"I don't want me to be dancing"

On January 6, 8, 10 and 12, in Moscow, as usual, concerts of the Festival of Chamber Music "Return" will be held. Over the 18 years of its existence from a youth experiment, laid out by two graduates of the Gnesinsky school, it has turned into an obligatory winter part of the program of any self -respecting intelligent music love. The news of this year - announced by the festival of the crowdfunding project - was the reason for the meeting of Ekaterina Biryukova with one of the leaders of the festival, violinist Roman Mintz.

- launched by the “return” of the crowdfunding project to collect money for the festival - this is a certificate of what? That things are very bad? Or, conversely, that the festival gains new breathing and uses new opportunities?

- Yes, things, in principle, are the same as usual. I personally did not believe that it was possible to raise money in this way. But I look, everyone collects, many of my friends, well, we decided to try. Because there is only one alternative - invest your money. We have now collected almost 90,000, this, in principle, is not bad. On the other hand, if we collect less than 200,000, that is, less than half, they will simply not give us anything and everything will be sent back - such conditions.

- Initially, the festival had a private status. But like the Moscow Philharmonic once took you under the roof?

- Not that under the roof. We have partnership agreements with Philharmonic. She actually does not invest in us. She rents us a hall, and then takes the money for tickets. Goes to zero.

-Just to zero? You have crowded halls!

- But the price of the rental of the hall is high. For the Philharmonic, it, of course, is lower than if we ourselves came there. But still. And we still have the costs of everything else - tickets and accommodation for some participants, visas, printing, administration.

- At the same time, you do not pay fees.

- Yes, we do not pay fees. Otherwise, it would be a completely different budget.

But, probably, we can already safely say: Dima and I Dmitry Bulgakov, with whom Mints steams a couple of “Return.” - Ed. ) As a fundraiters are simply insolvent, we cannot normally look for sponsors, this is not our path. Several times there were people who helped us. But this is by chance. Our last long philanthropist just came with someone for the company to our concert, then came up and asked if we needed support. Such a fabulous case. But since then, a license has already been withdrawn at his bank, and he lives abroad.

- And how much, do you think, so you can still exist? During this time, after all, some competitors, probably, you have appeared.

- There were two cases when they told me: you were stealing an idea. One is the festival in Armenia "Return". He appeared many years later than ours. With a declared idea of ​​collecting Armenian musicians scattered around the world. Well, in Russia, the Big Festival was based with a similar concept at the time of creation. But - maybe it will sound arrogantly - in order to steal a festival, we need to steal our brains. Those who go to our festival go because they like what we are doing.

-And yet. How much more can you hold out in the status of such a non -state festival?

- And he can only be like that. He was like this from the very beginning and this was different from everything around. We were 20 years old, we ourselves made it. If he has to become state, subject, then he will simply disappear. I can't work under someone.

- And what, say, can crush the Philharmonic? As far as I understand, you have no repertoire disagreements with her?

- We have only one talk with Philharmony - we always ask to restrain ticket prices. And so they treat us with understanding. They know that we do not bring them, do not hang on their balance, like some unprofitable event. Although the cash fee, of course, depends on the size of the hall. This year there will be not a small hall, which is being repaired, but Rachmaninovsky.

- Your audience will not fit into Rachmaninovsky!

- Yes, only those who now have time to buy tickets will fit. It is much less small, but there were no options.

- Did you consider the chamber hall of the house of music?

- Not that. In spirit, not that. There are guards.

- Yeah. I was recently at a concert where the guard did not want to let the composer George Peletsis to the stage, whose music was performed all evening.

- Yes, I read about it. Therefore, I say. For most people who go to our festival, it consists of several components. And the atmosphere is almost in the first place. And if it is a state -owned place with the guards, then the mood of everything that happens will immediately change. We do not even discuss these things with Dima, because it is clear.

- So what the contradictions of your festival with public financing may have?

-The head of state once said a well-known expression-“who dinner the girl, he dances her”-and this immediately indicated the alignment of forces in our country. I don't want me to be dancing. Or at least - so that I would give a reason to think that I can dance. Dima has the same thing. Therefore, it is unacceptable to become some kind of state institution. We can be with the state structure in partnerships, but nothing more. The fact is that our person cannot feel free, once having received money from the state. Because it is believed that the state is some kind of living organism that after that has the right to your soul.

And if anyone tomorrow does not like the text of a work that I want to perform? Or something else. I want to be able to say what I consider necessary. You just always need to very clearly denote your position. We, musicians,, in principle, are not very taught this. In the music environment, in general, such a thing as integrity is not something important by default.

- Why is this happening, what do you think?

-Because there are a lot of compromises from childhood in order to achieve something. Any competition is already a compromise. Since imagining a person who wants to play everything that he plays at the competition is very difficult. But that's okay. And here is another example. Many of my friends do not have an internal dissonance from the fact that they have a certain position about what is happening around and that at the same time they go on stage with people who support a completely opposite position. Moreover, people around them do not even raise this topic. Maybe once in his life a person falls out a chance to enter such a company on the stage. And it cannot be missed. And each next silently understands this. And he would have done the same-if they had ever contacted him such a proposal. 90 percent out of 100. And conversations begin that "the music is separate, and the policy is separate."

- This is a very sore topic of recent times.

