The International Tchaikovsky Competition
in Moscow
This summer Moscow will host the 11th International Tchaikovsky Competition
held every four years. Today we mark the 40th anniversary of the competition
that started on March 18, 1958.
The visiting card of the competition is the First Piano Concerto by
the genius of Russian music Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The winners play it at the
end of the contest. The sounds of the famous concerto express their triumph
and, probably, the frustrated hopes of those who have lost. But for all
lovers of classical music, who closely follow the events of the competition,
the Concerto is a touchstone to determine the genuineness of musical values.
The late 1950s were marked with the first signs of what became known
as a political thaw in the Soviet Union, with the first attempts to raise
the iron curtain and show the world the country's cultural achievements
and its talented people and the care the state was taking of them. In 1957
Moscow hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students, in 1958 the First
International Tchaikovsky Competition and in 1959 the First International
Film Festival. Naturally, both the Moscow authorities and Muscovites wanted
the Russian performers to win. The violinists were a success and Valery
Klimov won first prize. With pianists, it was different.
It was Van Cliburn, a romantic-looking young American who won the first
prize and became the greatest news of the competition, its favorite and
its legend.
Tatiana Gaidamovich, Professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who has
written numerous reviews about the Tchaikovsky Competition, starting with
the historic first, says: "Naturally, sending its representatives
to a competition, every country aspires to being awarded first prize. There's
nothing wrong with this. It's important how honest the competition is.
The first Tchaikovsky Competition was honest because the panel of judges
brought together great people who would never do anything against their
honor. The last say was with music."
The names of these great people belong now to history, amomg them such
pianists as Heinrich Neigauz, Emil Gilels, Lev Oborin and Svyatoslav Richter
and violinists David Oistrach and Efrem Tsimbalist. At the Second Competition
in 1962, when cellists joined in, the panel of judges boasted new brilliant
names.
Tatiana Gaidamovich recollects that the audience was up when the judges
entered the hall. Among the judges were Gaspar Cassado , Maurict Marechal,
Grigory Piatigorski, Pierre Fournie, Mstislav Rostropovich and Svyatoslav
Knusevitsky. The impression was that the entire 20th century history of
cello art was represented in person. The first competitions involved such
celebrated participants and judges that mistakes were impossible. Pianists
Cliburn, Ogdon , Ashkenazi, cellists Shakhovskaya and Gutman, violinists
Tretiakov, Spivakov and Kremer, all fully deserved their prizes. Later
starting with the Third Competition, when singers joined in, among the
prize winners were Nesterenko, Obraztsova, Atlantov. These competitions
launched young performers on their brilliant careers.
Russian performers featured prominently among the prize winners. Small
wonder, they had an excellent training, the care of the state and full
financial support during the competition, something to be admired by western
performers. The French violinist Maurice Marechal said once: "As an
old man, I envy the Soviet musicians and I will never stop saying this."
True, Soviet musicians enjoyed great benefits but they also had to work
hard. To get to the competition they had to go through three rounds of
qualifying auditions, which was even more difficult than to play at the
competition itself. Only the strongest could cope with the complicated
programs ranging from Bach to modern composers. And the Marathon race of
the competition lasted nearly a month. Following the Soviet example, major
contributors to the competition began holding national qualifying auditions.
The American press wrote in the 1960s that the competition became a contest
of young giants.
Times have changed. As the 20th century is drawing closer to its end,
it bears a stamp of fatigue and pragmatism. Young performers reflect the
general trend. To do justice to the Tchaikovsky Competition, we must say
that it resists the general trend, trying to live up to its great reputation.
The prize winners of recent years also display high artistic quality. Among
them pianists Mikhail Pletneyov and Barry Douglas, violinist Viktoria Mullova
and singer Lyudmila Shemchuk.
Besides its general high level and the ability to open new stars, the
competition is outstanding for its particularly warm atmosphere. "In
Moscow I am happy" - these words of the British pianist Terence Judd
have been repeated by many other participants. Some others, like the Bulgarian
cellist Kalcho Gadevski, even decided to marry while in Moscow during the
competition days. Love affairs at the competition are a special subject.
As for the atmosphere, it's created mostly by the Moscow public, who are
fond of their competition and flock to the concerts. The archives hold
unique photoes showing young girls crawling along the roof of the Conservatory
to a window on the second floor to get inside. This means there were no
spare tickets.
