle turned out to be an integral component of festival ideology. Although the "alternative", according to critics, has long been opposed by anything and in general a solid event and with experience, the mood of leisure time and oversight has not gifted for many years.

This year’s marathon will be opened by a newcomer - Polish flutist Edita Phil, the only debutant of the Alternative. All other musicians are not the first to perform at the festival. Moreover, it creates that from each of the participants, from each prepared program, a nostalgic thread stretches into the past; And the most powerful historical subtext to the organizers was clearly very important. The famous pianist, composer and writer Ivan Sokolov, who lives in Germany, will complete the program of the first day by the performance of the Sonat Galina Ustolskaya, the great student of Shostakovich. At the 7th festival "Alternative" (then written with the interrogative sign: "Alternative -?") Was held by the author’s evening of Utostolskaya, the composer of "opposition", marginal in essence (fame came to it for the seventy -first year of life, and the reason for this is not only the "special situation in a special country", but also the author’s position of Ustoshalskaya). Then the writings of Ustolskaya were performed by Alexei Lyubimov, a great pianist and one of the founders of the Alternative. Direct reference or reminder by chance, it does not matter; The title of the first day of the festival - "Classics of the Academic Age" - is already a historical view.

Mystics composers, philosophers, “melodic hypnotists” will be the heroes of this “alternative”. The Dutch pianist Haudt will perform the works of Elvin Kurran, the inventor of the music of the Embipant. Van Haudt, the organizer of festivals dedicated to composers such as Jachinto Schelisi or Elvin Kurran, will remind you at this festival at once. About the first live performance of Schelli in Russia on an alternative in 1995. About his speeches in Russia - last year, joint with the famous "musical acrobat", dancing clarinetist Michel Marang (in Moscow and St. Petersburg ); In addition, Van Haudt participated in the 1997 Alternative. The reference to the Alternative-97 is not devoid of some mystical features. Then - not at the festival, but completely independently - the Kronos Quartet first came to Moscow (an academic ensemble rattling around the world), and the concerts of American musicians were surrounded by festival concerts. The influence of the aesthetics of Kronos on the "alternative", the most amazing coincidence of critics spoke immediately. Since then, the Kronos -Quartet managed to visit Moscow repeatedly, but this year it will again be with us immediately after the end of the "alternative", on May 31 - an elegant rhyme.

The next plot of the current "Alternative" is the media opera Iraida Yusupova, Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov and Alexander Dolgin called "Egypt". Prigov is the main “non -resident” at home, a participant in a great many projects. For example, he unites with the Opus Posth ensemble - and during the performance he begins to call the musicians on the mobile phone, learning where you can conduct a technical examination of the car. Or just sits among spectators who can never know for sure - Prigov just sits or is it part of a cunning plan. His alliance with Yusupova , the ideologist of the video and media opera, and Dolgin, the operator and photographer, has existed for a long time; On the Alternative-19, for example, their video operates were presented (what the beloved genre-Permanse is transformed into new technologies). But this part of the festival program is important not a reference to some specific past performance. This performance, no matter how ridiculous, turns out to be the key to home stability.

The next point of the program is the phenomenal Dutch drummer, the accompanist of Sonny Rollinza, the weight of Montgomery, Dexstora Gordon, Eric Dolfi and other "great" - Khan Bennink. In the mid -60s, he, together with the pianist Misha Mengelberg and composer, Willem Broker, created an Instant Composer's Pool - a creative association, without which it is impossible to imagine Dutch improvisational music. The current performance of the drummer is the next rim of memories, primarily about the concert of Bennin with Misha Mengelberg in October 2005 at the second festival of Nikolai Dmitriev.

And the American quintet Spooky Actions will beat all records for the number of references, hints and allusions hidden in their performance. On last year’s Alternative, the musicians played the works of Anton Weberne and Arnold Schenberg in jazz processing. This year they will perform QUATUOR POUR LA FIN DU TEMPS (that is, the "Quartet at the end of time") Olivier Messian. The malicious house organizers instantly appropriated the name "Another End of Time" to the last day of the festival, provoking another association. The forerunner of the "death of the author", the main ideologist of musical eschatology, is the famous composer Vladimir Martynov, who has repeatedly participated in an alternative. The end of the composer era was the core idea on which Martynov’s work, the performing art of the Opus Posth ensemble, is paradoxically built. And at the same time, this gloomy idea is not able to keep the musicians in the power of hopelessness and doom: in the peak of tragedy the concept of the “musical end of the world” is played every now and then (in particular, the “alternative”, as it was , for example, two years ago - then, in particular, the presentation of the book of Norman Lebrecht “Who killed classical music” took place. Martynov Lebrecht has nothing to do, writes that the classic dies in the process of commercialization; but not to beat the title of his book;

The four -day marathon of the current alternative creates a certain number of intrigues and plots (one of these plots is the unity of the "composer" field, however, it is not possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the work of Utvulskaya, Kurran and Messian as part of the column). But, in addition, the "alternative" of this year offers the viewer a large -scale field for nostalgia - a mosaic or a web of historical allusions. In four days, it is obvious, then a considerable part of the life of the festival will be shown with strokes and hints. The "alternative", with its pathos of overthrow and confrontation, could relate to the idea of ​​any tradition aggressively and arrogantly, but this, fortunately, does not happen. The tradition is already affirmed - by the very fact of each "alternative" consisted, and this year this idea is also duplicated by the plot of the festival.