I suppose I could recall a week when I visited a few Art events, but I don’t remember a single week when I’d attend three musical events. On Monday I went to the Yauza Theatre, to listen to a program dedicated to the Four Seasons. The recordings included Il Inverno (Winter), Concerto no. 4 in F Minor, RV 297 by Antonio Vivaldi (the famous 1st movement), Winter in Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzola, a couple of extracts from Haydn’s Four Seasons oratory, which were followed by the witty commentary and brilliant performance of Tchaikovsky’s Four Seasons by a well-known pianist Alexei Skanavi.
The Yauza Theatre celebrates 100th anniversary next year. Erected in 1903, the building used to house the Mossovet Theatre when it was headed by Yuri Zavadsky. Then it changed the hands and for several decades belonged to the Electric Factory located in the vicinity. The legends of Russian rock music performed there, including Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenschikov, and the film director Sergei Solovyov filmed bits of ASSA movie there. In 1992 I visited this “house of culture” with my Dad on the occasion of celebrating Paul McCartney’s birthday. The event included a screening of Let It Be, followed by a concert. Towards the ends thereof a hard rock group jumped on stage, and die-hard Beatles fans moved outside, into a mellow summer evening, where young guys played and sang the songs, some of which I’d already known by heart. Obviously, being a child, I doubt I took much notice of the outside decor or interiors. This time it was different, and the best I could describe it to myself was a “working class Bolshoi Theatre”.
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| Yauza Theatre, facade |
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| Yauza Theatre, detail |
On Wednesday I went to Moscow’s oldest cinema, Khudozhestvenny (Artistic), near the Old and New Arbat Streets and Arbatskaya metro station. A young composer Arseny Trofim, originally from Nenets Autonomous Region and now based in St. Petersburg, has composed a new score to Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.
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| Yauza Theatre, foyer |
And on Saturday I went to the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin, to listen to the first in a series of concerts by Alexei Skanavi. I came across this wonderful pianist in 2003. Apart from all the good things he does to promote classical music, I appreciate and enjoy his performance manner. The impression I often gather from pianists is that they’re trying either to destroy an instrument, or to showcase their “emotional integrity”. With Skanavi, there’s nothing like this, he doesn’t wriggle excessively at the piano, make faces, but produces the exact tempo and level of sound with seemingly little effort. Needless to say, a lot of hard graft remains behind the curtains, but each time his performance is pleasure to heart, ear, and eye. The first concert was focused on the music of the fin de siècle. Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Sans, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky…
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| Yauza Theatre, ceiling |
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| Yauza Theatre, hall |
Next week promises to be slightly less eventful. From this, I took with me not just new music, but new ideas, a half translated book, and inspiration.