The tradition of the competition's cultural program was founded by
the great pianist Emil Gilels who gave a concert for the participants of
the first contest. Since then Moscow-based theaters and museums entertain
competitors and take them to trips to St. Petersburg. The most exciting
event is a visit to the Tchaikovsky Museum in the town of Klin near Moscow.
This gives a chance to take a look at the home of the great composer and
touch his piano.
Greeting the First Competition in 1958, the outstanding French pianist
Margarita Long said it was like a musical spring of the world. We would
like to repeat the words of another outstanding musician, the American
cellist Grigory Piatigorski who said that he wanted to live to see the
30th and the 100th Tchaikovsky Competition.
Time for "Untimely Thoughts"
By Olga Rusanova Maxim Gorky's 130th birth anniversary
He had a hard life and died a tragic death. But even after his death
fate played an evil joke on him. In Soviet Russia he was referred to as
"the storm petrel of revolution" and "a great proletarian
writer". His works were studied in school, his name was given to cities,
streets and steamers. In the post-Soviet era "the storm petrel"
began to fade into oblivion.
March 28 marks 130 years since Maxim Gorky, a truly great Russian novelist,
was born. Unfortunately this is likely to be a quiet jubilee. We still
have not shed ideological labels attached to him by the communist regime.
We have not realized yet that Gorky, as critics wrote about him, is "a
tall tree rising above the low shoots of humanity", that he is enormous
and many-sided. However journalist Olga Rusanova believes that the time
has come to evaluate his personality and his works unbiasedly:
I decided to turn to the recollections of his contemporaries, and to
his own work, "Untimely Thoughts". Why to that work? Because
it was banned in the Soviet Union, and got published in Russia only in
1990. In the meantime he wrote those notes and articles back in 1917-1918.
And what was so "untimely" in those thoughts? Just imagine the
historic background: World War I still continues, a revolution takes place
in Russia. The bolsheviks led by Lenin triumph. In the meantime Gorky writes:
"Lenin is no omnipotent magician, but a cold-blooded juggler with
no pity for the life and honour of proletariat. The working class must
know that there are no miracles in real life, that what awaits it is hunger,
totally ruined industries, a long and bloody anarchy followed by no less
bloody and gloomy rule of political reactionaries."
He wrote this just three days after the bolshevik coup, but his prediction
was so horribly right. Gorky was not gloating over his nation's misfortune.
His attitude to revolution was too enthusiastic to let him look on the
surrounding horrors -- famine, economic devastation, ban on the freedom
of speech - with indifference.
"Am I not responsible for the abominations seething around me?"
Gorky asked rhetorically. "I feel as if I were nailed to some rotten
wall, crucified on it with the stinging thoughts about the ravished person
I cannot give any aid to ever!"
Nevertheless he gave aid - to those who suffered from hunger, who were
humiliated. He helped young men of letters. He used his newspaper to help
everyone to understand what was happening, find a place in the new life,
and advised them to start doing some work, some ordinary work. He was a
hardworking person himself.
One summer Gorky lived in a village near Kharkov. He invited a fellow
writer, Stepan Skitalets, to visit him and "write a novel". Later
Stepan Skitalets recalled:
"Gorky worked like a shoemaker - with a band around his forerhead,
to prevent his long hair from falling down on paper. He worked for a long
time, till about 2 a.m., and when I saw that light was still on in his
room, I tried to emulate him, and went on with my work till he turned off
his lamp."
It's common knowledge that Gorky wrote an enormous quantity of works
- from stories and novels to the grandiose epic "The Life of Klim
Samgin". He also wrote numerous plays. When such a phenomenon as the
Arts Theater in Moscow is mentioned (its 100th anniversary is celebrated
this year under UNESCO's auspices), for some reason Chekhov alone is recalled.
In the meantime Gorky was among the first authors who wrote plays for it.
His plays "The Lower Depths" and "The Philistines"
were written at the request of those who had founded the Arts Theater,
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and staged without delay, in 1902.
"The Lower Depths" described the life of homeless people living
in a flop-house. It was a great success.
Stanislavsky recalled: "He became a celebrity. People followed
him in the streets." "My dears," he told his fans with a
guilty smile. "You know, it's embarrassing. Why are you eyeing me?
I am not a ballerina..." Gorky was a novelist, a playwright, an editor,
a prominent public figure.
In 1918 Maxim Gorky founded the "World Literature" publishing
house in Petrograd (now St.Petersburg). The idea was to give the Soviet
reader the best books ever written on the globe in the best possible translations.
