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By Olga Fyodorova
In June 1962 the city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, was playing host to
the Soviet Union’s first ever music festival. There are two students perched
up high in the “gods” of the jam-packed concert hall of the local philharmonic
society.
“I can’t believe it just how we managed to get in without tickets... You’re
a lucky young lady, Olga. Sorry I forgot to congratulate you on your birthday
today. You are 20 now! We are not getting younger, are we?… Here is a bunch
of lilies of the valley for you… I wish I had enough money to buy you roses…
They’ve given you a grand present, by the way… I mean the festival, which
I’m sure they timed for your birthday…”
“How I envy those lucky guys who go out on stage and face the audience!
As a would-be music historian, I’m afraid I will enjoy neither of these
things, spending all my life teaching at some God-forsaken music school
out there…”
“I don’t think so… There is something inside you that I’m sure will eventually
help you make it big in music. The world will hear about you yet…”
“The world?! Well, it’s all right with me! Look, the orchestra is all set
now and Rostropovich is coming out with his baton in hand. They are opening
with the Festive Overture by Dmitry Shostakovich…”
In 1966, an honors graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Olga Tomina was
invited to join the Gorky Philharmonic Society as a music lecturer.
The concerts she held there for children, students and factory workers
did much to instill in them love and respect for the wondrous world of
music…
Before each performance, Olga Tomina offered brief yet inspiring introductions
of composers and their music. Besides local performers, she also
enlisted the help of young rising stars from Moscow, among them violinists
Gidon Kremer and Vladimir Spivakov and viola player Yuri Bashmet, all of
whom are her good friends now participating in each and every major concert
she holds in Nizhny Novgorod.
Consistently rising up through the philharmonic ranks, Olga Tomina eventually
emerged as the main driving force behind their concert work organizing
festivals of modern music written by established and officially ignored
composers. It is largely thanks to her effort that the city on the
Volga became a place where musical ideas were flying freely amidst the
suffocating atmosphere of Soviet totalitarianism.
In 1984 Olga Tomina organized Russia’s first festival of music by Alfred
Schnittke, giving this talented and officially much criticized innovator
a chance to showcase a retrospective of his work written in different styles
and genres.
The festival was a great success and each night people from all across
the nation jam packed the vast concert hall of the local philharmonic society
much to the excitement of Alfred Schnittke and of, course, Olga Tomina
who made the whole thing happen.
When the then director of the local philharmonic society quit in 1989,
people started asking Olga to fill the void. She turned down the offer
saying she just hated to give up her hard-earned artistic directorship
and wouldn’t take up a job she didn’t know a thing about. The city
authorities then suggested that she combine the two jobs and sent her out
to study management in the United States.
In the summer of 1991, Olga Tomina, already a certified concert manager,
met the Borodin Quartet’s cellist Valentin Berlinsky and unveiled to him
her plan of holding a major new festival she dubbed as Russian Art and
the World. She wanted well-known Russian musicians and foreign players
this way or another connected with Russian culture, to join in. Berlinsky
immediately latched onto the idea and asked whose name it was going to
have.
After a moment’s silence, Olga Tomina said: “Andrei Sakharov, the outstanding
physicist, human rights champion and a great citizen… Our city owes a great
deal to Sakharov who once was exiled here for his dissident views. Virtually
incarcerated here, Sakharov took his only delight in going to our concerts.
I still remember him sitting modestly with everyone else and listening
to music by Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky… Let this new festival be
our repentance, our musical tribute to the memory of this great man...
We’ll bring together the best players we can find and make this whole event
worthy of Sakharov’s name.”
The 1st Andrei Sakharov Festival held in Nizhny Novgorod in 1992 was such
a resounding success that they decided to hold it each year.
Olga Tomina became the artistic director of the Sakharov festivals her
programs stunning everyone with their conceptual profundity and the handpicked
constellation of the world’s leading players.
The Sakharov festival has over the years featured a bevy of top-flight
performers from Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Estonia, Holland
and the United States, and has been the first Russian festival to join
the European Festivals Association. In 2001 Olga Tomina, the festival’s
organizer, was named the world’s top manager of the year….
… Olga Tomina’s office. The Sakharov festival marked its 10th anniversary
earlier this month playing host to world-acclaimed luminaries like Yuri
Bashmet, the Borodin String Quartet, the French operatic diva Francoise
Pollet, escorted by the French Ambassador, Johann Strauss orchestra from
Austria, Lithuanian conductor Sauljus Sondetskis and Tchaikovsky prizewinning
bass singer from America, Zolotes Toliver.
…Mstislav Rostropovich has just flown in and with the tension building
up, a gray haired man stomps in…
“Hello, my dear! Today is June 9, remember? Happy birthday! As usual, I
brought you a bunch of your beloved lilies of the valley. I wish you everything
you’ve ever wished yourself! You have a great husband who is a fine
writer too, a great son. And a charming granddaughter who looks so much
like you! And you’ve come such a long, long way, my darling, your festival
is famous everywhere and the world’s best musicians are lining up to join
in… And you, so beautiful and smiling, keep coming out onstage always finding
the right words and getting things done. You are everyone’s darling, you
know that? You’ve got lots of friends and are always bubbling with
new ideas! Good luck!”
“I appreciate this, I really do… But I guess it’s high time we started...
Mstislav Rostropovich will now take up his baton and steer our orchestra
though the Festive Overture, just like he did during our first festival…”
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