People and events:

• PIANIST NAUM SHTARKMAN TURNS 75
• ROBERT ROZHDESTVENSKY'S "MOMENTS"
• MONASTERY OF THE SAVIOR AND ST. EUTHYMIUS: YESTERDAY AND TODAY

PIANIST NAUM SHTARKMAN TURNS 75

By O. Bugrova
The renowned Russian pianist and professor Naum Shtarkman celebrated his 75th birthday with solo concerts in the Moscow Conservatory in late October. One of the more than 500 disciples of the great Konstantin Igumnov, Shtarkman represents the so-called "old" piano school, the school founded by Igumnov. He is one of rare musicians dubbed "poets of the piano" and "refined lyricists". A soloist with a vast concert schedule in Russia and abroad, and a conservatory professor, Shtarkman enjoys absolute authority and respect among his celebrated colleagues and students, and is often on the jury boards of prestigious piano competitions.
What is the Russian piano school? Does it require of a musician certain natural gifts to be able to equal the legendary Russian pianists of the past? "Talent cannot be taught", Naum Shtarkman believes. "You either have it or you haven't. The same with individuality. It can't be taught but it can be pulled out and unfolded, just like Igumnov unfolded mine. When I entered the conservatory, I prided myself on my fluency and technique. But Igumnov heard something different in my play, something unknown to myself. "You are a lyricist!" he said. I didn't believe him at first but later I saw that he was right. Igumnov taught us absolutely everything: which fingers are more convenient in this or that passage, how to use the pedals, how to shape up the form, how to make music breath, how to create an impression that it's being born right out of your fingers - that's something that can also be taught!"
The Russian piano school has always been distinguished by its "melodiousness" - a hard-to-achieve quality of a really expressive performance. Shtarkman is the one who knows how to make a piano sing.
"That's what Igumnov did marvelously and what he demanded from us", Shtarkman says. "There were brilliant and mediocre pianists among his disciples, but all of them had a perfect, noble sound. This was his school's visiting card. One could always guess Igumnov disciples by the way they touched the keys".
In accordance with the established tradition, a Russian pianist is supposed to be a well-educated and highly cultured person. Shtarkman is well-versed in painting and architecture, and it helps him a lot in the search for means of expression while working on a piece and in getting closer to its author.
"When I start working on a piece, I must learn as much as possible about the author", Shtarkman says. "I read musical literature and memoirs to find out what kind of person he was, his habits, his nature, what he liked and disliked, and this helps me understand his music. For one, I know that Chopin liked expensive suits and expensive furniture, and called his apartment a "bonbonniere". I know that he had fair hair and blue eyes, that he was 170 cm tall, and this knowledge makes me feel that we knew each other well…
Shtarkman's vast repertoire comprises dozens of solo programs and boasts some 60 (!) concertos for piano and orchestra. Like any pianist, he has his preferences, above all romantic music of the 19th century, his favorite composers being Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Lizst, Rakhmaninov and Tchaikovsky, which also reveals his belonging to the old Russian school. In our kitsch-infected age, Shtarkman is indeed a musician from the nostalgic, romantic past.
"Every man has his voice", Shtarkman says. "And everyone must sing only in his own voice". I never imitated anyone and never will, and I keep telling my pupils not to do this. I always wanted to play something that I thought was mine, something that came close to my heart… I played a lot of good music and love it all. A pianist must be in love with each note…"
 

ROBERT ROZHDESTVENSKY'S "MOMENTS"

