Mikhail Fikhtengolts. Shades of Silence

At first, when the St. Petersburg Early Music festival announced a concert by the Italian Paolo Pandolfo in Arkhangelskoye, it didn’t seem like a very good joke. Moscow is not the place where you can give a recital of the viola da gamba - a quiet instrument with a gentle, ghostly sound, not designed for a room larger than a small concert hall. Petersburg is a different matter: a city that loves ancient quirks, is absorbed in its antiquity and does not want to accept the hectic way of life that Moscow dictates to it. However, the cards turned out so that Pandolfo last weekend came precisely to the Mother See - more precisely, to its environs, for Arkhangelskoye, the only one of the Moscow estate museums, has not yet (thank God!) fallen within the city limits. Moreover, hidden in the old mansion is a real rarity - a newly restored Baroque theater, of which there are only seven left in all of Europe.

However, the theater for Pandolfo also seemed to be a universal expanse. Viola da Gamba is extremely far from the aesthetics of the operatic genre, which is thoroughly secular in its essence. Those who first heard this beautiful instrument with many strings glistening in the twilight might have thought that this phenomenon did not belong to European culture at all. This is meditation when the performer, through playing an instrument, temporarily withdraws into himself, focusing on his inner sensations and trying to establish contact with a certain source of spiritual energy. The applauding public is clearly superfluous here. Although, in the case of Paolo Pandolfo, a musician - I will not hesitate to use a loud epithet - from God, engaging in voyeurism is useful and pleasant. Parallel to the musical chronicle, moving from Italy to France, and from there to England and Germany, Pandolfo spoke in a quiet voice about the history of the instrument and the people involved in it. I would venture to bet that neither Tobias Hume nor Card Friedrich Abel or a dozen other authors who wrote at one time for the viola da gamba are unknown to anyone except a narrow circle of professionals. Which is natural and correct if we consider music as a kind of religious phenomenon. Individuality dissolves in the once and for all established canon, feeding it with new juices and gradually becoming an integral part of it.

Possessing undoubted stage magnetism, Pandolfo sacredly honors this canon, complementing it with truly individual intonation. Here the Spaniard Diego Ortiz sounds , and the sound of the instrument becomes more colored, the intonation becomes nervously aggravated, as it is aggravated in the paintings of Velazquez and El Greco . The characteristic sketches of Hume, an amateur musician who wrote his plays in between his military service, seem to lead directly to Hogarth with his bizarre irony and grotesquery. Finally, the German Abel is the last of a galaxy of violist composers, expressive and thoughtful, who sang a swan song to the instrument that was leaving musical practice. In Pandolfo's interpretation, each of them, although not great, acquired meaning and an amazing depth of experience. Pandolfo recalled that the history of music was made by many musicians, and not just generally recognized geniuses.

And above all, he reminded us of how, despite its apparent closeness, this music is infinitely far from us and our perception of the world. How quiet she is. Trying on these shades of silence on his instrument, he treacherously exposed the vices of the public, who outwardly seemed so intelligent and understanding. For this music can be spoiled by any extraneous sound. The creaking of a clumsy video camera. The click of the camera shutter. The rustle of a plastic bag that some old woman foolishly brought with her into the hall. We have forgotten how to listen to silence. And the more clearly this fact is realized, the more poignant the sound of the viol becomes, disappearing into oblivion.