Rambler's Top100
 

RUSSIAN CULTURE NAVIGATOR

english
win1251


O.Bugrova

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, one of the largest in Russia, has entered the new year with masses of exhibition projects, most of them international, since cooperation with colleagues from abroad is high on the Museum's agenda. The Director of the Museum, Irina Antonova, told of the major events in 2006 as she met with representatives of the Russian press in Moscow.
"We're planning an exhibition of works by a prominent British architect, Norman Foster, - Irina Antonova says. - The basic theme is the dialogue between cultural legacy and contemporary process. There are also plans to organize a show of works by Pavel Filonov, a remarkable Russian avant-garde artist of the early 20th century, and we are planning to enlarge this show with foreign collections. Another exhibition is planned around "St.Sebastian", a masterpiece by the Italian artist of the 15th century Antonello de Messina, which is now in the Dresden Gallery and is really superb after restoration. We are also mounting an exhibition for Valentino, a renowned designer and artist, with about 60 items on view. They are all genuine works of art and I think the visitors will enjoy it".
This year the Pushkin Museum is preparing an unusual exhibition - an exhibition of masks, which it is planning as a joint project with several museums. The mask, including the hunting, the fancy ball and even the post-mortem, will be presented as a particular object of art with its historical and cultural background. Equally exciting from both the artistic and historical viewpoints will be an exhibition of tapestries and trellises dating from the Flemish tapestry of the 15th century to the present day in works by the Russian artist Grisha Bruskin, who lives in New York and is seen by many as a cult figure in contemporary art. As before the Pushkin Museum takes part in all sorts of cultural programs. One of its rarities - "The Jaguar Attacking a Horse" by Henri Rousseau - is now part of an extensive exhibition in Paris. And to the amazement of the visitors the Museum is exhibiting works by Titian and Karavadjo, which will arrive in Moscow from Naples.
This year the Pushkin Museum is launching a new permanent exposition - a gallery of French art of the late 19th - early 20th cc. and later, which will occupy the private collection hall, currently under restoration. The gallery is the biggest in Russia collection of French art of the above-mentioned period and competes with many foreign collections of the kind. Originally it was put together by Moscow merchants and patrons of the art Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, who went on frequent business trips to France, where they bought works of art from the then unknown and now famous painters.
About the collection of Morozov and Shchukin Irina Antonova had this to say: "The most difficult thing is to understand the art of the day we are living in. It has always been difficult. Hence - the misery of many artists, writers and musicians whose works were rejected in their lifetimes. But Shchukin and Morozov knew the value of the impressionists and post-impressionists, such as Pierre Bonar, Eduard Villar and in the later period - Matisse and Picasso. None were museum painters then. Le Louvre never bought their works and they had no recognition in France. Due to their remarkable intuition the Moscow collectors managed to realize that those works were the art of the future. They felt the power of the time they were created in".
A collection of French impressionist art from the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum is currently on display in Japan. The exhibition is running from October 21st 2005 to April 2nd 2006 and is a sweeping success. By the end of December the Art Museum in Tokyo had been visited by nearly half a million. From January 11th the exhibition is open in Osaka.

