ST Petersburg and Moscow, Autumn 2004 - by McBurney

Tempo 59 (232) 23–27 © 2005 Cambridge University Press 23
DOI: 10.1017/S0040298205000124 Printed in the United Kingdom
   ,

 
Gerard McBurney
(Between 22 September and 4 October last year, Gerard McBurney

made a short research and lecturing trip to St Petersburg and Moscow.
On his return he circulated a private, informal account of his activities
and impressions of the current state of musical life in Russia to a
number of interested parties and friends. Among these was the Editor
of Tempo, who considered that parts of the report were of such
interest that they merited wider circulation. At his request,
Gerard McBurney has prepared this edited version of his report for
publication.)

My trip was organized by the St Petersburg Conservatory and the
British Council. I offer them warmest thanks.
In St.Petersburg I found myself participating in the lVth International
Conservatoire Week Festival, organized by the redoutable Lydia
Volchek. This consisted of a week of concerts, masterclasses, discus-
sions and lectures. As well as the St P Conservatory, other participants
included folk from the Moscow Conservatory, the Manhattan School
of Music, Oberlin, the Paganini Conservatory (Genoa), the
Paderewski Academy (Poland), Copenhagen, the Royal Northern
College (Manchester), the Sibelius Academy and others. I found
myself flagged up as ‘representing’ the Royal Academy of Music,
which was something I could have done with knowing about before-
hand.
The atmosphere was chaotic but enthusiastic. I delivered two long
lectures in Russian (each well over two hours!) to a small classroom
full of students and a handful of members of staff (so … about 20–25
listeners). One lecture was on the state of British music today. By way
of illustration, I played extracts from very recent works by Mark-
Anthony Turnage, Harrison Birtwistle, George Benjamin, Simon
Holt, Judith Weir, Tom Adès. I am grateful to the various publishers of
these composers who provided me with CDs and scores. These
provoked enormous interest among a small but enthusiastic group of
students from the musicology course, who asked to borrow the works
and listen to them complete… The rest of the audience was, I think,
respectful, but somewhat mystified. As one fine musician said to me:
‘What is this music about? And why is it all so gloomy?’ I tried cack-
handedly to explain, but fear I made little impression.
My second lecture was more musicological: an investigation into the
history of the British reception of Russian music. This consisted of an
account of the pioneers in this field (Dannreuther, Marchbank, Montagu
Nathan, Evans, Calvocoressi, Abraham, etc) and of the shifting perspec-
tives on Russian music in our culture, especially as they are affected by
political circumstances. I ended with the diatribes of Robin Holloway
and the enthusiasm for late Soviet music that followed the collapse of the
24 
USSR. Most of this intrigued the Russians, I think because it is always

jolly to find that someone else is interested in your culture…
I also participated in a polemical round-table of the ‘Whither clas-
sical music?’ variety, with the stately figure of Alexander Tchaikovsky
opening by telling us that nothing could be in better shape than the
position of young composers in Russia today. This was a view passion-
ately contradicted by the extremely articulate Dina Kinarskaya from
the Gnessin Institute in Moscow. We also heard from a young woman
from St Petersburg’s local version of Classic FM (Radio Klassika),
explaining their predictable problems, as well as from other partici-
pants. I said my piece about the digital revolution and the marginalizing
of classical music in an ever-expanding world of other musical possibil-
ities. I reckoned my first job was to discourage young Russians from
thinking that they could come and spend the rest of their lives happily
playing in the Wigmore Hall to packed audiences, or getting commis-
sions from the London Sinfonietta and living on the proceeds. I also
mentioned a number of other familiar problems in our country, but
then answered that with a more positive line, beginning by describing
in some detail the work of Radio 3 and the BBC orchestras, going on to
the commissioning and planning procedures of the Hallé Orchestra,
the opening of the new Sage Centre, our various modern music groups
(the BCMG, London Sinfonietta), the festivals and ending with a piece
on the education and outreach programmes that are such a big feature
of our musical carryings-on these days. This last theme was completely
new to the Russians, who have nothing like it and are mystified as to
how it works and what it means. So… I hope they got something from
it. Needless to say, the familiar theme of ‘Dumbing Down’ ran like a
drone through most of the afternoon’s proceedings.
I also took time out to talk about more eccentric efflora like country
house opera (I did this because Glyndebourne, Garsington and Grange
Park all put on rare Russian operas this year, of a kind that the Russians
themselves would only be likely to mount in a state-funded opera-
house). These anecdotes provoked gratifying looks of astonishment
and plenty of questions as to who exactly was paying for this stuff.
After this, I left for Moscow, where I spent several days meeting up
with colleagues and spending time in the Shostakovich Archive…

