Ilya Ovchinnikov. Bass guitar, cello and doorbell

Bass guitar, cello and doorbell
Ilya Ovchinnikov

Publication date: November 27, 2003

Following the parade of outstanding conductors in October, a two-month parade of festivals takes place in Moscow. December will be decorated with “Mozartiana”, “December Evenings”, “Vladimir Spivakov Invites”, and November will be marked by “Moscow Autumn”, “Sound Theater”, “Dedication to Oleg Kagan”. The festive side of musical life is naturally complemented by the everyday - first of all, subscription concerts: the Fedoseevsky orchestra, for example, has four of them in November. One of the group’s performances successfully coincided with the festival in memory of Kagan : both in the festival program and in the BSO concert on November 22 occupied an important place , works by Shostakovich and Schnittke . During the evenings of the festival, the music of the two composers sounded more convincing - first of all, thanks to the brilliant performance of Natalia Gutman, who is organizing the “Dedication to Oleg Kagan” for the fourth time.

The festival in memory of the remarkable violinist opened on November 16 with works by Beethoven, Strauss and Rachmaninov performed by Natalia Gutman and Eliso Virsaladze. On November 23, the forum ended with a performance by the Nizhny Novgorod Symphony Orchestra; pianist Alexey Volodin, violinists Viktor Tretyakov and Svyatoslav Moroz, violist Yuri Bashmet and cellist Natalia Gutman performed solos in works by Beethoven, Bruch and Schnittke. The conservatory was overcrowded on these two evenings - recently this has only happened at the performances of Mikhail Pletnev and Nikolai Baskov. Of course, these concerts deserve such attention; however, a significant part of the audience was attracted more by the solemnity of the opening and closing of the festival than by the music itself. The mass exodus of listeners, which began three minutes before the end of the last evening, spoke of both disrespect for the musicians and basic unfamiliarity with the material.

The duet of Gutman and Virsaladze can be heard in Moscow several times a year; however, real enthusiasm appears among the public only when there is an informational reason . was received quite calmly Thus, the appearance of Natalia Gutman in the festival program on November 20 ; in the evenly filled hall, the stalls - alas - gaped with empty seats. The Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by our former compatriot Voldemar Nelson. seemed to be the weakest moment of the evening Schubert's Ninth Symphony : we were surprised by the fast tempos and excessively joyful sound. The second part, with its complex dramaturgy, was played as if it were an encore play - the subtleties of the instrumentation appeared as typically “encore” vignettes. However, the same cannot be said about the fragment of Wagner’s opera “ Tristan and Isolde ” that opened the concert: the orchestra, which is now going through difficult times, pleased with the purity of sound of both strings and winds. All that remains is to regret that “The Entry and Death of Isolde,” which stretches into infinity, did not actually turn out to be endless.

The central event of the concert and the festival as a whole was Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto . Natalia Gutman in no way gave herself up to inspiration - on the contrary, she drew it from an absolutely precise knowledge of how music should sound. The orchestra was a worthy partner for the soloist, but the sound space was completely subordinated to the cello. Even with a silent orchestra, the instrument sounded so voluminous, as if it were an orchestra itself. And when the roll call of cello and horn began in silence, it seemed that they did not need the support of the orchestra at all. The performance of the concert turned out to be a real musical celebration; Gutman was probably also pleased, playing a sarabande from Bach's cello suite as an encore.

An equivalent event would be Concerto Grosso #2 by Alfred Schnittke, written especially for Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman; he closed the festival program. However, it was strategically wrong to end the evening with this opus: part of the audience was fed up with the first part and was not ready for the more complex second. The Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic Orchestra coped with the score as a whole, but the details were much more important: first of all, the non-standard instruments complementing the orchestra. If the harpsichord formed a successful ensemble with the violin and cello, then the electric guitars and drums against the background of the orchestra were barely audible - in the canonical recording of Gennady Rozhdestvensky , every inclusion of pop instruments causes a shock. Otherwise, the conductor and soloists did everything they could: Alexander Skulsky did not allow the complex music to disintegrate into its component elements, and Natalia Gutman and Svyatoslav Moroz, according to the idea of ​​the composition, opposed the orchestra to the best of their ability.

Whatever one may say about strategy, the Concerto Grosso ended up at the end of the program absolutely legally: after it, almost any music would be inappropriate. It is gratifying that in November Schnittke performed in Moscow at least three times: his “ Requiem ” opened “Moscow Autumn” , and on the eve of the closing of the Kaganov Festival a piano concert dedicated to Vladimir Krainev was performed. The Fedoseev Orchestra was conducted by Günter Neuhold, with Austrian pianist Emma Schmidt as a soloist. Her reading of the concert did not seem too deep - at least, Schmidt’s encore piece by Granados sounded much more organic. For either this or another reason, the concert did not make the same strong impression as the composer’s other instrumental opuses. If Schnittke was an innovator in almost every new composition, then the best moments of the piano concerto are reminiscent of early Music for piano and orchestra , and the famous First Symphony , hardly adding anything new to them. It is curious that in one of the leitmotif chords of the concert, Schnittke depicted a bell ringing in his Moscow apartment on Dmitry Ulyanov Street.

The BSO also performed a suite from Shostakovich's music to Kozintsev's Hamlet. For unknown reasons, it was one and a half times shorter than the canonical suite from the film , usually performed at concerts. Thus, the most beautiful fragment “The Death of Ophelia” turned out to be released - one of the best in Shostakovich’s lyrics; However, let us note the very fact of the revival of interest in his film music. At the "Moscow Autumn" a wonderful organ fugue from the film "Golden Mountains" was performed; on December 6 will pick up the baton , Vladimir Ashkenazy : half of his program, dedicated to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, will consist of fragments of music for cinema . The most successful among the Fedoseevites was the work of a composer equally distant from both Shostakovich and Schnittke: we are talking about two suites from the ballet “ Cocked Hat ” by de Falla. The music endeared itself to the audience from the very beginning, when the orchestra members suddenly clapped their hands and let out several wild screams.

The decoration of "Cocked Hat" was the solo horn and cor anglais, and the cheeky bassoon part was reminiscent of Stravinsky's " Petrushka ". The similarity is not surprising - “The Cocked Hat,” like Stravinsky’s early ballets, was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and became the most successful production of the Russian Ballet since “Petrushka.” Unfortunately, a number of the most effective moments of "Cocked Hat" were left behind the scenes - for example, the ironic quotation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony . Such are the costs of ballet suites, which present many wonderful ballets in an incomplete, stripped-down form. "Cocked Hat" is so sparkling, brilliant, fresh that ideally it should sound only in its entirety - on an equal footing with such leaders of symphony programs as Mozart's Fortieth Symphony or Rimsky-Korsakov's " Scheherazade ". Vladimir Fedoseev performed these two masterpieces with his orchestra on November 28 , and in December we will have a BSO subscription, which will include all Beethoven’s symphonies and concerts . This is hardly any consolation to those who did not hear the famous theme of fate in the suites from The Tricorne. However, you should not miss the opportunity to re-listen to Beethoven's symphonies in the concert hall: you probably won't have time for this at home.