In the footsteps of the Bremen Town Musicians

Rene Klemencic at the Roots and Crown festival

The arrival in Moscow of Rene Klemencic - musician, philosopher, writer and one of the founding fathers of European authenticism - became the main event of the new and already beautiful festival “Roots and Crowns”, which takes place from July to early September mainly in Arkhangelsk. two sites, one more interesting than the other. The first is the ancient Gonzaga Theater, the only surviving unique example of the work of the Italian Pietro di Gottardo Gonzago, the “theater of scenery,” the theater of “enjoying illusion.” The second is the recently restored Oval Hall of the estate museum, graceful and light, with a high dome, with Cupid and Psyche. Festival concerts are still held in Tsaritsyn and in Moscow in the modest Gagarinsky concert hall (in fact, one additional evening for Rene Klemenchich and his musicians). But the main venue is not only a well-chosen ambience, but also a bast in line with the unprovocative, but surprisingly harmonious, elegant concept of the festival, which distinguishes it from other “early music festivals”.

The motto of the programs is “From the origins of ethno to the sophistication of baroque.” The authors of the festival (initiated by Alexey Semenov, director of the LAD ensemble) take the popular passion for the authentic sound of baroque music further - towards the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, and through them into the cold depths of ancient European (and not only) folklore. Discovering the kinship between ethnicity and authenticism that seem today to be distant from each other (at least structurally). Despite the close birth dates of the two movements (the turn of the 60s-70s of the last century), they still appear in culture as almost fundamentally different things, appealing one to the highly professional sphere (authenticity) and the other to the “folk” ( ethnicity). “Roots and Crown,” one of the most sophisticated projects among its kind, insists on their direct relationship.

One has only to look at the musicians of the Austrian professor (more like the professor of sour cabbage soup) Rene Klemencic - the Iranian-Viennese teacher, singer and percussionist Esmail Vassegi and the Swiss gray-haired hippie organ grinder Rene Zosso, and this relationship will seem fundamental and unconditional, and the time of birth modern enthusiasm for both directions - quiet angelic happiness (for all the revolutionary nature of the undertakings). The visiting musicians are distinguished from the honored masters of the hippie ethno-European turn of the 60s and 70s only by the jackets on the shoulders of Klemencic and Vassegi. And they seem like some kind of ironic remark (well, yes, we teach at conservatories, we write works on ancient music). In the appearance of Rene Zosso you will not find a trace of structured and almost commercialized “high” authenticity. In their music especially (as in the entire festival) one thing flows into another and back again, not only strengthening the conceptuality, but also hinting at happy times when everything was so.

“We want to show the simplicity of nature and the sophistication of culture, the purity and clarity of origins and the sophisticated sophistication of subsequent directions, the depth and strength of the roots and the endless diversity of the crown,” says the festival and shows all this in its entirety and with all care.

Rene Klemenchich, sitting on a stool in a poor little hall in Gagarinsky Lane (two days after a concert in the fabulous Arkhangelsk, with the ancient opus “Carmina Burana”, the original of what was later cast in the popular work of Carl Orff), is surrounded by a dozen old pipes (inconspicuous, medieval recorder flutes darkened by time, double flutes, horn flutes, a beautiful shawl horn). Esmail Vassegi has tambourines, tombak, santur (in Europe in the old days it was called dulcemer, but we know it as cymbals). Rene Zosso has a completely magical thing: a hardy-hardy, or hurdy-gurdy, a box with strings and a round bow set in motion by turning a special handle. Zosso is a wandering minstrel who accidentally wandered into this century; to the accompaniment of a hurdy-gurdy, he sings European music of the 13th-14th centuries so that it dances and enchants. We have only Andrei Kotov playing the hurdy-gurdy and singing with it “spiritual poems” - a folklore version of the Orthodox canons. In Kotov’s work it sounds no less magical, but calmer. And Zosso, with his own acting and dancing of the revolving pen, makes her be earnest and theatrical. The program “Music of the Middle Ages between Christianity and Islam” is all shimmering with oriental facets; Europe sounds completely different from what is familiar and expected. After the traditional Persian singing performed by Esmail Vassega, the song of the French anonymous of the 14th century to the accompaniment of the santoor or the Spanish music of the 13th century sound like its continuation, variation, reflection, transformation.

The professors - a European and a Persian (they were joined by the wonderful Moscow professor Mikhail Saponov) - before the concert they told how in Europe of the Middle Ages there were no barriers between cultures, the same instruments and musicians wandered all over the world, sometimes changing only the names , served in royal courts, sang in peasant yards and in city squares. And professional and popular practices were only just anticipating their fundamental demarcation. Now both have very different “areas of distribution” and “forms of consumption”, but they have quietly united in the programs of the “Roots and Crown” festival.

On July 28, Rene Klemenchich will also play the “Tender Memories” program on the clavichord, and later at the festival Andrei Kotov’s “Sirin”, and Nikolai Tarasov with the baroque clarinet and its ancestor Chalumeau (with the ensembles “LAD” and The Pocket Symphony), and Anatoly Grindenko without its own choir “Old Russian Chant”, but with viola da gamba and Bach cello sonatas, and the children’s ensemble La Campanella with a child’s view of old music.

Yulia BEDEROVA