“Studio of New Music” celebrated its 30th anniversary at the Moscow Philharmonic

The Philharmonic subscription “Another Space” opened for the third time in the Tchaikovsky Hall. Continuo.” The program of three works dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Studio of New Music ensemble included two premieres: Laborintus II by Luciano Berio – Russian, “Behind the Light” by Vladimir Gorlinsky – world. Tells Ilya Ovchinnikov.

The host of the concert, Yaroslav Timofeev, began the evening with a reminder that the “Studio” was founded 30 years ago by Vladimir Tarnopolsky, its permanent artistic director. This is important: for more than a year and a half, Tarnopolsky, a composer in demand and performed all over the world, has been outside Russia, but the “Studio” is still one of the cores of Moscow musical life. While some metropolitan groups change artistic directors, while others exist without them at all, which inevitably affects the repertoire, quality of play and much more, the “Studio” remains true to itself. This is evidenced, in particular, by the program of the anniversary project “StudioFest”, which included scientific readings, an exhibition dedicated to the history of the ensemble, and concerts.

The poster for the first of them recalled several repertoire directions of the “Studio” – avant-garde of the 1920s (Alexander Mosolov, Vladimir Deshevov), works by contemporary Russian composers of different generations (Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Yuri Kasparov, Alexey Syumak) and European music of the turn of the 20th–21st centuries ( Fausto Romitelli). The second concert featured three Diaghilev ballets created with the participation of Picasso (“Parade” by Satie, “Cocked Hat” by de Falla and “Blue Express” by Milhaud): although this seemed like a step away from the main repertoire of the “Studio”, but at the same time time emphasized its breadth.

The culmination of the “StudioFest” was this evening, where Beat Furrer served as another example of European music of the late twentieth century, Berio represented the post-war avant-garde, and Gorlinsky represented our days. Introducing the public to the best achievements of the last century, throughout the 30 years of its history the group has also served as a center of attraction for composers, encouraging them to create new works. The “Studio,” founded as an ensemble of graduate students, has raised several generations of excellent performers, and today, alongside young musicians, top-class soloists play in it. Pianists Mona Haba and Natalia Cherkasova, drummers Andrei Vinnitsky and Andrei Nikitin, cellist Olga Galochkina, oboist Anastasia Tabankova, violinist Marina Katarzhnova, double bassist Grigory Krotenko and others – without any of them our musical life would be significantly poorer.

The bright start of the concert was Furrer’s Nuun for two pianos and ensemble, the world premiere of which took place in Salzburg, and the Russian premiere in Moscow, at a concert for the 20th anniversary of the Studio, also with the participation of conductor Igor Dronov, Mona Haba and Natalia Cherkasova. The main intrigue, however, remained the two premieres. The first performance in Russia of Berio’s Laborintus II can be called a feat – both for the conductor, and for the ensemble, and for the soloists of the Intrada ensemble, who coped with the most complex vocal parts with seeming ease. Their voices seemed truly angelic, despite the fact that the work was written for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth and images of hell occupy an important place in it.

Berio created Laborintus II several years before the famous Symphony; in both works he actively used the collage technique. But if the Symphony is strict in form and collage there is primarily a means of connecting numerous quotes, then here various styles and composition techniques are combined in a free form, from aleatorics and pointillism to elements of baroque, jazz and pop music. The collage is also the text spoken by the vocalists and the reader: in addition to Dante, fragments of the Bible, poems by Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Edoardo Sanguineti, who acted as the librettist, are heard. The vocal and instrumental textures are so varied that the unifying element is precisely the part of the reader. In one of the recordings, it is performed in a pointedly affected manner by Mike Patton, the vocalist of the band Faith No More, but now Nicola Doria, a teacher at the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow, was on stage, and his calmer tone suited the work better.

Score “Beyond the Light. A Journey for an Ensemble” by Gorlinsky, which became one of the winners of the “Notes and Quotas” program of the Union of Composers of Russia, was created directly for the “Studio”. As the author says, he wrote the play as a whole and each part separately with specific ensemble soloists in mind. They may argue, but it seems that each solo is invented with love for the artist – so that he has both the opportunity to show himself and interest in his part. It is possible that “Behind the Light” would have won in its integrity; it lasted less than 52 minutes: two years ago Gorlinsky’s composition “Terracotta” was performed here, and even for him, with his absolute uncompromisingness, half an hour was enough. True, “Terracotta” is fundamentally unlike anything else, while there is a rich circle of associations around the new play.

For example, the composer mentioned Britten’s “Guide to the Orchestra” as a possible model, and the presenter of the concert suggested integrating “Behind the Light” in the series of “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Mussorgsky and “Peter and the Wolf” by Prokofiev. The work begins with a series of solos, from which a picture emerges of the awakening of some huge organism: here the introductions to Mahler’s First Symphony and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” were recalled. The middle section contains the majority of solos, where almost every one of the Studio soloists was able to show themselves. As we approach the finale, various micro-ensembles appear – flutes, drums, horn and harp, a saxophone solo sounds nostalgically, and the piece ends with a short tutti. It’s hard not to agree with the words of Yaroslav Timofeev: “When everything outside has frozen and hovered at some bad point, it is important that the inner journey continues… probably this is now our main other space – the inner space, and there is definitely still where to go”.