Our everything about our everything

Mozart's Requiem, completed at the Territory festival

The first main musical event of the "Territory" - Mozart's Requiem in the author's (unfinished) version with additions made by modern Russian composers - became not only ambitious and spectacular in concept, but also meaningful and not without gaiety in execution.

Conductor Teodor Currentzis, the initiator of the project, known for his passion for textbook classics (often performed in unusual, but authentic tempos and manners), ancient rarities and the latest experiments, prefaced Mozart with two Moscow musical premieres. “Normal” by St. Petersburg author Boris Filanovsky based on texts from Sorokin’s “Norma” charmed the audience (and there were quite a lot of them, and the police gently guarded the approaches to the Pavel Slobodkin Center) with its free and yet very strict relationship with the literary source, elegant writing style and careful execution . Currentzis's Novosibirsk charges - the musicians of the Musica Aeterna ensemble - were almost as good as the author himself in the most complex voice part. The second “pre-Mozart” composition in the program - “The Man Who Became a Rainbow” by Anton Batagov (almost an hour-long rainbow flickering of ascetic sound structures) - even with an insufficient number of rehearsals, was performed by the Novosibirsk people with such concentration that it served as an excellent preface to the subsequent Mozart playing. Although Batagov himself (who only sometimes allows his music, which has long become part of his personal Buddhist practice, to go out in public), would probably object to such a utilitarian interpretation.

Meanwhile, for the “new” Mozart, a properly emptied perceiving consciousness is very useful; this makes it easier to hear it “as if from a blank slate.” The project was very intriguing from the very beginning: both because of the “original author’s” sound (that is, not in Süssmayr’s edition, in which the classical musical tradition knows him, and not in any other of the existing editions), and the composition of the soloists (among others, the wonderful Dame Simone Kermes) and the composition of the “pre-writers” (somehow they will get out of this story). The sections of the funeral mass that were unfinished or not composed at all were asked to be completed by Anton Safronov (a student of Edison Denisov, an active author on the European stage), Vladimir Nikolaev (ASMO member, “electroacoustic” and “alternative” with a very individual and elegant expression of a creative person), Sergei Zagniy ( conservatory teacher, strict conceptualist, skilled master of the Renaissance, one might say, sense) and Anatoly Korolev (St. Petersburg professor, whose music is played at the most advanced St. Petersburg and European festivals).

The genre of the performance was called “Mozart’s Requiem with fantasies and comments.” In reality, not only “unfinished Mozart” was heard, but also unfinished “Mozart with commentaries”. The fact that there was no Simone Kermes on stage was partly compensated for by the unannounced Veronica Dzhioeva. The missing music by Anton Safronov and Anatoly Korolev (perhaps those who took their task most academically and seriously?) had to be compensated by Mozart himself (in Currentzis’ interpretation, as usual, at an incendiary tempo), as well as by the conductor personally - with a meaningful wave of his hands during a pause.

But Zagny, in the accompanying text (which in itself begs to be a work of art, and can be read on the website of the Territory festival) warned: “Writing a Requiem, especially a Mozart Requiem, is still not a very good sign. We know how it ended for Mozart himself.” For Mozart's new project, this ended in a kind of poetic “incompleteness.” Anton Safronov, who not so long ago reconstructed the 3rd and 4th movements of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and in this case orchestrated the opening phrase of “Lacrimosa” written by Mozart, continued it with his own interpretation of the canonical text, but handed over the score of the “continuation” to the orchestra late. We didn't have time. Anatoly Korolev, as they say, considered his comments completely unprepared.

But the fearless, experienced “alternative” musicians, Nikolaev and Zagniy, formulated their musical thoughts on time and clearly. To the fragmented, fragmentary sound of authentic Mozart, Nikolaev added the exquisite and simple harmony of his “Sanctus”, radiant and gingerbread (how gingerbread an internally sophisticated musical construction can be). And just as (if not more) convincingly the composer Zagny justified the trust placed in him by history. The precise and subtle meaning of this work (formulated in the text in such a way that one does not even want to quote; it is better to direct the interested reader to the original, especially since it is accessible) here embodied in a wonderful melody, a heartfelt, simple, bright and memorable song about Mozart. Which you want to sing alone and in good company, with a guitar and a capella, in the bathroom and in the living room, in the kitchen and in the hallway, on the road and at a feast, to your beloved child instead of a lullaby and to your loved one during morning exercises. It must also be said that this spiritual verse about life and death, the terribly poignant (as, in fact, happens in spiritual verses) history of a famous order and its completion is sung in Russian. And we almost sing along, at the same time acutely feeling what the author of this commentary managed to feel and say: the piercing incompleteness - not only of the Requiem, but also of Mozart himself. Or maybe even our own.

Yulia BEDEROVA