easter festival
Maestro Valery Gergiyev does his yearly Superman act in a Moscow Easter Festival of unprecedented grandeur, which is the civilized way to spend the May holidays. The human voice is the star of the show in the remaining two weeks of festivities.
TEXT FRANCIS MERSON feedback
It’s that time of year again: the aroma of freshly-baked kulichi wafts through in the air, Putin crawls out of the Kremlin to roll a few Faberge eggs down Vasiliyevsky Spusk and the gargantuan figure of Valery Gergiyev has blotted out everything else on the musical horizon of Moscow. The Moscow Easter Festival, the brainchild of the renowned Mariinsky conductor, is in full swing, but the best is yet to come, as workaholic Maestro Gergiyev performs his usual trick of conducting ten world-class musicians a week, as well as astounding the masses with a sumptuous symphonic program. The music of Dmitry Shostakovich, who was born a hundred years ago this September, has become a guiding theme of the festival, and his work will be featured extensively. The festival is fortunate enough to have the official blessing of the most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, Alexi II, so we can expect good weather for the remaining two weeks of festivities. The human voice takes center stage this year, with an emphasis on choral and operatic music. Of all the choirs participating, the one definitely not to be missed is the ancient-Russian vocal ensemble “Sirin,” who are performing on May 6 at the Church of Kozma and Damian. Named after the mythical bird-maiden who spellbinds mortals with her song, Sirin works closely with musicologists and composers to decode musical texts from the very dawn of Russian Christianity. This forgotten musical tradition is resurrected and given life by the opulent voices of the choir, each member of whom is trained in period technique. But Sirin’s music is no soporific plain chant, and the choir’s concerts have an earthy exuberance and spiritual passion that is truly exhilarating. Sirin will also be participating in a Gala concert of eight choirs on April 30 at the Tchaikovsky Hall, where they will be joined most notably by The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voice Choir and the Ukrainian chamber choir Credo. Yet another Mozart anniversary celebration has been planned, in case you missed the official bash in January, with the Requiem being performed for the nth time this season. But the concert on May 3 at the Tchaikovsky Philharmonic Hall will be a chance to hear a top-class rendition of the piece, with an all-Swedish cast of soloists under conductor Fredrik Malmberg. But the most exciting vocal event of this year’s festival is the concert version of the third-act of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walkere” on May 6 in the Conservatory’s Great Hall. Wagner is best digested one act at a time — if the third act alone lasts normal concert length, just imagine sitting through the whole thing — and this humane approach to the audience should be a real winner. Leading bass-baritone of our time and knight of the realm, Bryn Terfel, will be playing the role of Wotan. Terfel’s dramatic talent should come across even in a concert setting, not to mention the sound of his velvet baritone resonating in the hallowed acoustics of the Great Hall. The voice-heavy festival program will be balanced out by some truly exceptional instrumentalists, which Gergiyev must be given full credit for attracting. Winner of the Queen Elisabeth competition, Danish violinist Nikolay Znaider will be regaling the public of the Great Hall with the Korngold Concerto in D major on Sunday May 7, under the baton of Maestro Gergiyev, needless to say. He will be sharing the bill with the indecently young Polish virtuoso Rafal Blekhach, a specialist in the works of his compatriot Frederic Chopin, whose “First Concerto” he will be playing on the night. And, as though Gergiyev wasn’t busy enough already, Robert Schumann’s “Second Symphony” has been shoved in to boot. And you may as well just sleep over at the Conservatory on Sunday, as pianist Yefim Bronfman will be playing Bartok’s “Second Concerto” the next night. Bronfman won a Grammy in 1997 for his recordings of the Bartok concertos, and is definitely the pianist of choice for this seminal 1931 work. The concert will also include the “Tenth Symphony” of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose fame, it might be added, Bartok thought grossly overrated. So May 8 will be a chance to compare these two contemporaries. But the brightest star of the concerto series is Vadim Repin, the current violinist non plus ultra, whom Yehudi Menuhin called “the best, most perfect violinist I have ever heard.” Playing on a Stradivarius once owned by Pablo de Sarasate, Repin will be tackling the “First Violin Concerto” in an all-Shostakovich concert on May 9 at the International House of Music to mark the end of the festival. The Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra will be rounding out the program with Shostakovich’s “Ninth Symphony” and the suite from Moscow-Cheryomushki. For a complete schedule of show times, log on to www.easterfestival.ru. |
