Composer Alexander Knaifel turns 80

The composer is a world-recognized classic, whose name is pronounced on a par with Pärt, Gubaidulina and Silvestrov. On November 28, the maestro turns 80 years old, most of which he lived in his beloved St. Petersburg. Why Kneifel still remains one of the key figures of the avant-garde, and why his works do not lose their value and relevance, I tried to figure it out Georgy Kovalevsky.

“Petersburger by nationality” is how Alexander Knaifel, who was born at the height of World War II in Tashkent, where his parents, teachers of the Leningrad Conservatory, lived in evacuation, follows George Balanchine. The image of Leningrad-Petersburg not just as a city with its right angles of streets, skyward spiers and columns, facades of palaces and mansions reflected in the water surface, but as a special metaphysical space between heaven and earth really entered into the flesh of Kneifel’s works, including at the structural level.

In his writings, Kneifel uses number series and mathematical proportions in the same way that the architects who built the Northern capital relied on strict calculations, and among the main creative reference points of his youth is the composer Yanis Xenakis, a graduate of the architectural bureau of the famous Le Corbusier.

Kneifel’s “trusted by algebra” harmonies and sounds acquire such strength, depth and piercingness that they are able to make huge halls and spaces listen to themselves. When in 1995, Mstislav Rostropovich was preparing at the Washington Cathedral the world premiere of Kneifel’s “Chapter Eight” based on the biblical text of the “Song of Songs”, where, in addition to the solo cello, four more choirs participate, arranged in a special way in the temple, notes of slow, quiet music lasting more than an hour, was seen by Galina Vishnevskaya, who told the author and her famous husband quite definitely: they are supposedly crazy, in a cathedral that can accommodate 5 thousand people they will not listen to such reverently. Fortunately, the opera diva turned out to be wrong; the recording that survived from that performance is one of the evidence of the truly magical influence of Kneifel’s music, which then conquered almost all layers of American society, from dark-skinned hippies to the government establishment. A similar story was repeated later in the churches of Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, Lucerne – but the upcoming St. Petersburg premiere of “The Eighth Chapter” did not take place for financial reasons, although the metropolitan’s special blessing was even received for the cellist to play in the church.

Another example of the special impact of Kneifel’s music is a truly recorded case of healing from a serious mental illness.

The autistic daughter of the German poet and industrialist Francisco Tanzer, having come across a recording of Kneifel’s “Agnus Dei” dedicated to the victims of the siege, listened to this composition many times until she felt relief from her illness. “Chapter Eight” and “Agnus Dei” in Kneifel’s work seem to draw a vertical between heaven and earth. If the lyrics of “Song of Songs” vibrate with the colors of a world of boundless love, then “Agnus Dei” is a descent into hell, touching the depths of human suffering, a pole of numbness expressed in sounds in the face of the cold of death. However, living this through music frees people from horror, and then comes hope for the infinity of life.

Kneifel’s music synchronizes in a special way with the painful points of world history.

Thus, in the midst of the premiere performances of the opera “Alice in Wonderland” in Amsterdam in September 2001, a terrible terrorist attack occurred in New York with the collapse of the twin towers. Despite the mourning declared everywhere, the performance, in which artists from seven countries took part, was decided not to be cancelled, and Kneifel’s music based on the plot of Carroll’s fairy tale became a triumph of light and miracle, capable of dispelling any darkness. And during the days of the August 1991 putsch, the prophetic (film about a coup d’etat!) “Defector” by Sergei Snezhkin was shown on Leningrad television with music by Knaifel, which is based on the prayer of Ephraim the Syrian (the text itself, it turns out, was written into the parts of the instrumentalists and was intended for silent intonation to oneself).

In the 1980s, cinema turned out to be almost the only way to earn money for Kneifel, as well as for his friends and colleagues (Denisov, Gubaidulina, Schnittke). In 1979, the composer became one of the later famous “Khrennikov Seven”, a cohort of young composers whose work was accused of lacking “meaningful artistic goals” and whose works were under an unspoken ban. But the music for Semyon Aranovich’s television films almost immediately “went to the people.”

The tango composed by Kneifel for “Rafferty” was performed in Leningrad restaurants and jazz clubs, and the symphonic fragment from “The Confrontation” was later used for all sorts of screensavers.

The blockade of Kneifel’s academic writings was finally broken in the 1990s. At the end of the Soviet era, the Melodiya company published records with a recording of the vocal cycle “Stupid Horse” based on the poems of Vadim Levin, and in 1992 a large festival was held in Frankfurt am Main, where Kneifel became one of the headliners along with Stockhausen and Cage. Immediately after the festival concerts, at which almost all the works created by that time were performed, offers from the world’s best festivals poured in, and the composer himself received a scholarship, which gave him the opportunity to live and work in Berlin. But, after working for some time in the capital of Germany (wonderful photographs of the composer in the company of Kancheli, Pärt and Schnittke circulate on the Internet), Kneifel returned to St. Petersburg, closer to his beloved Udelny Park, Komarovo and Sortavala, where he visited in the summer almost without interruption for forty years and where many of his masterpieces were born. Among them is “Autumn Evening” for string quartet, part of the cycle “In the Pure and Invisible Air,” which was then used by the Volvo concern as a musical accompaniment for its advertising.

Kneifel’s works of recent years can be described by the expression “reaching to heaven,” and the point here is not only in religious and philosophical concepts (since the 1990s, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh has become one of the spiritual reference points for the composer), but in the author’s message itself, when special In this way, gravity is overcome and the musicians must also seem to soar above the ground (an incident happened with this word at the premiere of Alice in Wonderland in Amsterdam due to the fault of the translator, who interpreted this remark as “filling the stage and hall with puffs of steam”). Perhaps that is why his works are not such frequent guests in our concert halls; simple professionalism is not enough here; here, in addition to impeccable mastery of technique and intonation, you also need to be an actor, a clown and a philosopher, capable of smiling despite all the problems and bringing light to where the darkness thickens .

Among Kneifel’s faithful and reliable companions is his wife, the magnificent chamber singer Tatyana Melentyeva, whose voice is immortalized, among other things, in the recordings of the famous German independent label ECM.

Kneifel’s music is one of the tuning forks for a world gone mad; it has an amazing light that breaks through even the darkest clouds, just as we feel the light in the texts of Pushkin, Kneifel’s favorite poet.

One of the last works completed by the maestro, but not yet performed, is the grandiose fresco “Hallelujah”, where the most incredible cast has been assembled based on the plot of the “cave action”, which should be located in the seats of the spectators, and the listeners, on the contrary, should be on the stage . After all, if it seems like everything is upside down, then maybe you just need to change your point of view and stand upside down, turning your gaze to the heavens.