Translated material
Improvisation about unification
The 51st international festival of contemporary music “Warsaw Autumn” is taking place in Poland
Although the mid-50s of the twentieth century was considered a “thaw” in Poland, and the goal of the organizers of the Warsaw Autumn festival was just to show themselves and look at others, from the very beginning it was more than a festival: “VO” largely determined the level the relationship between art (in this case, music) and power in the countries of the socialist camp. In 1972, for example, at the last minute, the USSR sent Tikhon Khrennikov instead of experimenter Edison Denisov (although Denisov did appear in the program - under a pseudonym, as a co-author of the collective chamber work "Encyclopedia"). And already in the 21st century, the concert of not just anyone but the living classic of Polish music, Krzysztof Penderecki, was booed and called “socialist realist”.For political reasons, the annual festival was even canceled twice - in 1957 and 1982. Therefore, the Warsaw Autumn celebrated its half-century anniversary twice - in 2006 and 2007.
Having entered its second fiftieth anniversary this year, VO continues to search for its place in the musical world, at least from the point of view of ethnogeography: for example, 2005 was the “year of Russia,” and at the same time of everything to the east. This year’s festival could be called Spanish-language - in addition to Spanish authors and performers themselves, the whole of Latin America and the countries of the Romance languages that have joined them are widely represented (the Romanian ensemble “Profile”, the Italian “Tempo Reale”).
As always, the festival began with the obligatory symphony concert in the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall - with the participation of the National Philharmonic Orchestra, choir and soloists - organist Arkadiusz Bialitz, Thomas Bloch (on the electric instrument "Waves of Martenot") and the Spanish singer Arcangel. There was no “wedding general” also because a generational change is definitely taking place in Eastern Europe: young composers are old enough to be grandchildren of the contemporaries of the first “thaw” of the 50s, but there are no clear leaders among them. Fortunately, the composition of the young Pole Wojciech Widlak that opened “VO-08” turned out to be more than worthy: without falling into the extremes of postmodernism or new simplicity, the author of an instrumental piece with a solo organ (and an untranslatable play on words in the title) worthily continued the line of the classic Witold Lutoslawski, firmly holding the “golden mean” between the mainstream and experimentation. The oratorio Uaxuctum by Giacinto Scelsi, an Italian hermit who approached the music of the East from a side unknown to anyone before, was also clearly chosen with significance. Alas, the young conductor Krzysztof Urbanski could not cope with the choir, and the oratorio about the mythical Mayan city, which was destroyed to the ground by the builders themselves, did not sound as impressive and meaningful as the organizers had hoped. But the cantata “What after death...” by Spaniard Maruisio Sotelo for flamenco singer(!) and orchestra was brilliant. Curious even at the level of concept, the cantata performed by the gypsy flamenquist Arcangel really made an impression with its combination of Neo-Viennese writing (in the spirit of Alban Berg) with Andalusian flair.
From the first night concerts, I remember the classics of the twentieth century - the rarely performed (because difficult) organ “Meditations on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity” by Olivier Messiaen in the impeccable interpretation of the Swede Hans-Ola Eriksson, and from the matinees - the performance of the Wroclaw chamber orchestra Leopoldinum (Wroclaw as a cultural the center begins to compete with Krakow itself). Leopoldinum with piano duet named after. Lutosławski was dared to perform Cesara Duchnowski’s computer score “Reality in a Window Frame,” in which the general pauses sounded almost longer than the electroacoustic sounds themselves.
For the second time, an ensemble with a direct connection to Russia, the Seattle Chamber Players, came to Warsaw. Its program director is Muscovite Elena Dubinets, a musicologist, and violinist Mikhail Shmidt is also from Moscow). For the first time in Warsaw, the Seattleites appeared in the “Year of Russia” with a Russian program. This time, in accordance with the focus of the festival, they showed the composition “Bora Bora” by a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Ecuadorian Jorge Campos, which was first performed at the Moscow “Alternative”. And Poland was represented in the program by Cascando for voice and ensemble on lyrical (!) poems by Samuel Beckett, performed by vocalist Agata Zubel, who received one of her first prizes in Moscow at the competition for young composers named after. Jurgenson.
The finale of the festival will be especially spectacular. There is no shortage of grandiose ideas at VO: at one point, for example, it ended with four symphonies by Wtold Lutoslawski, with two conductors taking turns directing the orchestra. In 2006, at the 49th VO, 19 string quartets played selected premieres from 48 previous festivals from 11 am to 11 pm. Last year’s fiftieth festival ended even more grandiosely: to the “St. John Passion” by Sofia Gubaidullina, which had already concluded it once, a Polish classic was added - the famous “Matins” based on the Orthodox canonical text by Krzysztof Penderecki.
This year, something completely difficult to imagine is expected: back in the countercultural 60s, the troublemaker Karlheinz Stockhausen compiled a two-hour collage “Hymns” from radio recordings and his electronic music with the hope that sooner or later “the peoples, having forgotten their strife, will unite into a single family " This time, a fairly well-known Polish-German youth orchestra (supplemented by orchestra members from other countries), in the development of Stockhausen's utopia, will improvise to its sounds coming from multi-channel loudspeakers. Blessed is he who believes...