Psychoanalysis lesson

Russian premiere of monodrama to Schoenberg's music

The cycle “Masterpieces of Austrian Symphony of the 20th Century”, organized by the Center for Contemporary Music and the Austrian Cultural Forum, began in the Rachmaninov Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Its goal is to present works by classics of the world musical avant-garde. At the first concert dedicated to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, the Russian premiere of the monodrama “Waiting” took place.

To be honest, this fact causes more shame than joy. Because it shows that in the musical field we exist in some kind of ghetto, remote from the big world, where instead of varied food we are given dry rations in the form of several dozen musical hits of a limited period. For the whole world, “Waiting” is not only a classic, but also a repertory composition, which was created in 1909 (world premiere in 1924 in Prague) and is an example of musical expressionism. “Waiting” is a revolution in music and one of the main cultural events of the 20th century, an icon, like Malevich’s “Black Square”. “Waiting” was sung by outstanding singers and staged by famous directors. One of the incarnations was Robert Wilson's production at the Salzburg Festival in 1995 with Jesse Norman. The bench on which Norman performed the performance was turned into a marble exhibit in the lobby of the Grand Festival Palace, symbolizing not only the modern orientation of the festival of the Gerard Mortier era, but the transformation of the avant-garde into a part of bourgeois culture.

The Russian premiere of “Expectation” suggests that we, although a hundred years late, are still beginning to master world values. In fact, for us this event is of approximately the same significance as the first exhibition of Pavel Filonov in St. Petersburg, after which the paintings of the genius who died during the Leningrad blockade became the property of society. In some ways, Schoenberg is akin to Filonov both in language (extraordinary care and detail of texture), and in the psychological state controlled by unconscious horror, and in the sense of reality, when it is impossible to draw the line between the real and the imaginary.

All these properties of 20th century art are manifested in “Waiting” in just less than half an hour. During this time, the singer shouts out an almost detective story, where there is a moon, a forest, a corpse and blood. A story about a woman on the verge (or beyond) of a nervous breakdown, waiting for her lover. Perhaps everything she reports with such convincing frankness, including even the death of a loved one or his betrayal, is the fruit of her imagination. The main thing here is not the authenticity of what happened, but the irrational force that turned a person into a psychological clot of loneliness, despair, fears, manias and phobias. This entire unstructured flow of emotions was turned into verbal matter by Maria Pappenheim - not a professional writer, but a young doctor, whom Schoenberg, one might say, accidentally asked to write the opera libretto. Pappenheim created the text in a state of exaltation, turning off everything that is customary to observe in opera librettos, especially reason. The resulting nonsense, which is impossible to tear yourself away from while reading, became the basis of a great work of art, lived in one breath. Oddly enough, his performance does not at all overwhelm him with pessimism, but, on the contrary, with its condensed, rapidly changing sensations, it evokes an extraordinary uplift of spirit.

This effect happened during the performance of “Expectation” by the ensemble “Studio of New Music” and Ekaterina Kigichina. The score was presented not in the original (Schoenberg's composition is designed for 150 musicians), but in an arrangement for chamber ensemble, made in 1999 by Faraji Karaev and approved by the Viennese publishing house Universal Edition. The chamber version is not at all an adaptation out of despair, it is an independent work of art that clearly shows the intentions of Schoenberg, who created the genre of Schreidrame (scream drama) and did no less for the opera genre than Wagner. Wagner turned opera into a musical drama, and Schoenberg turned musical drama into a psychological flow that provides insight into the subconscious. To understand oneself, another famous Viennese, Sigmund Freud, suggested studying one’s own dreams. To better understand yourself not as a human being in general, but as a modern person, you need to listen to Schoenberg’s monodrama.

The performance of “Waiting” is not only a lesson in psychoanalysis, not only an educational program, but also cultural therapy, which gives a change in scale. After the evening in the Rachmaninov Hall, the limitations of our musical life with its focus on hits and great success are called into question. The first evening of the series “Masterpieces of Austrian Symphony of the 20th Century” (the remaining three will be dedicated to Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Gustav Mahler) is an event not at all pretentious. This is a simple and honest performance of music, and a hundred years after its creation, it is striking in its originality and depth. It does not seem abstruse and complex at all - it is a language that has long been mastered by European civilization. Without which today it is somehow inconvenient for us to even consider ourselves part of it.

Marina BORISOVA