Music under the snow

The multimedia project "Color - Symbol - Sound" in the cultural center "House" "Pictures - dried music": this was the name of the concert of the group "Accident", held in the artist’s house ten years ago. At the beginning of the evening, it was announced that the concept had changed and the program will sound under the slogan "Clowns arrived." It became clear that the artists do not relate too seriously to the idea of entering their music into the museum space, nor to their own intention to ridicule this idea. Meanwhile, we can name many attempts to combine music and painting - the first thing is the festival "December evenings", which more or less successfully connecting the exhibition and concert programs. Gennady Rozhdestvensky left a vivid mark in the connection of the two arts: for the album of records “Music and Painting” (1976), the conductor selected the works of composers of the twentieth century, inspired by the work of great artists, the central place among whom is Paul Klee - painter, folklorist, poet and violinist.

Clay's work has repeatedly inspired composers; Since the death of the artist in 1940, a dozen works appeared, caused by his paintings. In addition to authors such as Tan Dong, Peter Maxwell-Davis, Sandor Veresh and Gunther Shuller, our compatriot Edison Denisov gave tribute to Klee. His "three paintings by Paul Klee" for the solo Alta and the ensemble would surely enter the album of Rozhdestvensky if they were written a few years earlier. The composition of Denisov opened a concert of the Moscow Ensemble of Modern Music (MSM) in the cultural center "House". The four numbers that made up the program sounded accompanied by an exciting video section, which was born in real time: Olga Kumheger was responsible for this part of the evening. Sitting behind the laptop keyboard, the artist worked on equal terms with musicians, combining fragments of famous paintings with her own blanks in a unique improvisation.

The result was determined primarily by a measure of artistic fantasy, which was directly dependent on the fantasy of the composer. So, in "Three paintings by Paul Klee", Denisov repelled from three specific paintings, the elements of which now formed the basis of the visual series. The most curious was the middle part, where only alt sounded: of red, yellow, pink, orange spots, the famous picture of Kleecio Kleecio with its huge hypnotizing eyes gradually formed. The next and more interesting number were the "Picasso symbols" Yuri Kasparov (student of Denisov and the head of the MAM); Here we are talking not so much about specific paintings, but about the characteristic symbolism of different periods of the artist’s work. The characters and elements of the Picasso paintings moved along the screen in the most bizarre way, and the music was so exciting that almost every batch - whether it was an harp, violin, thrombone or wooden box - I wanted to listen separately.

The most unexpected (including for the composer, by his own admission) the point of intersection of music and painting was the appearance on the screen of the outlines of the famous "Germniki"; This picture inspired Yuri Kasparov to create the symphony of the same name, which received the first award of the All -Union Competition contest in 1985. Two more works - the “embodiment of the color” of Dmitry Kapirin and the “negative modulations” of Dmitry Courland - found in the “color - symbol - sound” their perfect embodiment: it is difficult to imagine the possibility of listening to such opuses at home. In the first case, a combination of music performed on the stage plays a decisive role with the one that is recorded in advance and sounds from the speakers; In the second, all the more you can not do without a phonogram, including heart -rending cries, the sound of beating glass, joyful laughter, shots and much more. All this acquires integrity just in connection with a video sector: a huge dial, a gigantic clamp, and to top it off, the snow drill gives the music a new dimension. A repetition of the program will be held on April 24 in the theater hall of the House of Music.

04/13/2006 / Ilya Ovchinnikov, the material was published in the newspaper No. 65 dated 04/14/2006.