“She may have worsened now.” But she is always there. This is the topic of principles. I studied until the 8th grade not in musical, but in ordinary secondary schools, including the famous 57th, and when I moved to Gnesinka, it was very difficult for me to fit there. Here is this brought up from childhood: "In the priority - only what is needed for your career."

- But in your festival, after all, musicians are involved, who in another festival go on stage with a person whose political position is opposite to yours. Where is the line that you think it is impossible to cross?

- Fine - in me. I'm not an extremist. Of course, I will not stop saying to someone. I can, however, say that I think his behavior is wrong. Although nothing will change from this. But I just decided for myself what I am ready for and what is not. And I want to emphasize that it is not the difference in political positions that I am doing - I am normally treated, as well as any difference in opinions - but hypocrisy: there is one position in conversations, and in business - the other.

- Is it difficult to get into a “return” to a young musician?

- Both complicated and simple. Age, by the way, does not play any role at all. The main thing is that there is a good musician and a pleasant person with whom you can communicate. There are people who play well, but I do not call them, because they will not fit into the general party. And so, a person is needed-and he is somehow always. For example, you need a cellist. Naturally, I first call Andrianov, Blauman. Basis - both cannot. Then I begin to remember who we still know. As a result, Nastya Kobekina will play, which once took part in our "children's album", and now there are a lot of where it performs. There will be many new participants this year.

- Is the geographical principle important? Should they be returned from somewhere?

- And we never held on to him. It’s just what they immediately grabbed, it was easier to write in the newspaper: “Return”-this means that Mints and Bulgakov come from abroad. But this was not even discussed by us as the main idea. Yasha Katsnelson, for example, plays with us from the first festival and never left anywhere. “Return” for me is a more return of our sensation. We are a group of people who grew at one time in one place. Even if someone studied at the CMS, and not in Gnesinka, they still talked to each other.

- That is, this is a return to childhood?

- Return to each other. All this is fooling, all sorts of texts in booklets. After graduation, everyone was in different places. Someone in Moscow, someone is not. And for some time we broke up. Then, two years later they began to gather, played, invented such a festival.

- The Russian performing school is the concept of 18 years that the festival is going on, it seems, even disappeared?

- I think the end of the Russian performing school came at the moment when the iron curtain fell. But, of course, this end did not come at once, because no car stops right away, there is the power of inertia. And, in fact, what is called the Russian performing school - the Soviet performing school, actually existed only due to the fact that everything was closed. Hermetic. There were very few possibilities of exchange of ideas. And so it developed inside these borders. The boundaries opened - that's it. What school can we talk about if everyone is everywhere?

“Do you returned, feel like a“ last generation ”?”

“I feel like a man who still remembers how he was accepted into pioneers.” On equal terms, I communicate with people who have not found it anymore, I am with them on “you”, but for them it is already from the history textbook.

-I mean still belonging to this legendary performing school, and not to pioneers ...

- And this is the same. Who cares? As soon as the curtain fell, people rushed to enrich themselves with new knowledge. As soon as they saw what was happening around, we found that we were not the navel of the earth (after all, there were such complexes) - for many it was a shock. So I studied in London, went into the classroom, and there the Romanian played before me, now she works in the famous quartet, after me - an Englishman, a Ukrainian, a Japanese woman. The best of the best were gathered from everywhere. This was a completely different story than here. Here everyone was cooked in their own juice.

- How is the festival program compiled? You always have four evenings, three of which have their own topics, and the latter is assorted, called “The Concert on Applications”. Who invent the topics of the first three concerts? Or first it turns out who wants to play what, and then all this is distributed into different heaps?

-It happens differently. It happens that someone calls and says that he really wants to play such a thing. Then I begin to dig around this thing, look for what stories are connected with it. Some topic may be born from this. Sometimes the topic is simply invented initially.

- One of the programs of this year is devoted to suicide ...

- This topic was very long ago, but I could not realize it. And now it happened. The starting point was the third quartet of Brahms. There is a letter to Brahms to the performers, where he offers them to imagine a person who is going to shoot himself in the head, because he has no choice but to do anything else. It is even sometimes called the “Werther Quartet” in the near-music literature. But what's interesting. All the music that will be in this program is not written by those who committed suicide, but those who were interested in this idea. And those who committed it, just nothing on this topic.

An important program for me dedicated to Shostakovich. The music that influenced Shostakovich is mixed in it, with the music of those whom he influenced. When I recruited information for this program, it suddenly dawned on me that Shostakovich’s most original students who managed to find an independent voice - Ustvolskaya, Sviridov - had extremely difficult relations with him, spoke very sharply about him.

- And Weinberg?

-Weinberg for me is still more likely an epigon (now, of course, I will be torn to pieces). In general, the portrait of Shostakovich, which will turn out as a result of this program, will be completely non -canonical. All the time when I did it, I thought: why is Shostakovich almost canonized? Why did he become our main composer? And why is he so close to our intelligentsia? And that's why, it seems to me. Because he justified everyone who was one in the kitchen, and in life to another. Roughly speaking, with one hand he entered Suliko into a cellular concert, the other signed a letter against Sakharov. He justifies this idea - "Think, okay, but he said everything with music, but he has a fig in his pocket." I do not deny the genius of his music, as it denies, say, Utvolskaya, but this is such an ambiguous figure. Its status is at the level of some incredible martyr. But all his torment was only inside himself, from his own fear. Because when he signed a letter against Sakharov, no one could do anything to him. And this surrender to this fear - it is incredibly close to us all to this day.