At the same time he founded the House of Scientists and many other literary
and theatrical organizations. In the meantime he read a lot. That selfmade
man was one of the best-educated erudites of his time. Writer Korney Chukovsky
recalls:
"He read hundreds of books on all specialties - electricity, horse
breeding and even painless childbirth - and we were always amazed at the
quality of the elements of culture he studied, and at the quantity of them.
He wrote as many letters in one day, as some of us wrote in a month! He
edited so many journals and books! And he did it with such selflessness!
"I have such a greed for editing!" Gorky said one day. "His
greed was really passionate sometimes: he wanted to read any book he happened
to see, and to amend it, if possible. Once, having read an abusive letter
written in a neurotic handwriting, he corrected it automatically, leaving
the abuse but turning the confused phraseology into clear one."
Gorky was acquainted with many great men -- Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov,
Ivan Bunin, Stanislavsky, Repin, Stasov, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse.
But his dearest friend was the great opera bass Fyodor Shalyapin. Their
destinies were surprisingly similar: both of them were born in the Volga
Valley (Shalyapin in Kazan, Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod), both in the lower
classes. They had to do hard work since their childhood, but reached the
height of culture.
"No matter what is said about Gorky, I know that all his thoughts,
deeds, feelings, merits, mistakes had only one root - the great Russian
River Volga," Shalyapin said.
Their friendship began in 1900, but life brought them apart: Shalyapin
left Russia forever in 1922. Gorky also left Russia in 1921, for medical
treatment in Italy, but he returned ten years later. There were all sorts
of rumours about his life abroad.
"When I hear about how mercenary Gorky is, about the luxury of
his villas in Capri and Sorrento, about his wealth, I feel embarrassed
for people," Shalyapin wrote. Gorky was one of those people, who were
always short of money, no matter how much they earned. He never spent money
on himself. He never loved money, never took interest in it.
"No, what guided him was not mercenariness. He was passionately
sorry for the people. And he had another passion - his love for Russia.
That issue rose between us. When we met in Rome in 1928, he told me serevely:
"Fyodor, you must go to Russia." "It's pointless to say
why I refused to heed Gorky's admonitions. I still do not know which of
us was right, but I do know that his was the voice of love for me and for
Russia. Gorky was deeply confident that we all belonged to our nation..."
Today there is an enormous interest in Gorky in the world. Several
monographs devoted to him have been published in the past few years in
the West: in Germany, Norway, the USA. In Russia today, because of the
general reassessment of values, there is some confusion in regard to Gorky
- his personality and his works. But it is absolutely clear that it is
ending. Russian theater and film directors are beginning to fix their eyes
on his powerful dramas. Gorky was in fashion in Moscow last season. There
is no doubt that we will realize at last that he posed a colossal figure
in our culture - the man who "closed" the 19th century and "opened"
a new era - a writer, a philosopher, a publicist, a patriot, a humanist.
It was he who said: to be a man is magnificent, it's something to be proud
of.
The Russian Museum Celebrates A Centenary
By Olga Bobrova
On March 19 the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg
turned one hundred years. By UNESCO decision it has been included in
the calendar of the remarkable cultural dates of mankind. The museum owes
its name to the fact that it contains works of art created only by Russian
masters. It's hardly possible to do all the 155 halls of the permanent
exposition at a go. But if you manage, you will get a full idea of Russian
art represented in painting, sculpture, coins, porcelain and objects of
the folk crafts as they developed in the course of the millennium from
the 10th century to nowadays.
The museum's permanent exposition, however, contains a mere two percent
of some 400 thousand exhibits kept in its reserves, which is four times
as many as the Tretiakov Art Gallery in Moscow can boast.
The museum's treasures are housed in four majestic buildings forming
an architectural frame to the collection. Works of art in their own right,
the Stroganovsky, Marble, and Mikhailovsky Palaces and the Engineering
Castle were initially built for members of the Emperor's family and families
of the aristocracy.
The Stroganov Palace saw seven generations of barons and counts changing
each other from the mid-18th century to the fall of the Russian Empire
in 1918. The palace was nationalized and its extensive collections scattered
all over Russia and the world. In the years of Soviet government the palace
housed a military institution and its splendid interiors were changed.
In 1991 it was handed over to the Russian Museum, which launched restoration
work. Recently, the first exhibitions have been launched in a few restored
halls.
The Marble Palace was built in the late 18th century by architect Antonio
Rinaldi. Empress Catherine the Great meant it for her favorite Count Grigory
Orlov.
