Circulation of "Return"

The “Return” chamber music festival was created by violinist Roman Mints and oboist Dmitry Bulgakov. In 2000, they created the cultural development fund of the same name, and “Return” became a brand for various programs. Among them is the “Return” subscription. Portraits" in the Chamber Hall of the House of Music and in the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Conservatory, the annual chamber ensemble prize for students of special music schools and colleges, and the most important project from the point of view of the history of music and the relationship between art and politics, the project "Repressed Music", carried out jointly with the Israeli ensemble Group for New Music. The project was intended to recall (or tell for the first time) the work of composers who became victims of totalitarian regimes, and included a tour of German cities, as well as the release of a disc and a book, about which the newspaper wrote in detail (see Vremya Novostei, May 28) .

Many regular participants of “Return” are now masters of the Moscow stage: pianists Alexander Kobrin and Yakov Katsnelson, violist Maxim Rysanov, cellist Boris Andrianov, guitarist Dmitry Illarionov, soprano Yulia Korpacheva and others. Year after year, musicians who have become recognized refuse lucrative concerts abroad in order to perform at the non-commercial but native “Return”.

According to established tradition, the eleventh festival will be held in the Rachmaninov Hall from January 6 to 12 and will consist of four concerts. The first concert is called "Obsession". The word implies borderline states of human consciousness - prayer, vision, sleep, dream. The name of the concert was given by the first movement of the Second Sonata for solo violin by Eugene Ysaïe. The sonata will be performed at the festival. The central piece of the program will be Osvaldo Golikhov’s essay “Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,” dedicated to the famous rabbi, the father of European Kabbalah. The theme of the second concert is “Stylization”. In different eras, composers explored the writing features of their predecessors. The results of the research were and are becoming new collage opuses. The concert will feature Alfred Schnittke's "Suite in the Ancient Style", Rodion Shchedrin's piano piece "Playing Rossini", Leonid Desyatnikov's Hommage a Piazzolla, Ravel's "Tomb of Couperin" for piano (it is, however, not an imitation of Couperin's style, but rather a recreation of the structure French Baroque Suite), as well as a viola concerto, which was attributed to one of Bach's sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, and apparently was created by the violist and music publisher of the first half of the 20th century, Henri Casadesus. The third evening will be devoted to film music - both specially written by composers for films (Shostakovich’s Romance to Alexander Faintsimmer’s The Gadfly), and simply used in cinema and animation, which has become an integral part of the artistic image (Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat minor in “ Tale of Tales" by Norshtein). The Russian premiere of Michael Nyman's music will also be performed.

The fourth “Concert on request”, as usual, is composed in accordance with the wishes of the performers: this is, in particular, Shostakovich’s Octet, Viktor Ekimovsky’s “Eternal Return” for solo bass clarinet, “Phantasmagoria” for cello and piano by the American composer John Corigliano, the Second Mendelssohn piano trio. The festival will end with the world premiere of composer and conductor Andrei Doinikov’s “Lullabies” for voice and instrumental ensemble.

Grigory DURNOVO