From the life of one mordent – Newspaper Kommersant No. 211 (7412) dated 11/15/2022

Alfred Schnittke’s legendary score of 1976 was performed by Alexei Utkin’s State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia (GAKOR) in the Thing in Itself cycle dedicated to the masterpieces of the 20th century. He tells how the old virtues of “Concerto grosso”, new twists in history and explanations by musicologist Yaroslav Timofeev made Schnittke’s music relevant again. Yulia Bederova.

Among the educational philharmonic formats, the Thing in Itself occupies a place somewhere in the middle between the youth projects Language of Music or Mom, I’m a Music Lover, on the one hand, and Vladimir Yurovsky’s cult concerts with his comments, on the other. In the 2010s, Yurovsky truly restored the ancient practice of music with conversations and even turned it into a separate genre of concert art, if not a kind of “talk about the important”, however, he no longer comes to Moscow. “The Language of Music” and “Mom, I’m a music lover” appeared later. Both projects are aimed at a young audience, and they add a bit of popularizing pathos to education: the programs are compiled from short scores from different eras, and the dialogues of the hosts with the musicians and the public are built right into the course of the concert events.

The Thing in Itself takes its inspiration from essentially different projects (two-part form in one section, emotional and intellectual density from adult genres, free presentation of information with concise illustrations and multimedia from youth) and is a unique format. Each program is dedicated to a single composition of the 20th century that influenced people’s ideas about music and about themselves. It is read syllable by syllable, disassembled into spare parts (diagrams, themes, tables, sounds, video and photo materials are used) and reassembled in live sound, and the conversation about the past acquires a non-museum edge.

The motto of the programs is borrowed from Kant: he bequeathed us to remember that the world and the things in it are unknowable. But, appealing to Kant, “Thing in itself” still listens to how things sound not only in themselves or in their inherent historical context, but also today in us. Even though the 20th century in the philharmonic tradition still sometimes falls into the category of “modernity”.

To outline the gap and at the same time to hear how the thing of the last century resonates with the current time is not a directly articulated task of the cycle, but its challenge and reason. So in the series, scores very different in style, spirit and registration were already performed – from Steve Reich’s Desert Music to Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, which, it would seem, are fundamentally alien to modernity. But that was not the case: in the sounds of the old-fashioned Rachmaninov, overtones of Stravinsky’s modernism were found, in the contours of the emigrant “longing for the Motherland” – blurry timeless outlines, and the conversation about the dances of 1940 turned into a non-archival conversation about life and death. The author and presenter of the cycle, musicologist and multi-instrumentalist Yaroslav Timofeev argued against the common idea that the archaic Rachmaninoff was a man out of his time: “I am convinced that geniuses are always born there and when it is needed.” But in the story about “Concerto grosso No. 1” he was already arguing with himself: “It is clear that Schnittke is a composer who was born at the wrong time, in the wrong place.”

Indeed, until recently, the thesis that the Soviet avant-garde artist Schnittke belonged to the “German romantics” needed proof, but today it sounds as natural as breathing. With the same ease, musical terms without translation (from lamento to microchromatics) flew from the stage into the hall, and as one of the episodes of a swift oral investigation, something like a “brief history of mordent” was played out (Timofeev played a short, strumming tune from the theme of Schnittke and followed by his entire sound biography from Arcangelo Corelli to Mikael Tariverdiev). “Psychological enfilades” of textbook masquerade, capricious timbres and motifs as musically personified images of good and evil with their cinematic nature and jewelry interweaving were also easily demonstrated.

It seems that the listener is fascinated and is ready to believe: on the pages of Concerto grosso, Schnittke poses the question of the attractiveness of vulgar music in the era of the avant-garde, carefully sews beads of triviality into a non-woven dissonant canvas, in a word, explores the problem of the evil of banality, and the case takes place ten years after how the Western world will learn the details about the “banality of evil.” But it is already hard to believe in the irreproachable conclusion, which the fascinating musicological non-fiction leads to: “The cultural audience of the late 1970s was forced to live an appropriate life, while trying not to lose its conscience. But the context has changed, and now these experiences have nothing to do with us.” Someone probably took this conclusion at face value, someone heard chilling sarcasm in it, but, one way or another, Schnittke’s music, which sounded to contemporaries like a poignant drama of doublethink, is now topical in a new way, although in the old way beautiful.

It was the same in the performance of GAKOR and soloists Ilya Movchan and Andrey Zabavnikov, reminiscent of Schumann’s Florestan and Euzebius, which association the romantic Schnittke, apparently, did not lay down, but could. Another thing is that with an important experience of authenticity and emphasized decorativeness – such that the seductive bitterness of the score seemed clear, but illustrative – GAKOR made “Concerto grosso” a spectacular, even fresh, but still an additional link in the program, where the story about music and it itself are more often balanced in rights and meaning.