Translated material
Looking for a recipe
The Philharmonic has opened a new children's season
It all starts with a huge traffic jam on the Garden Ring, almost a kilometer before the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall (this is on a day off). God knows how, it continues with parked cars or noisy running along the metro escalator in a crowd of children and parents. Streams pour into the KZCH, fill it with children's fidgeting and hum (the hall is filled with children mainly four to six years old, at least one child per adult) and run into Pavel Lyubimtsev, who appears on stage, who preceded this day's concert with an opening speech and promised to do in the same way before other parts of the cycle. Then Chulpan Khamatova appears in front of the children and their parents in the role of a reader (in the form of a cute fairy), and the hall, instead of the dusty smells of old season tickets, feels the breath of a new fashionable time.The new subscription of the Moscow Philharmonic - “Fairy Tales with Orchestra” - already looked like a breakthrough in advance and was sold out at a leading pace. In general, the popularity of children's “classical musical” matinees, with all their late-Soviet and post-Soviet, if not shabby, then at least old-fashionedness, has never fallen below a critical point. But this huge potential for popularity has not yet been properly used by anyone. In the decisions of children's subscriptions and individual events, the recipes were old, and the faces were not newer.
Meanwhile, in the country, or at least in Moscow, there is both a baby boom and a boom in classical music (preparatory and junior classes of children's music schools are filled to capacity, home teachers are in great demand, and prices for their services are rising). There is also a boom in ballet (children's ballet studios in every regional children's institution) and a boom in figure skating (skates are in terrible short supply; if you can't sign up for a section, there's a queue). The last two points would not be relevant to the topic if it were not for the general feeling of déjà vu, that today's parents want to teach their children the same things they were taught. And also the fact that that same evening, when Chulpan Khamatova was reading a fairy tale at the Philharmonic, she still appeared beautifully on TV skating. At the same time, the ice show was hosted by the pregnant Irina Slutskaya, and the feeling of a baby boom, completely merging with the boom of pastimes beloved in Soviet times (decorated with beautiful, relevant star faces), filled the screen and the hall to the brim.
The idea of modernizing children's matinees at the Philharmonic resulted in a beautiful cycle, opening with the literary and musical composition “The Sleeping Beauty”: a fairy tale by Charles Perrault plus ballet music of the same name by Tchaikovsky. Performers: Chulpan Khamatova and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. At the controls is Yuri Simonov. He compiled a light “cut” from small pieces of text and music, bringing them into external correspondence (so as not to tire the children too much with large fragments and not fall into the trap of a discrepancy between the fairy tale and the ballet libretto).
Everything was very nice. Although dear Khamatova could not compete with the unforgettable storytellers (Babanova, Plyatt, a few others - their voices, manners, rhythm), she read touchingly and the children liked it. This, of course, was both good and a little sad - it seemed that since the subscription was made with the help not of lecturers-musicologists, but of good actors, then maybe they would remember the recipe for old fairy-tale magic, firmly forgotten in late Soviet times? I wanted not only entertainment without bad taste and mustiness. I wanted art, an artistic impression - expressive meanings in a fairy tale, irony or simplicity, integrity or ambiguity, delight or secret sadness, a super task (about what, why), a director's hint. But pleasant reading (sometimes even a little shy - perhaps out of uncertainty that there is something important to convey besides the text) with a pleasant game has become more of a traditional hobby in a new way. Not frightening with dust, but also not breaking through the dense, varnished veils of reality.
The fairy girl was a pleasure to look at. The orchestral fragments sounded smooth and effortless. If you adjust the seams a little, you can record it on a CD. Recorded musical fairy tales (often, however, without an orchestra, but with a synthesizer) are selling remarkably well today. I would just like to shorten the introductory speech of Pavel Lyubimtsev a little.
The next concerts of the new cycle (and besides this there are 18 more children's subscriptions in different halls!) will include the beautiful Marina Alexandrova (star of the TV series "Azazel", "Poor Nastya", actress of the Sovremennik Theater), Dmitry Nazarov (not only "Culinary Duel" ”, but also wonderful roles in the Moscow Art Theater) and Pavel Lyubimtsev in the role of narrator. Future fairy tales - “The Little Mermaid”, “The Little Humpbacked Horse”, “The Adventures of Pinocchio”. Future music - Jean Sibelius, Lyadov and Stravinsky (“Firebird”), fragments of Rossini's overtures. It’s not quite a magic recipe yet (perhaps we can get closer to it with the help of good directors who know how to hear meanings), but there are new faces, old fairy tales (well-chosen, in high-quality translations) and not a banal musical choice.