IGOR MOISEEV - A LIVING LEGEND OF OUR TIME

N.Yakhontova

On January 21st the Russian choreographer and artistic director of the renowned Folk Dance Ensemble, Igor Moiseev, turned 100.
At such an advanced age Igor Moiseev not only heads the dance group but never misses the rehearsals to direct the new numbers. Quite recently he was even demonstrating dance patterns to the artists!
"I'm a witness to the entire century, - the choreographer says. - I remember tsarist Russia, pre-revolutionary Moscow, where I first arrived at the age of 9, I remember city policemen of those days, the First World War, which broke out in 1914, the 1917 Revolution…In a word, I remember every period in the history of 20th century Russia, and living a life so long I have a lot to say and I want to say more. I'm proud I met in person and talked with Stanislavski, Chaliapin and other glorious workers of art…"
Igor Moiseev's ancestors included Russians, French and Rumanians. Noble by origin he received a brilliant education and was luckily spared the purges of the 1930s. After finishing a choreography school in the class of Alexander Gorsky he joined the Bolshoi ballet company and was soon destined for a glamorous future. Igor Moiseev was meant to become a "prince" but…
"I've always perceived dancing in a sense much wider than classical dance, - the maestro says. - A classical ballet dancer has a limited thinking. Classical style hinges on rationalism and has boundaries and rules. Conversely, folk dance is a dynamic picture of a people borne from the people's traditions and psychology. People dance what they feel".
Igor Moiseev often says as a sort of joke that throughout his life he has been guided by an invisible hand that took him to the right direction. It all started when he was a lead dancer with the Bolshoi at 24 and opted to try himself as a choreographer. In terms of direction he was immediately attracted to mass scenes. Since Igor Moiseev possessed a remarkable combination of taste and accuracy of artistic solution with strict discipline, he was often made responsible for the theatricals during physical culture parades on Red Square in 1930s. In 1936, Igor Moiseev directed the First National Folk Dance Festival. It was then that the idea of a permanently working folk dance group came to his head.
The first rehearsals started in February 1937. The first program was such a success that the group was soon performing in the Kremlin. But patronage from top government never prevented Igor Moiseev from having his way. His credo was duty, honor, integrity, hard work and worthy life in order to leave a tangible footprint in history.
"…If Moiseev group's concerts leave you indifferent and you don't applaud or stomp on the floor with delight, you aren't quite normal", - ran a line in the French "Le Parisien". Indeed, the guys and girls in folk costumes radiate a remarkable light - you cast a quick look at them and the next minute you are drawn in an avalanche of tremendous joy and inspiring optimism that leaves you happy as a child.
Moiseev Ensemble started to go on foreign tours soon after the end of the Second World War. In a sense it went on both an artistic and a diplomatic mission. The success the group enjoyed is hard to describe. In Rumania the wily administrators sold two tickets for one seat and every concert began with a scandal. In Spain people queuing for tickets flooded the street to an extent that it had to be sealed off from public transport. All in all, the Moiseev Ensemble has performed in more than 60 countries and in some - more than once.
The Ensemble's present-day repertoire consists of spectacular folk-style fantasies growing from Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Spanish, Polish, Argentine, Bulgarian, Mexican and Chinese, Hungarian, Venezuelan, Mongolian, Czech, Slovakian, Japanese, Vietnamese and Greek national dances - 300 dances of peoples all over the world!
"Closer contact and friendship between peoples of the world is an inherent part of our artistic practice, - the choreographer says. - This is our work, the work of the Ensemble, of which I'm the leader. Contacts provide an opportunity for mutual understanding and for people to share their cultural achievements, which taken as a whole constitute world culture".
Igor Moiseev holds a number of international prizes and numerous awards, including the Mozart Medal, which is UNESCO's most prestigious one. He is an honorary member of art academies in countries across the globe. But the most distinguishable for the maestro has become the Order of Peoples Friendship he received in Russia. And Russia is where the major jubilee events are, the highlight being the celebration of Igor Moiseev's birthday in the Kremlin Palace on January 21st.
Igor Moiseev's looks speak of vigor and willpower. With infinite stamina, as prompt and businesslike as ever, with a sharp eye, he is invariably demanding and harsh on his group. His authority is beyond doubt and the admiration this sage with a young soul arouses knows no bounds.
"I've long noticed, - Igor Moiseev says, - that the world hinges on harmony and whenever there's a violation of harmony there follow tragedies, dramas and disasters".
 