I spent a good deal of time in both cities listening to music and
meeting with composers and musicologists. In particular I had long
meetings with Alexander Knaifel, Sergei Slonimsky and Alexander
Vustin. In summary, here are my traveller’s impressions of what I saw.
First, concert life:
There is a vast amount going on in both towns – of, naturally, vari-
able quality. Most impressive of what I caught up with (inevitably, some-
what accidentally) was the festival ‘Early Music’, led by Marc de Mauny,
who has lived in Russia for a number of years. This involved bringing
performers from many countries (including such distinguished folk as
Gustav Leonhardt, Michael Chance and Emma Kirkby – who unfortu-
nately fell ill and was unable to sing in St Petersburg, to general disap-
pointment), but also many lesser-known performers. Groups came
from France, the USA and elsewhere. Particularly splendid was a duo of
Italian viola da gamba players who gave a magnificent concert that was
cheered to the echo. De Mauny organizes this festival so that
performers get to play in several cities including St Petersburg, Moscow
and elsewhere. This is a considerable feat.
   ,   25
In Moscow I missed a Schnittke memorial festival, celebrating what

would have been his 70th birthday. Moscow musicians of my acquain-
tance were struck by the fact that though his music has been some-
what out of fashion since his death, this festival was provoking interest
as many foreign and émigré musicians were flying in to take part,
including Kremer, Mazur and others. The festival looked like being a
celebration on the part of those who had known the composer and
worked with him. It was being promoted on a lavish scale.
Second, composers. As mentioned above, the previous generation
of Soviet composers are almost invisible, consigned to an era that the
very young feel disengaged from (a bit like my students at the RAM,
really!). Schnittke is hardly played, Denisov is almost forgotten,
Kancheli, Pärt and the rest likewise. Gubaidulina’s Passion was
performed in St Petersburg by Gergiev and received coruscating
reviews and hostile reactions from local musicians. Any composer who
leaves the country essentially falls off the radar. Those who die fare no
better, despite the lavish speeches at their funerals.
The current state of Russian music is not much more lovely than in
other countries. The neo-romantics, neo-provincials and neo-conser-
vatives have a following, certainly, and there is the usual ubiquity of
mini-music of one sort or another and a continuing flood of religious
kitsch. There is also an embattled coterie of hard-line neo-modernists,
for whom late Nono and Lachenmann are idols. Such folk have no
following, of course, but they do form themselves into little groups
and exchange tapes and scores and organize a certain number of club-
concerts. Some of them disappear to Germany on post-graduate
scholarships. They also engage in a good deal of combative jour-
nalism, as always (except in the high Soviet period) a flourishing and
inspiring art in Russia – especially by comparison with most of the
music journalism published in UK newspapers, which seems at the
moment almost uniformly feeble and amateurish.
My personal opinion is that of those composers left behind by the
political changes and still living in Russia, Alexander Vustin is by far the
most interesting, distinctive and important, together with Vladimir
Tarnopolsky (both are in Moscow) and Alexander Knaifel (in St
Petersburg). Galina Ustvolskaya would appear no longer to be
composing, Tarnopolsky devotes an enormous amount of time and
effort to running new music at the Moscow Conservatory (a depart-
ment, ensemble, festivals, international exchanges) and finds it difficult
to fulfil his many composing commitments, but he currently has
commissions from a number of Western sources including those
countries (Holland, Germany, Austria) where he has long been cham-
pioned. Knaifel also has much foreign interest, nearly all of it in
Holland and Germany. Vustin has no foreign champions apart from
Gidon Kremer, who heroically keeps the composer from complete
isolation by a series of requests for pieces d’occasion, which the violinist
apparently pays for out of his own pocket.
On this occasion I did not meet with the energetic and talented St
Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov, as he is currently finishing up
an opera for the Bolshoi in Moscow. This in itself is a noteworthy story.
Desyatnikov, whose somewhat mini-music and post-Adams-y style has
also been taken up by Kremer, has had a difficult career for a number of
reasons. Amazingly, he has been commissioned by the Bolshoi and has
come up with an opera that has been variously described by those who
have seen the score as ‘hilarious’ and ‘an outrageous satire’. It is based on
