Happiness in lilacs – Newspaper Kommersant No. 56 (7501) dated 04/03/2023

The Tchaikovsky Hall hosted a concert by the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. The evening was timed to coincide with the main musical date of 2023 – the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Rachmaninov. Tells Ekaterina Biryukova.

Surprisingly, with the exact dating of the 150th anniversary, not everything is as simple as one might expect. Rachmaninov was born on March 20, 1873, according to the old style, which then corresponded to April 1 of the Gregorian calendar. But in 1900, the difference between the old and new styles increased from 12 to 13 days (and will increase to 14 in 2100). Rachmaninov himself, having moved from Russia to America in 1918, continued, like many Russian emigrants, to live according to the Julian calendar, and he recalculated the dates according to the new rules of the twentieth century. Thus, he considered his birthday not the first, but the second of April. This date was written in his passport, it was also stamped on a tombstone at the Kensico cemetery near New York (the idea of ​​reburial of Rachmaninoff in Veliky Novgorod, promoted at one time by Vladimir Medinsky, seems to be irrelevant now).

The Moscow Philharmonic Society decided to play on this somewhat symbolic position of the great musician, stuck between eras and continents, and make both days festive – the first of April and the second. Even against the backdrop of the large-scale action “Rakhmaninov’s Single Day”, which, according to the official estimates of the Russian Ministry of Culture, brought together about 500 events inside and outside the country, the philharmonic project looked like a guaranteed trump card. On April 1 and 2, Denis Matsuev, Valery Gergiev and the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra undertook to perform all four of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos, as well as his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Alas, this mighty plan was thwarted by the covid that had brought down Matsuev the day before. Programs with his participation have been postponed indefinitely. But they did not leave Sergei Vasilievich completely without a birthday. A full house of top music lovers led by Elvira Nabiullina and Alexei Kudrin, a rush of ticket speculators in the Mayakovskaya area, the first bars from Rachmaninov’s poem The Bells, which temporarily replaced the traditional bells in the Tchaikovsky Hall, and a sea of ​​nostalgic white lilacs on stage (they say , specially ordered from Holland) – all this happened on April 1.

The second piano concerto, performed by the young winner of the brand new Rachmaninov competition Ivan Bessonov, became a technical, albeit unequal, replacement for the Matsuev marathon. But the Symphonic Dances, which urgently appeared in the program of the second part, turned the holiday up to the final audience rejoicing. Absolutely appropriate, I must say. Gergiev is sumptuous in this late masterpiece by Rachmaninov, perfectly controlled in his unkind, sometimes macabre dance, repeatedly quoting and glorifying the gloomy medieval motif Dies irae (“Day of Wrath”). With the “youth” he has already played “Dances” on his Primorsky stage in Vladivostok, and it seems that the orchestra and the conductor understand each other well and encourage each other. So, even though, by an unkind coincidence, the Moscow Philharmonic congratulated Rachmaninov on the wrong day, which is marked on his grave, we have to admit that it came out in earnest and convincingly.