 
MOZART'S 250TH BIRTHDAY
 
January 27th marks 250 years to the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer who brought about the universal understanding of musical genius.
The year 2006 has been declared Year of Mozart by UNESCO. It will feature countless concerts worldwide of music by the great composer with the major festivities scheduled to take place in his native Salzburg and in Vienna, where he spent the last decade of his life. Mozart is being honored throughout Russia with concerts of his music going on in 14 big cities. And the first festival in his honor is currently underway in Moscow.
Among the participants are musicians from Salzburg and Vienna. For a whole year they'll be playing his popular and rarely performed pieces, including symphonies, choral compositions, chamber and instrumental music and operas. Of Mozart's 20 operas Russian theatres have produced 12.
Mozart was acknowledged genius during his lifetime. Maestro Joseph Haydn described his younger colleague as "the greatest of composers I've ever met". By the time he said so "the greatest composer" hadn't turned 30 and his most famous works - "Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", "The Magic Flute" and Fortieth and Forty First Symphonies - had yet to be written.
After dying at 35 Mozart left a colossal legacy that embraced every musical genre of the 18th century. The chronicles of the composer's works switch with utmost lightness from sonatas to divertissement, then to instrumental concertos, operas, merry canons, then to church music, marches, symphonies, quartets, serenades and back to sonatas, sketches to a ballet….His music varies in mood going from childish joy to sensuality, from the ocean of non-being to the ever-glowing light and happiness! According to Mozart's friends, he wrote music with the same ease he wrote letters. Mozart himself said the following: "I'm a composer and have no right to bury a talent for writing music that God so generously endowed me with".
Mozart grew as a composer in the age of Enlightenment and felt the pace of time through extensive musical and literary contacts with the major thinkers of the day. He read Shakespeare, Moliere, Lessing and Schiller, knew Goethe and Voltaire and was distinguished with a well-developed sense of self-esteem and a striving for independence. Mozart was among the first free-lance artists who said no to court service. He was never at odds with the reality and knew of the sordid aspects of life too. During the 10 years that he spent traveling across Europe with concerts in Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Austria and England, he met with all sorts of people from whom he received not only admiration but misunderstanding and envy. But he understood and was tolerant if not reckless. With Shakespeare-style splendor he drew a musical picture of humanity. We're all with out assets and shortcomings, a contemporary Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti said.
Of all known composers Mozart and his music enjoys the biggest number of epithets. The Russian scholars call him "divine", "light-radiating", "esoteric", "a universal yardstick in music" and even "the symbol of music as such". Russian musical critic Alexander Ulybyshev wrote one of the first in the history of world music serious treatises on the composer. In 1843 he published a three-volume research in French, called "The New Biography of Mozart". Every Russian knows of Mozart from a Pushkin line: "What a depth! What an audacity and what elegance!"
Mozart's individual style, naturally intertwining the Italian, French, Czech, Austrian and German traditions, is a simple and complex but understandable to all "European language". On this the 20th century violinist Iegudi Menukhin said: "This is one of the mysteries of his music: Mozart talks to a kid as a kid and to an adult as an adult".
The universal nature of Mozart's works has made them timeless. Every new age added its own understanding of the composer and many of the musical geniuses were once tempted to repeat the Mozart-set model. Among the Russian were Tchaikovsky with his opera "The Queen of Spades", Stravinsky, who wrote "The Rake's Progress" on the model of Mozart's opera "All Women Behave Alike" and Prokofieff, whose "Classical Symphony" is a close reminder of Mozart's "Prague Symphony". Mozart nowadays is as exciting as ever. As for why we can rely on Goethe, the most ardent of Mozart admirers among his contemporaries: "Mozart's works carry a life-giving power which passes from generation to generation, inexhaustible and non-destroyable".
 
GRAPHICS FROM PAVEL TRETIAKOV COLLECTION
(Exhibition to 150th anniversary of Tretiakov Gallery)
 
T.Zavialova
An exhibition of water colors from Pavel Tretiakov's collection has opened in the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. The exposition is the first on the list of jubilee events to mark the Gallery's 150th anniversary.
The industrialist and merchant Pavel Tretiakov was a passionate collector of Russian art, mainly paintings. In 1892 he presented to the city of Moscow 1287 paintings, 9 sculptures and 518 drawings. The donation formed the basis of the Tretiakov Gallery's present collection.
Lidia Iovleva is the Deputy Director of the museum: "Along with being the founder of the Gallery, Tretiakov was the only of the 19th century collectors who set up a national art museum. Many rich and knowledgeable people collected art in those days but none did anything as distinguishable".
The present exposition features 250 graphic works and shows how the collection of graphics was put together and what were the tastes, preferences and interests of the founder himself.
"The viewers will for the first time have a chance to get a whole picture of the collection of drawings and water colors raised by Pavel Tretiakov, - the exposition's curator, Olga Ptitsyna says. - By the end of his life the Gallery had 1500 graphic works. We're exhibiting the best from different times and by artists both known and forgotten".
The exhibition of graphics opens with black and white photos that depict the exhibition halls as they were during Pavel Tretiakov's lifetime. In those days the works hung on trellis in five rows and had no signatures so the visitors were offered a catalogue of works to guide them through the halls and lead them to whatever presented a particular interest. Even at that time graphic works were protected against direct sun rays.
The landscapes include the elegant water colors of Russian nature by Fedor Vasiliev and Pavel Fedotov, city views by Maxim Vorobiev and sketches of Italy by Mikhail Vrubel. The rarely exhibited "Berries of Red and White Currant" by Fedor Tolstoi can well be acknowledged a water-color masterpiece: the sculptor succeeded in rendering the color, form and even the dimension of the berry clusters. Equally impressive are views of the forest by Ivan Shishkin in "A Fir-Tree Forest" and "A Spider-Web in a Forest", the latter performed in the rare style of scraping through the paint layer. The genre drawing includes sketches to Vasily Vereshchagin's pictures painted in Central Asia, portraits by Vasily Surikov depicting people in ethnic garments and subject water colors by Vladimir Makovski " A Wandering Fiddler" and "A Prayer in Peasant's Backyard".
The exhibition hall depicts sketches of church murals and theatrical settings. It features numerous works by Viktor Vasnetsov, which he made while painting St.Vladimir's Cathederal in Kiev, the brightly colored sketches by Fedor Bruni to the murals in St.Isaac's Cathedral in St.Petersburg, the saturated drawings by Appolinari Vasnetsov - scenery sketches to Mussorgsky's opera "Khovanshchina".
The Exhibition "Drawings and Water Colors in the Collection of Pavel Tretiakaov" has a detailed catalogue in the form of a book and a CD and will be open until April.
 
