Theodore Currentzis brought Yevgeny Mironov to a frenzy

The Winter Theater is full house. For the sake of this concert, many spectators traveled hundreds of kilometers – just to look at the great and terrible Teodor Kurenzis. There are legends about the Russian conductor of Greek origin: some call him a god, others call him the devil. They say that his concerts heal from incurable diseases, but there is a reverse myth – that the “Courenzis effect” is killing his fans. The MK reviewer experienced firsthand the intensity of the conductor’s temperamental manner, who presented a new dramatic interpretation of the Italian works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky at the 16th Winter Arts Festival in Sochi.

– Is it true that before the concert, Currentzis fumigates the stage with incense? colleagues whisper before the start of the concert, while a large audience, rustling bouquets of flowers wrapped in paper, sits in their places.

“I also heard about it, but he was not noticed here,” one of the organizers of the Yury Bashmet festival answers.

“You know, my friend believed in the healing power of Currentzis, went to all his concerts, and then she got sarcoma and died,” adds one of her colleagues.

– You, try, tell it to that group of girls of Balzac age who came here from Krasnodar. They will shower you with flowers – to death. He has a whole fan club! one of the musicologists responds.

In a word, the atmosphere in the hall is mystical – the audience is waiting for the incredible. The Musica Aeterna orchestra takes their seats, filling the whole stage completely and without a trace. A podium has been prepared for the concertmaster and first violinist Olga Volkova, which elevates her above the rest of the musicians. This is unusual, but logical – so the bow of a short girl will be visible to the musicians in the last rows, and there are at least five of them. Olga does not dare to sit down – she walks in front of the musicians, giving them secret signals – she sets them up. By the way, Volkova is a new acquisition of the Kurenzis orchestra. In 2016, she became the youngest concertmaster of the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra. In 2021, she left for the Mikhailovsky Theatre, where she continues to serve as an accompanist, despite the fact that a few months ago she joined the Musica Aeterna orchestra. The languid expectation encourages the audience – the audience is waiting with bated breath. And then Theodore appears – in a strict black suit, with hoop earrings in his ears, he looks magical. The backdrop in the form of black squares, in the center of each of which a round lamp glows, blinks, flooding the orchestra with light. Kurenzis begins to conjure…

From the very first notes, he plunges into a grotesque hell. The symphonic poem “Francesca da Rimini”, which Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote on the basis of the 5th song of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, tells the tragic love story of Francesca and her husband’s younger brother Paolo. Their earthly love did not last long, the lovers only opened their hearts to each other, and Francesca’s husband appeared and killed him with a dagger. They ended up in hell together, and, perhaps, in the midst of torment, they found their happiness. At least this is how many great descendants developed the scene described by Dante, for example, Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote: “… death is nothing, nothing for us is a grave, and we do not feel sorry for the lost paradise, and love has transformed torment into paradise …”. Tchaikovsky’s music is consonant with these lines, it is undulating – it either elevates and gives a vague hope, then it takes it like a whirlwind into hellish flames. Currentzis increases the intensity of these polar emotions, speeding up the pace of the composition by one and a half times.

The conductor does not stand behind the console, but with his whole body sets the movement for the music, either bouncing or leaning forward. It seems that his quick fingers are turning invisible cogs in the air, playing on a nerve. Every now and then he looks into one of the musicians not even in the eyes, but, it seems, in the soul, in order to snatch out that very piercing sound. Incredible tempo and extreme vigor of the approach plunge into hellish darkness – the pain of Francesca and Paolo is felt literally on the physical level. And with the next plastic movement, Kurenzis heals him, pulling out a gleam of hope from the wind instruments, so that in a second with a tenacious movement he “squeezes out” the strings and again drives him into hopeless darkness. Perhaps no one before Kurenzis performed this fantasy of Tchaikovsky so dramatically.

The Italian Capriccio that followed seemed to be a relief only for a second – and then the conductor pulled the maximum drama out of the melody. Tchaikovsky’s nostalgic work, begun by the composer in Rome and completed in Russia, in the hands of Currentzis acquires an unusual harshness and sharpness. He seems to burn out all the lyrics of Italian folk motifs from which the composition is woven, and brings to the surface the bitterness of the loss of his beloved Italy (Tchaikovsky spent several years there and was fascinated by this region). In the final overture of Romeo and Juliet, the conductor again speeds up the pace, giving the fury of the musical illustration of the enmity between the two families of the Montagues and the Capulets a double power. And behind the warlike sounds, in which the swords of two opposing clans are heard, Tchaikovsky follows a soft lyrical theme, depicting the tenderness between Romeo and Juliet. But in the hands of Currentzis, you do not have time to feed on the bliss and rest. The gentle motives of the melody sway on restless waves, as if plunging into a stormy sea that is about to swallow you up forever…

He brought the audience of such an incredible passion to a delight, reminiscent of slight insanity. “Bravo!” the people shouted standing up. Yevgeny Mironov, who followed Kurenzis’ magical movements from the box together with Yuri Bashmet, sat spellbound throughout the concert, and was one of the first to jump up after the final notes. The actor, like most of the listeners, was clearly shocked by the original approach of Currentzis to popular, played to holes, compositions. Judging by his violent reaction, he is trusted to the point of frenzy. As, however, and the whole room.

Kurenzis was called to bow three times, and in the end he performed one more thing – “Elegy” from the Serenade for Tchaikovsky’s string orchestra. It sounded no less dramatic and energetic. Something incredible happened to the audience, which flowed out of the theater after the concert. Nervous delight hung in the air for a long time. It seemed that on this evening in the Winter Palace the forces of light fought with darkness, and no one but the conductor of this human drama won the victory …