“Both aesthetic and ethical victory” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/19/2022

On the day of the 90th birthday of Rodion Shchedrin, the greatest contemporary composer and one of the leading Russian musicians for more than half a century, his hits were performed on the stage of the Tchaikovsky Hall by the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater conducted by Valery Gergiev. Tells Ilya Ovchinnikov.

For the Moscow Philharmonic, as well as for the Mariinsky Theatre, the name of Rodion Shchedrin is one of the dearest. On the philharmonic stages, his compositions have been performed for over 65 years, and it was here that many of them were performed for the first time, starting with the First Symphony conducted by Natan Rakhlin (1958). Shchedrin played his innovative piano concertos with conductors Yevgeny Svetlanov and Gennady Rozhdestvensky, while Rozhdestvensky presented the premieres of the legendary “Poetoria” on the verses of Andrei Voznesensky with the participation of the poet himself and the oratorio “Lenin in the Heart of the People” with the final solo by Lyudmila Zykina. Already in the new millennium, for the first time in Russia, a number of Shchedrin’s compositions were performed in the Tchaikovsky Hall by Vladimir Yurovsky and Valery Gergiev.

In the last decade and a half, the Mariinsky Theater has become “Shchedrin’s Theatre”: all his operas and many ballets are staged here, the operas Lefty and A Christmas Tale were written for the theater, and cooperation continues. These days, the Shchedrin-90 festival is taking place in the theater, and yet, on the day of the anniversary, Valery Gergiev and his orchestra performed in Moscow. The program presented the main genres of the composer’s work, although its chronological coverage was limited: the late Shchedrin is a separate unusually interesting artistic world, but it is impossible to fit too much into one evening. With the exception of the fragment “Angel of the Lord” from the liturgy “The Sealed Angel” after Leskov (1988), soulfully performed by the choir of the “Masters of Choral Singing”, all numbers belonged to the period 1956-1967, one of the most successful in Shchedrin’s work, although “the personification of success » His fate is called in the XXI century.

By the scale of his personality, by the volume and variety of his writings, by the degree of authority and influence of the few living composers, one can compare with Shchedrin. Among them is Sofia Gubaidulina, who also celebrated her 90th birthday a year ago. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine two creators more dissimilar both in terms of the type of creativity, obviously extroverted by Shchedrin and introverted by Gubaidulina, and by official position in the USSR. In 1979, Gubaidulina was included in the so-called Khrennikov’s Seven, a group of seven composers who were criticized by Tikhon Khrennikov, chairman of the Union of Composers of the USSR. In those same years, Rodion Shchedrin was the chairman of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR, in many ways an alternative to the all-Union one, but it is impossible to imagine Gubaidulin in such a position. This is how it looks from a distance, and it is all the more curious that for contemporaries it could be otherwise.

For example, Alfred Schnittke included Gia Kancheli, Valentin Silvestrov, Gubaidulina, Shchedrin, and himself in the same circle: “This is the circle where I am interested.” Schnittke recalled with gratitude that the performance of his First Symphony in 1974 in Gorky took place precisely with the approval of Shchedrin, and was sympathetic to his social activities: “He did not evade, because he wanted to officially crush all demagogues, talkers and mediocrity.” The clearest example of this struggle is Shchedrin’s speech at the Fifth Plenum of the Union of Composers of the USSR (1966), where he defended the dodecaphone technique, which had long since become the ABC of world composition.

The speech still reads very bold today; then it made a huge impression, and a few months later, the premiere of Shchedrin’s Second Piano Concerto took place – it was he who completed the current program in a brilliant performance by Denis Matsuev. For contemporaries, the dodecaphonic basis of the concerto, combined with jazz improvisations, sounded shocking in the finale; but in order for the concerto to begin and continue to live on the stage, such “artificial preparation” as Shchedrin’s sharp speech was also necessary. “That was the most important stage, both an aesthetic and ethical victory. But how much did it cost a life then! – the composer later recalled bitterly. Today, this victory is undeniable – an hour before midnight, the crowded hall of Tchaikovsky listened to the Second Concerto.

Before that, there were the Carmen Suite, where Gergiev increased the number of strings compared to the usual, giving the music a real operatic and symphonic sound, and Mischievous Chastushkas with fragments of The Little Humpbacked Horse, and Varvara Chastushka from the opera only love”, presented by mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Sergeeva as a masterpiece in itself. Any of these numbers at the end of the evening would have guaranteed a standing ovation, but Valery Gergiev riskily put in the final of the program, probably the most difficult number to perceive, and was not mistaken: the audience appreciated Shchedrin’s courage and innovation, the fruit of which today is perceived as an obvious classic. For an encore, Denis Matsuev performed the ageless Humoresque; as Gergiev said before the concert, it was from her many decades ago that the future conductor’s acquaintance with the music of the hero of the day began.