GELIKON-OPERA IN 2006
 
N.Viktorova
Artistic Director, conductor Dmitry Bertman:
It's practically for the first time that we are celebrating Mozart's anniversary so widely. As part of celebrations of the composer's 250th birthday the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall hosted the Russian premiere on January 8th of Mozart's opera "La Clemenza di Tito", which we presented at an international festival in Merida in Spain. The opera features the Vienna operatic star and one of the best at present performers of Mozart Charlotte Leitner. "Mozart Nights" has been on out theatre's repertoire since January 13th. "Dedication to Mozart" includes the comedy "Apollo and Hyacinthus" and within it - concert numbers from operas by Mozart.
In view of a great number of international projects and tours in 2006 practically all our staff will be engaged in different productions and on different stages. On January 10th part of the Gelikon-Opera company went of a tour of the United States with our own version of "The Bat" by Strauss, which will play 52 times across the US eastern and western coasts.
This year Gelikon-Opera turns 16. Though young, the company has earned itself a name throughout the world and has won the affection of the audiences, who have been following its repertoire and are looking forward to new projects. And even though some criticize the theatre's original versions of timeless classics, the majority appreciate the remarkable fantasy, optimism, life-giving vigor and quick wit and humor in the productions by director Dmitry Bertman. "Theatre is entertainment" - is the director's motto. The master's hand renders a glittering and charming touch to every of the productions.
April 26th will feature the Russian premiere of Dvorak's opera "The Mermaid", which we recently played in Denmark, in Aarhus, the hometown of Hans Christian Andersen. I would say the play turned out wonderful and the actors were superb. We are all besotted with it. Everybody is looking forward to us playing it in Moscow.
A unique premiere has been scheduled for May 18th, - Dmitry Bertman says. - It's the last opera by Umberto Giordano, known as the author of operas "Andrea Chenier" and "Fedora". The opera is called "Siberia". The composer had a Russian wife and loved Russia collecting Russian themes. Those who saw the high-profile "Barber of Siberia" will find the plot familiar. The scene is set in Petersburg, Western Siberia and Trans-Baikal Region and the show promises to be spectacular. And the Gelikon's Opera Caf? in Moscow will host the first night of Donizetti's comic opera "Rita, ou le mari battu". And as all shows in Opera Caf? are accompanied with treats this one will be "supported" with pizza or some other dish from the Italian cuisine.
Among the Gelikon-Opera's latest traditions are series of solo concerts by its stars in Moscow. This year features Irina Samoilova, Vadim Zaplechny, Larisa Kostyuk, Sergei Toptygin and Igor Tarasov.
This year the Gelikon-Opera will participate in a number of international festivals: "Bartok+Bel canto" in Hungary, Merida in Spain and the "Brigitta" Summer Festival in Estonia.
And the new season in September the theatre will open with the premiere of Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov" in the rarely performed rendition by Shostakovich. The opera will also make it into the program of the September Festival honoring the 100th birthday of Dmitry Shostakovich. The highlight of the program will be "Lady Macbeth of Mzensk".

  01/26/2006

Rambler's Top100

BACK TO MAIN PAGE