By T. Zavyalova
"A poet in Russia is more than a poet" - it has always been so and will always be. The 1960s saw an unheard of poetry boom that few of the previous epochs can rival. This was the time of a political "thaw" when democratic winds broke through the ice wall of communist ideology and heralded new trends in the Soviet literature and arts. Thousands of people flooded the halls of the Polytechnical Museum to hear poets Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who were very young back then.
Rozhdestvensky is a whole epoch in Soviet poetry. Many remember him reciting his poems in a soft, yet powerful voice that mesmerized the listeners. This is what he wrote in his autobiography: "In his poems the author always tells about himself, about his thoughts and feelings, even when he writes about space achievements". Rozhdestvensky was a public man in the true sense of the word. He traveled a lot about Russia, meeting with all sorts of people and versifying his life experience, all he saw and felt, in numerous poems.
Robert Rozhdestvensky was born in Siberia and lived in Omsk till the age of 13 when the family moved to another city, and later to another, often changing places, as his father served in the army. In late June, 1941, just after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, Robert, barely 8, wrote his first poem. He began publishing his poems while still a student at the Literary Institute in Moscow. Popularity came quickly. "Spring's Flags", "Test", "To My Contemporary", "Uninhabited Islands", "Drifting Avenue", "My Love" - these and other selections of his verses sold in the wink of an eye. Standing apart in Rozhdestvensky's legacy is the poem "Requiem" devoted to soldiers fallen during the Great Patriotic War.
"His poetry will survive for centuries", says singer Iosif Kobzon. "I am not afraid of sounding pathetic. Rozhdestvensky's "Requiem" is immortal. In this poem he curses wars. Had he written nothing more, he would still have immortalized himself in the memory of future generations".
The former Soviet authorities were eager to exploit his talent to eulogize the glorious achievements of "five-year" economic plans and were openly displeased when he switched over to other themes, such as love lyrics, for example. And after the split of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it was precisely "Soviet" themes that earned him tough criticism.
Many of his poems were set to music and became popular songs, and although he never conceived them as such, one can feel music in every line he wrote.
 

MONASTERY OF THE SAVIOR AND ST. EUTHYMIUS: YESTERDAY AND TODAY

By M. Faustova
On the steep bank of the river Kamenka off the ancient Russian town of Suzdal there stands one of Russia's oldest cloisters - the white-stone Monastery of the Savior and St. Euphymius surrounded by thick walls. This year it celebrates its 650th birthday.
The monastery was founded in the middle of the 14th century -first as a fortress designed to defend the Suzdal and Nuzhny-Novgorod principality from enemy attacks. Its centuries-old walls remember Tatar and Polish invasions, and internecine feuds… And in the 18th century it was even turned into prison.
Few know today that it used to be one of the most influential and richest cloisters in Suzdal. Czars Vasily III and Ivan the Terrible lavished gifts on the monastery in the hope of securing divine help and intercession from that holy shrine where the miracle-working remains of its first Father-Superior Euthymius were laid to rest. There are very few historical records about St. Euthymius but the legend has it that he was a man of extraordinary kindness and unshakable faith.
The Monastery of the Savior and St. Euthymius was a major spiritual center of Orthodox enlightenment and it also boasted one of the best bell foundries and best bell-casters in Russia. The melodious ringing of its bells was heard miles around.
Although the monastery's construction stretched for about three centuries as it kept expanding and adding new premises to its initial compound, it represents a fine sample of early Russian architecture. The central building is the massive five-domed Transfiguration Church. Its inner walls are covered with murals painted by the well-known icon-painters from Kostroma Gury Nikitin and Sila Savin. Most of the murals recount the life and holy deeds of St. Euthymius, while others feature the monastery's reconstruction.
On both sides of the Transfiguration Church are a refectory and a belfry. The latter has a complicated architecture with an octagon at the base. On the belfry's second level there is the Church of the Birth of John the Baptist blessed the day Czar Ivan the Terrible was born.
In the 18th century the monastery gradually lost its former power and significance, which prompted Empress Catherine II to transform it into a prison defrocked church officials convicted to jail terms for various "religious" crimes. The monastery's father-superior was appointed head of the prison where later political inmates were also kept. Prison cells were located in the ever-dark "secret" courtyard that never enjoyed the rays of the sun. Warders were not allowed to know who the prisoners were. Today the prison is a museum.
The Monastery of the Savior and St. Euthymius miraculously escaped destruction in the devastating 20th-century wars and cataclysms and is still in a good condition. Recently it hosted a scientific conference devoted to its historical and cultural significance. All who visited the monastery in those days say they felt as if divine grace descended upon them.