Back to the classic - or go?

Who and how is listening to classical music? Conversation with cultural historian Mikhail Efimov

Ivan Tolstoy: Classical music sounds today with every dentist and in every elevator. On the other hand, professionals complain of difficulties when filling out concert halls.

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Mikhail Vitalievich, what are we listening now?

Mikhail Efimov: I hope that almost everyone recognized the foundation - this is Mozart's clavier sonata to Major. The music is well -known, textbook, but it sounds strange, agree. Then, not that. Not only because not only the piano sounds, but the whole trio is piano, violin and cello. Is it modern music or is it Mozart? This is both. Technically speaking, this is a fragment of the record of a wonderful modern jazz and non-jazz musician and composer, trumpeter Vyacheslav Gayvoronsky, which is called "Interventions in Bach and Mozart." And what we have now heard, perform Polina Fradkin on Piano, Vladislav Pesin on the violin and Vladimir Gavryushov on the cello.

This, it seems to me, is a suitable emblem for our today's conversation - classic and modernity. And all this, one way or another, is united by a dimensionless definition - classical music today.

Ivan Tolstoy: We will not theorize about what classical music is in principle, otherwise, maybe not all our listeners will be so excited and passionate about this topic, but I will ask you simply: classical music today, it means that it exists, is it alive, they write it?

Mikhail Efimov: Of course! Of course, they write, and there are a lot of this music and very different. Here you need to inevitably narrow something, otherwise we will immediately blur and will be such endless globalists. Well, if we limit ourselves to the Russian cultural space, which today is also largely international, let's call at least a few well -known names of modern Russian academic composers. Let's call Vladimir Martynov, whom almost everyone was heard of, Alexander Pedatov, who is not only an original and very popular composer not only in Russia, but also in the world. Many people know him as a person who completed the ninth symphony of Alfred Schnitsky according to his drafts.

Of course, you can call Boris Filanovsky, Pavel Karmanov, Dmitry Courland. We can recall Ilya Demutsky, about which few years ago few have heard, and recently this is one of the most famous modern Russian academic composers. Why? Because he is the author of music for the ballet "Nureyev". Or Sergey Nevsky. And here is the inevitable coupling with Demutsky for the reason that, like Demutsky, Nevsky also collaborates with director Kirill Serebrennikov. This is both theatrical and movie music, and, among other things, extra -expressionous academic music.

A thing is widely developed such as overposing classical works

In modern academic and near -academic music, such a thing as overpresentation of classical works is widely developed, and what we will now hear is the "Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, but not quite Vivaldi. What is it? This is the "Seasons", overflowed by a modern, exceptionally demanded and commercially successful composer named Max Richter. This is how "times" sound today, how today is perceived by today's modern composer.

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Ivan Tolstoy: Mikhail Vitalievich, but what about the usual, traditional classic? Is she in demand by performing and listening?

Mikhail Efimov: Still! I would even say such a sharp thing that new music, music, which today is composed by academic composers, lives today, lives, maybe tomorrow, but we have no guarantees about the next week. And the classic was the day before yesterday, yesterday, today and, almost with a guarantee, it will be not only tomorrow, it will be in a week and a year. Therefore, the popular classic is really popular.

All this can be viewed from two diametrically opposite sides. On the one hand, we can say that there is already no strength to listen to the same “times of the year” Vivaldi, you can’t play the first time of Tchaikovsky for the first time, you need to let go of Mozart’s forty symphony and let her relax. Actually, academic and professional musicians talk about this quite often that music needs to be relaxed, you can’t play the same thing all the time. And that is why in recent decades there has been a true revolution, such a repertoire expansion when musicians are trying to get out of this commercial ghettos of popular classics.

The epidemic of searches of the composers of works that have been unpublished during the lifetime of the composers began in some way

Therefore, the epidemic of searches of essays unpublished during the lifetime of the composers of essays began in some way, or there are unfinished works and "we will finish them." This is what music historians, musicologists, textologists, performers interested in expanding the repertoire participate in the more professional.

And in this way completely unexpected things appear, I would even say - extraordinary. For example, recently ended the eighth, "unfinished", Schubert symphony. We know that there are two parts in it. No, textologists with the archive of Schubert have worked and found the missing third and fourth parts, so now we have a non -accurate Schubert symphony - a finished one. Another question is whether it will be learned performing and listenerly?

And the popular classic, regardless of who “writes” the “unfinished” Schubert symphony, of course, is. She is alive. Grammy award ceremony is somewhat about this. For example, what is the manifestation of Russian participation in the classic Grammy? This is a very popular pianist Daniil Trifonov, he plays Russian music of the beginning of the 20th century. This album Silver Age is called, there is the music of Scriabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. It may seem to us that it’s enough to play it, but we must always remember that the listener is getting younger all the time, he is becoming more all the time, because the audience of listeners of any music has enlarged tremendous.

We now listen to the music of the modern German composer Children Glaint, the music is called Distant Land and has a subtitle "Music with Brahms for the Orchestra." This is an essay of 2013. This is another strategy, not like Max Richt with the "Seasons". Glaint took the material of the works of Johannes Brahms, in particular the fourth symphony, and went on. He went with Brahms further than Brahms, he decided to hear Brahms in the 21st century-as the composer hears the music of Brahms, which is 140-150 years old.

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Modern Russian academic music ... One of the most sought -after Russian composers is Leonid Tennikov. His last one, extremely successfully and benevolently, is called "Bukovinsky songs." Although they are songs, they will not sing, they will play piano. The piano is played by Alexei Horbol, the music of Leonid Netatnikov. This essay was first sounded in 2017, but not as an independent music in the Philharmonic Hall, but sounded in the American Ballet Theater, it was Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet, and only after that this music healed his independent life.

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I don’t remember who said this, maybe Ray Charles, who has nothing to do with academic music. These were the words that music was almost the only thing in the world that has not yet become an apple of contention for people. Now we would say that he was somewhat naive - music, like everything else, can become a apple of discord and any other fruit. Today, as we know, there is a polemic ideological, “ideological”, very emotional, about whether white music for white people exists, black music for whites, what color this music, who oppressed whom, who exploited whom. And in a modern historical and musical conversation, this is a lot. At the same time, I still really want to believe that Ray Charles was right, that the music would not become for people this apple of discord, which they will begin to bite from different sides and all, in the end, will be suppressed. It seems to me that music should have a future, so the music will be alive - it will be new music, it will be an old music that will have a new life.

And, by the way, the current Grammy pleased me little, but pleased with one thing: among the nominees in the "Choral performance" department, a very interesting record was nominated (although it did not win). He was nominated for the "Requiem" of Alexander Kastalsky. This is an American entry, the conductor Leonard Skatkin is conducted by the conductor. We will not listen to this, but for me this is a good bunch with what we have recently talked about. Remember, our name Kastalsky appeared in a conversation about Peter Petrovich Suvchinsky? Castalsky is the interlocutor of Suvchinsky, a man who did a common Russian musical business with Suvchinsky a hundred years ago. A hundred years have passed, and this music has been alive. We wish her life!