a modern novel of, I gather, somewhat in-your-face shockingness and
much nose-thumbing humour and, as set by Desyatnikov, contains a
26 
series of exuberant parodies of, among other things, the great Russian
masters of the past. The ‘Tchaikovsky scene’ has caused great delight
among those who have heard it and there is hope among the composer’s
supporters that the première in Moscow (scheduled, I think, for next
spring) will cause a scandal. At any rate, it is certainly brave of the
Bolshoi to undertake such a commission.1
Finally, the conservatoires. Putin, in the great tradition of Russian
rulers, seems to be taking a personal interest. Some years ago my old
acquaintance, the musicologist and accomplished politician Alexander
Sokolov (author of books on modernism and on the 18th century) was
made Rector of the Moscow Conservatory and immediately set about
reforming and cleaning up. Recently, however, he has been chosen by
Putin to be the new Minister of Culture, a position of colossal power
and responsibility, especially given Putin’s energetic campaign to claw
back control of the media and the dissemination of information into
the direct control of the government. Sasha Sokolov has accepted this
promotion but has kept on his job as Rector, apparently in the sense
that no-one in recent years has survived very long as Minister of
Culture and should his new job suddenly be terminated it would be
good to have the other to return to. In a way, it is a good thing for
Moscow that their Rector, whom they rarely see these days, should be
the most powerful cultural authority in the country. But there are
downsides too, as Sokolov is forced to delegate most of the everyday
running of the place.
There is a huge amount to do in the Moscow Conservatory, espe-
cially since the catastrophic fire of a year or two back which destroyed
valuable instruments, rooms and materials. Money is clearly tight. It is
still difficult to pay the staff in any way that might match the offers that
some of them are likely to get from Western institutions. But… things
seem to be ticking on anyway.
The St.Petersburg Conservatory has been through a very bad time
in recent years, suffering, like Moscow, in the Yeltsin Era from the
depradations of corruption and the emigration of much of the staff.
But a year or two back, the cellist Sergey Roldugin, ex-principal cellist
of the Mariinsky (Kirov) ballet orchestra and a lifelong, indeed child-
hood, friend of President Putin, was appointed to be the new Rector.
He too launched a general clean-up and it was widely hoped that his
friendship with the President, which was what had led to his appoint-
ment, would mean that more central state funding might be available
to bring the whole place up to modern standards. Unfortunately,
apparently at the President’s decree, Roldugin has recently been
removed to a higher place, to run a whole swathe of cultural and
educational matters in the St.Petersburg. In other words, like Sokolov,
he has been co-opted into government. The result is that the thor-
oughly Soviet figure of Alexander Tchaikovsky, nephew of the late
Boris Tchaikovsky and, in Soviet times, a distinguished Union func-
tionary and able deputy of the formidable Tikhon Khrennikov (still
alive, by the way!), has been brought in as pro-Rector to run the place
while Roldugin is otherwise engaged. As may be imagined, there has
been some criticism of this move and an understandable sense on the
part of some that the clock is being pushed back. That said,
Tchaikovsky continues to promise constructive change, so everyone
will have to wait before they can pass judgement seriously.
1
For Desyatnikov, see Olga Manulkina, ‘The Rite of Beauty: an introduction to the music of
Leonid Desyatnikov’ in Tempo No.220 (April 2002), pp.20–23. At the time of going to press,
his opera Rosenthal’s Children was scheduled for première at the Bolshoi Theatre in Spring
2005 – (Ed.).
   ,   27
In sum, the recent history of both institutions suggests that they are
being well and truly drawn into the major political changes currently
being implemented by Putin, and it remains to be seen what the
musical and educational effects of this will be. What they need, like
most conservatoires the world over, is simply better paid staff with
serious levels of commitment and new up-to-date premises with all
possible modern equipment. Pigs do fly in Russia, but I wouldn’t
imagine any of this is likely to happen in the near future.

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Tempo 59 (232) 23–27 © 2005 Cambridge University Press 23

DOI: 10.1017/S0040298205000124 Printed in the United Kingdom

   ,

(Between 22 September and 4 October last year, Gerard McBurney

USSR. Most of this intrigued the Russians, I think because it is always

In Moscow I missed a Schnittke memorial festival, celebrating what

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