Translated material
Pavel Serbin: I'm afraid of the word "authenticity"
— Please tell us about the concert program.
-- The purpose of the program is to present Russian classicism in a variety of genres and names. Firstly, I would like to introduce you to the wonderful domestic school represented by the names of Dmitry Bortnyansky, Maxim Berezovsky, Evstigney Fomin; on the other hand, it is important for us to open for the listener the music of those composers who worked in Russia: Anton Ferdinand Tietz, Johann Heinrich Fatsus. In contrast to other foreigners (Giovanni Paisiello, for example), they came to Russia not only with the goal of quickly earning money and leaving. Titz and Fatsus became part of Russian musical history. They received excellent training in their homeland in Germany, and then came to Russia and never left.
— By the way, in relation to the fine arts of the 18th century, there is a term “rossika”. Rossika is the name given to the work of foreign masters who came to Russia and worked here. The word itself articulates the ambivalence of the artist’s position...
— Curious... The fact is that similar ambivalence characterizes the creativity of the musicians who arrived at the court. When they arrived here, they began to write music in a completely different way. The atmosphere of Russian acapella church music, and to some extent folk music, influenced them. They were already composing in a style that is defined as a la russe style, as if national. Their experiments largely became the basis of the so-called national school of composition in Russia.
— Was the music played in two concerts heard for the first time?
- It has been heard before, and only performed by the Pratum Integrum orchestra. In general, Pratum began with the premiere performance of the Symphony in C major by Maxim Berezovsky (the three-part opus, created around 1772, is considered the first Russian symphony). This happened in 2003. After recording Berezovsky, we became a permanent orchestra and from now on we work together. Since the current concerts opened with the same symphony, we can say that their program also encrypts the history of our own group.
-- The Pratum Integrum orchestra has chosen an authentic performance style. I would like to understand the term “authenticism” itself. It quickly comes into fashion, like postmodernism and conceptualism. Today, both the vibration-free playing style of some gothic rockers and the tradition of playing music in museum halls can be called authentic. Where, in your opinion, are the boundaries of the concept of “authenticity”?
- I'm afraid of the word "authenticity." I prefer historical performing practice to it. In the West, authenticism emerged as a rebellious phenomenon. But now it is beginning to ossify, turning into a new academicism. Moreover, the old guys do not give way to the young people. Why did authenticism arise in the first place? I believe that every piece of music accumulates a critical mass of interpretations, after which it requires purification. Let's take a trivial example: Bach's chaconne. Bach wrote it in the twenties of the 18th century. In the Bach tradition, the chaconne was performed for thirty to forty years. Then, in the era of classicism, this play was played differently. In romanticism it is different again. In the twentieth century, the performance did not at all match the composer’s intentions. Thus, the accumulated critical mass breaks through, and the work itself screams: I want to be played in the old way. Technological aspects are also important. The same non-vibrato strings. When an orchestra plays a vertical non-vibrato, the intonation is built completely differently. When everyone in groups vibrates, intonation cannot be heard. The technique of non-vibrato has become relevant for modern orchestras. I think that in a hundred and two hundred years, authenticism will be relevant for the music of the 20th century, if its interpretation goes too far. Another thing is that the twentieth century differs from the 18th century in that sound recordings are possible. Our contemporaries rely in their interpretations on what they hear on discs “first hand.”
— Do you think it’s possible today to achieve the sound that Bach heard?
- Of course, we cannot completely imitate how the work sounded on the day it was written. If we accept such a dogma, then we must admit that the work has no right to be interpreted after some years. That's why we talk about the degree of approximation. Those who think that authenticism completely closes off the possibility of performing self-expression are mistaken. We just don't put ourselves first. In first place is the composer.
— Please tell us about the Russian tradition of authentic performance.
-- The first shoots of Russian authenticity have been emerging since the 1960s, with the concerts of the Madrigal ensemble. In 1993, the Ancient Music Ensemble was created at the Moscow Conservatory. Almost all future Pratum Integrum orchestra members performed in this ensemble under the direction of Alexey Lyubimov, a world-famous pianist. I started in 1994. In St. Petersburg, a breakthrough was made by the Musica Petropolitana orchestra, from which our band's accompanist Sergei Filchenko came. So the continuity is obvious.
Russian authenticity has its own internal problems. The main one is authoritarianism. People put themselves first, not music. They strive to gather around themselves a certain protoplasm that will reflect subjective ideas about the authenticity of one leader. Pratum was originally created according to a different model. In our orchestra there is no conductor, there are no random people. It consists mostly of graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, my friends. During rehearsals, we weigh the opinions of each musician. We manage to maintain democracy in the orchestra. Nominally I'm the artistic director. In fact, I am responsible for selecting programs, for searching in libraries, for the bass group, for rehearsals. All responsibilities are distributed among us. We are not threatened by authoritarianism.
-- Which European schools of authentic music does Pratum Integrum focus on?
-- Let's start with the fact that we play music with outstanding European performers: Trevor Pinnock (harpsichord), Wieland Keiken (viola da gamba), Alexander Rudin, Ivan Monighetti (cello). We have a wealth of experience. But we still have our own preferences. Personally, I am a fan of the Concerto Koeln orchestra, which introduced me to classicism and the Sturm und Drang movement. But we are not trying to imitate anyone. We are slowly developing our own style.
— It must be very expensive to maintain an orchestra that performs authentic music? After all, the instruments must be old...
-- Yes, sure. The strings in our orchestra are originals and copies of instruments of the 18th century, the wind instruments are authentic copies. We pray for Mikhail Serebryany. He is an orchestra producer, a man passionately devoted to early music. He is a biologist by training and graduated from Moscow State University. So we exist thanks to private capital. For three years the state has not shown any interest in us.
— How do you look for rare scores?
- For me, the process is designated by the fashionable word “fan.” I'm interested in this as a hobby. I am in contact with almost all European archives. I write out a lot of copies, study scores that no one has ever touched. Here is an example of how the manuscript of Maxim Berezovsky's first Russian symphony was found. A very respected librarian from Italy was asked by the Moscow Conservatory to conduct a small search of Russian surnames in the catalogs of European archives for a library conference. An online catalog was used, where several Russian names were “loaded”, including Bortnyansky and Berezovsky. This is how some plays surfaced, including the first Russian symphony, the score of which is kept in Rome. Since the score ended up in a private archive, the process of obtaining copies took three years.
— Is there a lot of Russian music scattered in foreign libraries?
-- So many. Firstly, after the revolution we did not particularly take care of our archives. In 1918, we publicly burned the archives of the Court Chapel. Many manuscripts were saved thanks to emigrants. The scores remained in the West. Many works survived miraculously - only because our composers published abroad in the 18th century. And in Russian archives, even if something has been preserved, it is not always cataloged. Just a shame! If we imagine the picture of the heritage of Russian classical music as a whole, we will have to admit: seventy percent were lost, of the remaining thirty, half a percent were published.
-- What of the rest will we hear performed by Pratum Integrum in the next season?
— As for the Russian 18th century, we will apparently record a disc by Johann Wilhelm Gessler. There will also be Western European rarities: programs with the “new” Telemann, French Baroque, Swedish Mozart - Joseph Martin Kraus. The music of Johann Georg Pisendel, the famous violinist of the Dresden Chapel, for whom Telemann, Vivaldi, and Fasch wrote, will be played. We have a website, www.pratum.ru, where you can always see announcements of our programs.