The construction of the palace took 17 years and Orlov did not live
to see its completion. After his death the palace became part of the property
of the Emperor's family. It opens with a front staircase faced with grey
marble. The bays of the staircase hold decorative sculptures made by the
outstanding Russian sculptor Fedot Shubin in the 18th century. The palace's
most beautiful hall is finished with marble of seven kinds and 32 shades
of color. The hall was used for fashionable balls and musical soirees for
the elect.
The Engineering Castle was built in November 1800 for Emperor Pavel
I according to a project of the Italian architect Brenn. The Emperor contributed
to the work on the project which lasted 10 years. The castle looked like
a knight's medieval fortress, with an area totalling 22 thousand square
meters. Dubbed by some historians as a Russian Hamlet, Pavel I moved to
this residence on February 1, 1801, only a few weeks before a palace revolution
in which he was assassinated in his bedroom in the early hours of March
12. In 1994 the government presented the castle to the Russian Museum.
With restoration work still underway, the museum has mounted here its first
expositions.
The Mikhailovsky Palace is a palace that started the whole history
of the Russian Museum. Implementing the will of his father Pavel I, Emperor
Alexander I completed its construction in 1825. Built by the famous architect
Carl Rossi at the center of St. Petersburg on the site that is now called
Ploshad Iskusstv, Square of the Arts, the palace was meant for Alexander
I's younger brother, Mikhail. But Mikhail died shortly after he moved in,
leaving the palace to his widow and daughters who occupied it until the
late 19th century. Famous as lovers of the arts, the palace's residents
opened its doors to all celebrities of Russian and world culture. Among
their guests were Franz Liszt and Anton Rubinstein and many outstanding
Russian personalities, including Emperor Alexander III, who ruled Russia
from 1881 to 1894. Alexander III was fond of the arts and particularly
of Russian painting. When he died, it was decided to commemorate him by
creating a national art museum. The Mikhailovsky Palace was found the most
suitable building to house what became Russia's first state art museum.
"At that time the Mikhailovsky Palace was called the Russian Museum
of Emperor Alexander III," says the museum's Chief Curator Ivan Karlov.
"This had a meaning similar to the one that the Egyptian pyramids
had. The ruler's name ought to be remembered in the ages to come. Besides,
the country's prestige was a pressing issue, with such countries as Germany
and France having their national art museums."
In 1895 architect Sviniin reconstructed the dwelling premises turning
them into a museum with fine lighting equipment and a circular arrangement
of the halls. The Emperor's family moved to the new museum everything related
to Russian art from the Hermitage and their country residences. The St.
Petersburg Academy of Arts presented works by its outstanding members.
Collectors and members of the aristocracy also made a contribution. In
1898 with over 1,500 exhibits to its credit, the Russian Museum opened
its doors for the public.
In the early 20th century next to the Mikhailovsky Palace appeared
another building created by architect Benois and called after him. It also
became part of the Russian Museum.
"The Russian Museum is a historical and cultural complex boasting
several absolutely unique sections," says the Chief Curator Ivan Karlov.
"For example, the section containing the paintings of the 18th century.
Even the Tretiakov Art Gallery cannot boast such a collection, because
in the 18th century it was St. Petersburg that was Russia's capital and
the center of its cultural life. Also unique is the section of sculpture
with its two thousand outstanding items. The collection of the applied
arts comprises ten thousand items made of bronze, porcelain and glass.
And also unique is the collection of Russian miniature portraits on rings
and medallions. The museum also has extensive collections of prints and
drawings.
These collections feature the works of art created by such great Russian
artists as icon painter Andrei Rublyov, the 18th century artists Rokotov,
Levitsky and Borovikovsky and sculptor Shubin. The 19th century too boasts
great masterpieces from realistic paintings by Repin to lyrical landscapes
by Levitan. These classics are well-known and profoundly studied. But when
at the turn of the 1990s the Russian Museum produced paintings by Russian
avant-gardists of the early 20th century, it was a sensation. Works by
such non-conformist artists as Kandinsky, Malevich, Filonov and Shagal
were suppressed in the Soviet Union but the museum secretly collected and
preserved them despite the ban. The courageous effort saved this heritage
of the 20th century with all its contradictions, contrasts, aspirations
and experiments for many generations to come. The museum has achieved a
lot in the one hundred years of its life. On the day of its centenary,
March 19, it entered into its second century.
