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By Olga Fyodorova
The fall of 1933. Visibly alarmed, singer Yelena Kruglikova, is running
up and down the Bolshoi's corridors...
“Have you seen a six year-old boy here?”
“Is his name Zhenya? I sure did... The first time I saw him he was over
there playing something on the piano...”
“Right, that's exactly where I told him to wait for me and prepare for
tomorrow's piano class...”
“20 minutes later I saw him on stage watching the workers fixing the sets
and helping in any way he could...”
“My God! He could've hurt himself! I knew something wrong was going to
happen!”
“Don't worry. Just half an hour later I saw him with the stage setters.
He was all right, trying on some fake armor and brandishing a sword. In
a word, having fun...”
“Maybe he's still there, what do you think?”
“I don't think so. I later saw him hanging out by the pit. He was looking
down and watching the conductor's work and having the time of his life!”
“This boy just can't sit still! I don't know what's going to come out of
him!”
“I guess he's going be one of us, that's what... He loves it here, can't
you see? When he grows up he will be working here too. Theater is a place
one can always find a job he likes...”
“Well, we'll see... Oh, here he comes, Zhenya Svetlanov, a six-year-old
sneak! Who knows, maybe someday you'll be one of us here at the Bolshoi...”
Yevgeny Svetlanov debut at the Bolshoi came at the age of 27 and, a few
years later, he was already the chief conductor of Russia's foremost music
theater wowing everyone with his acute sense of music and profound understanding
of what was happening on stage... He had picked up that inner knowledge
and understanding from the long hours he had once spent scouring the Bolshoi's
darkest alleys as his mother was rehearsing...
Yevgeny Svetlanov was a real prodigy, quick on the uptake, his phenomenal
ear, memory, bubbling imagination and early desire to write music sending
his parents on a lookout for the best teachers money could buy. Svetlanov
was a certified pianist, composer and conductor and a good one too, but
it was his larger than life conducting talent that eventually earned him
worldwide recognition...
He spent nine years working with the Bolshoi Theater and each performance
was a masterpiece. In 1964 Yevgeny Svetlanov was offered the reins of the
country's best symphony orchestra...
The State Symphony Orchestra was originally intended as a showcase outfit
boasting the best salaries and fringe benefits one could ever dream of...
And still, musically, the orchestra was not always up to the mark. Its
previous conductor was talented, passionate but not well heeled enough,
his interpretations often spontaneous and lacking the discipline it takes
to be the best. That's exactly the quality Svetlanov had in abundance helping
the orchestra reach the very top and stay there...
The daily monotone of excruciating rehearsals often proved too much for
the musicians who grumbled about Svetlanov's nitpicking attention to detail.
Ignoring those protestations, the Maestro kept pressing on painstakingly
honing every nuance, ultimately bringing back the clockwork synchronicity
of the winds and the palpitating warmth of the strings. From now on, the
State Symphony Orchestra could be easily recognized by the very first chords
they played...
Which kind of music to focus on was never a problem for Svetlanov who immediately
asserted his preference for Russian music venturing what no one else had
ever done before - creating an Anthology of Russian classics to include
each and every Russian symphony written in the 19th and early-20th century.
Besides the internationally-recognized evergreens, Svetlanov spent hours
in libraries digging up rarely-played scores eventually building up a towering
anthology of performed and recorded Russian classics - more than 60 hours
of running time in all!
Yevgeny Svetlanov's orchestra traveled far and wide, crisscrossing Europe,
North America and Japan always winning kudos as one of the best around.
Maestro Svetlanov was hailed as an outstanding interpreter, primarily of
the all-time Russian classics Tchaikovsky, Rakhmaninoff and Skryabin...
And what about the Bolshoi Theater? Did Svetlanov really give up on the
Bolshoi?
No, his childhood love for the Bolshoi will never go anywhere. Sometimes
he went on staging operas there, first Othello by Verdi followed by the
Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh, the Golden Cockerel and Pskovityanka
by Rimsky-Korsakov, each production coming as a much-awaited celebration...
A man of bubbling imagination, Yevgeny Svetlanov was always out to explore
new grounds. Completing the monumental Anthology of Russian Music, he was
now out to play all of Mahler. And play he did winning glowing reviews
in the press! From there he moved on to play in concert 20th century hits
by Gershwin, Low, Bemtein, arrangements of Beatles’ songs and once again
winning enthusiastic applause from about everyone. Riding the wave
of this public adoration, the Maestro was now one hundred percent sure
about his ultimate success...
During the late 1990s things started changing for the worse though. The
traditional thrill of the orchestra's sound was all but gone now because
of the all-embracing economic crisis that affected just about every sphere
of Russian life, especially culture. Hating to subsist on their meager
salaries, the best musicians started flowing out of the country and Yevgeny
Svetalanov himself taking up several foreign orchestras to survive the
hard times...
Now he was a rare guest in Moscow occasionally coming back only to see
the overall process of disintegration going deeper and deeper. He took
his frustrations out on the musicians who, accusing him of neglect, were
complaining to the Culture Ministry. Things finally came to a head when
the musicians, eager to set the record straight, demanded that the maestro
either stay with them or quit altogether. Svetlanov pressed his demands.
The Ministry was at a loss, not knowing what to do...
Thing were going from bad to worse and, burdened by a raft of foreign commitments,
Svetlanov left to conduct a series of concerts in Europe. It was then and
there that the Culture Minister finally made up his mind... Having no legal
grounds to fire the world-famous conductor, he sacked him for of all things...
absenteeism.
Devastated by the blow, Yevgeny Svetlanov has since avoided coming back.
Shortly after his dismissal, the State Orchestra was given a new chief
conductor. It was stable work again, but their once famous signature Svetlanov
sound was all but gone now...
Old recordings are all we have to judge the great orchestra Yevgeny Svetlanov
once put together... Listening to these recordings one keeps wondering
how they could play so well with mostly the ordinary, off-the-wall, instruments
they had…
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