Translated material
Conceptual marathon
The Moscow Autumn festival celebrates its anniversary
On the occasion of the double anniversary (30 years since its establishment and 15 years in international status), admission to all concerts of the Moscow Autumn contemporary music festival (there are more than 200 of them at different venues) is free. In addition, the Union of Moscow Composers issued a commemorative gold medal, which was awarded to 46 people. First of all, the performers are Friedrich Lips, Mark Pekarsky, Valery Polyansky, Vladimir Ponkin, Valery Popov, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Tatyana Sergeeva, Boris Tevlin, Vladimir Fedoseev and others.“Autumn” is primarily a composers’ festival. The audience comes not so much for the performing interpretations, but for the composer's ideas and concepts. Novelty is the only selection criterion. Stylistically, “Autumn” is omnivorous. Here we have modern avant-garde, traditionalism, and postmodernism... The six most conceptual projects turned out to be just as different.
They say that the symphonic genre is in decline today, but Yuri Vorontsov’s Fifth Symphony (2008) refutes this statement. Performed by the Polyansky Chapel, the premiere became one of the main events of the festival. Sonoristic chaos, dramaturgy of giant layers, super-climaxes and transparent sonorities, rhetorical figures and “hidden” quotes (“Farewell of the Slavic woman”, “Our locomotive, fly forward!”, coda to Beethoven’s “Eroica”) - according to the composer, this is an allusion to the traditional symphonic cycle. Some listeners perceived the symphony as the music of global cosmic cataclysms, while it was about the tragic history of Russia - the author simply did not dare, fearing excessive pathos, to publish the “hidden” program in the booklet.
It can hardly be said that the other symphony performed by Polyansky this year - Yuri Kasparov's Notre-Dame - belongs to the traditional genre, even in the modern sense. Rather, it is a sound picture depicting a Gothic cathedral in detail. Moreover, these are not only almost physically felt geometric shapes, but also the atmosphere conveyed by orchestral means: the sound of an organ, the wind, birds, the ringing of bells.
The main “general” of the anniversary forum was Sofia Gubaidulina. She even performed as an aquaphone performer. An exotic instrument invented by the American artist Richard Waters, who lived in Hawaii, is a metal vessel with water and metal rods attached to it, which can be played, for example, with a bow. In appearance it resembles the first Soviet satellite, and in its internal content it is a tool for improvisational passages. Aquaphone sounds very esoteric.
This sound is in line with the concept of Gubaidulina’s composition “At the Edge of the Abyss” for seven cellos (an ensemble of cellists conducted by Vladimir Tonkh) and two aquaphones (the second was masterfully conducted by Zhazira Abdigali). The “abyss” is the distance between the fingerboard and the bridge of string instruments, the bottomless sound of aquaphones, and the old sequence Dies irae. The work is dedicated to his colleague and friend, composer Viktor Suslin. According to the author, this is a prayer for his recovery.
Another “general” - Austrian Dieter Kaufmann - brought a multimedia program and exclusive electronic equipment to Moscow. Kaufman arrived with his wife, actress Gunda Koenig, and violinist Elena Denisova. He presented the project Solo due (“Alone, and yet together”, i.e. in creative collaboration with his wife) to the public. However, the program was prepared collectively, with the participation of the composer’s children. In many ways, this is a product of the so-called trash aesthetics, with the inevitable “cacophony” of everyday sounds and debris of social space - from the howl of a siren to the sounds of the corridors of a music school. The concept, although bright, is quite speculative and confusing; Moreover, the actress in a fiery red wig communicated with the audience in German, and it is unlikely that the Moscow audience could fully appreciate her. The last episode turned out to be more accessible - Paganihilismo for violin and phonogram. This is an homage to Paganini: peculiar variations on three fragments of the cadenza for his First Violin Concerto. Kaufman's only compositional principle - replication and subsequent transformation of Elena Denisova's violin part - ultimately tired the audience, who applauded ahead of time.
For dessert, new works by two antipodean Moscow conceptualists: avant-garde artist Viktor Ekimovsky and minimalist Vladimir Martynov. Ekimovsky’s composition “The Scarlet Flower” based on Aksakov’s fairy tale, sounded, without exaggeration, in an ideal performance by the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg under the direction of Alexander Titov, is little associated with a fairy-tale image. She is quite disharmonious. However, as Yuri Vorontsov rightly noted, Ekimovsky’s purely musical series is only the visible part of the iceberg. “According to the plot of the fairy tale, you have to pay for the scarlet flower with your life,” comments Ekimovsky. “And it doesn’t matter anymore that the Beast can turn into a Prince, what’s worse is that beauty can be associated with evil.” This is the composer’s second work related to strange flowers. The first is "Rafflesia", reminiscent of the world's largest and very beautiful tropical parasitic flower with the smell of rotting meat.
No less an event was Vladimir Martynov’s performance of his new work “Message Wall” for piano and video, with a detailed conceptual program (reactions were different - from delight to complete rejection). As usual, Martynov’s comments are almost more important than the musical text, so let’s quote the author: “The message wall is not an entirely ordinary phrase; it is much more common to talk about a wall of misunderstanding that irreversibly arises between a person and reality. The wall of misunderstanding is a sign of the old, passing world, but a new world and a new reality are coming. We cannot yet clearly discern the features of this new reality, but the vague contours of the new appear in some incomprehensible way in the old. Thus, the wall of misunderstanding is transformed into a wall of message...” The work itself turned out to be just as extensive (lasts about an hour) and, moreover, very virtuosic, so that even a professional pianist would undoubtedly have felt the technical difficulties. Meanwhile, Martynov played both technically perfect and clearly as a composer. The basis is an A minor triad-color, blurred sonority, periodically acquiring certain contours. And in these contours everyone heard what they wanted - such an extremely generalized quasi-stylization. On the screen is a video sequence of Taisiya Zubova and Sergei Losev: blurry spots took on the contours of a brick wall, which gradually moved away, and finally disappeared completely. “The wall turns into a clean white surface,” continues Martynov, “on which a new reality can imprint its sign, and the person himself, open to the perception of the unknown future, must become this clean surface.” In general, the idea of tabula rasa, which was implemented in his own way by Arvo Pärt, Martynov’s predecessor on the path of domestic minimalism.
Without approaching the “new realities”, but looking at them, the “autumn” composer marathon has come to an end. There are several more concerts ahead, including the closing one in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions on November 30, when the Vladimir Fedoseev Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra will present a program of works by Boris Tchaikovsky, Lev Solin and Vladimir Rubin.