The 8th “Europe-Asia” Contemporary Music Festival in Kazan
Reviewed by Anton Rovner
The Eighth International Contemporary Music Festival “Europe-Asia” took place October 19-21, 2007 in Kazan, in the Republic of Tatarstan, in the western Russian Federation. This festival has been held in Kazan approximately every other year since 1993, attracting numerous outstanding musicians, composers and performers from Kazan and other cities in Russia and other countries–in Europe, Asia and America.
Part 1 of 2.
Composer Rashid Kalimoullin and the Composers’ Union of the Republic of Tatarstan organized it, taking the name “Europe-Asia” for two main reasons: Firstly, Kazan and Tatarstan are located in a geographic area that can be viewed as a crossroads between Europe and Asia. The Tatars themselves in many ways consider themselves as belonging to both European and Asian cultures, and that area itself has witnessed the migrations and incursions of numerous peoples from both the European and the Asian side. Secondly, when Rashid Kalimoullin took on the task of organizing these festivals, he invited noteworthy musicians from Europe as well as Asia. The very first festival involved only musicians from Japan and Tatarstan. Later, numerous other musicians were invited from many European countries, other Asian countries and the U.S. – including among others composer Robert Pollock, composer/bassoonist Johnny Reinhard, pianist Joshua Pierce, percussionist Peter Jarvis, violinist Asya Meshberg and clarinetist Philip Bashor. Every two years, for three or four days, numerous musicians from around the world have assembled in the capital of the land of the Tatars, with so many events taking place during those days that each day has felt like several days, and by the end of the festival most musicians have felt as though they had spent about a month in Kazan. In addition to concerts, there have also been master-classes by performers, presentations by composers, and round tables conducted by musicologists. At these festivals, not only have guests from other countries had the opportunity to immerse themselves in Tatar and Russian musical cultures, but many musicians from all over have also had a chance to meet colleagues from other countries as well, and to get invited to festivals in Europe, Asia or America to perform or to be present at performances of their pieces.
Occasionally the festivals have taken place during years marking important anniversaries. For instance, when the previous festival took place in 2005, Kazan was celebrating its 1000th anniversary, as the first time Kazan was mentioned in chronicles was in 1005. The following festival, in 2007, marked another anniversary no less crucial for contemporary music fans in Kazan – the fiftieth birthday of Rashid Kalimoullin. Though Kalimoullin has presented his compositions as part of the program of the festival in prior years, this anniversary prompted the need to organize a concert devoted entirely to his own compositions. Thus the festival opened with a concert titled “Rashid Kalimoullin and his Friends,” which took place at the Grand Concert Hall Oct. 19. Performers who took part in the festival included the “Acamicimaca” ensemble featuring guitarist Rolf Borch, soprano Janne Berglund, pianist llen Ugelvik, and clarinetist Anders Frisdal. There was also the French Paris-based saxophone quartet Xasax, directed by Pierre-Stephane Meugé and featuring Jean-Michel Goury, Marcus Weiss and Serge Bertocchi. There was the Freiburg University Percussion Ensemble directed by Bernhard Wulff, including Kevin Sims, Olivier Membrez, Johannes Knopp and Wen Cheng Lee. Among the Kazan-based musicians was the string orchestra “La Primavera” directed by Roustem Abyazov. Among the solo instrumentalists were the aforementioned Asya Meshberg and Philip Bashor from the United States, and Kazan-based musicians: flutist Venera Porfiryeva, pianist Anton Semkin and percussionist Sergei Krylov. Kalimoullin himself played saxophone and percussion in the concert.
Kalimoullin’s music encompasses a wide range of styles and trends, from the traditional to the avant-garde. Some of his compositions performed at the concert are fairly traditional, tonal, and quite romantic in their mood, frequently very pictorial and expressive in their sound palette. “Vision of Palmira” for flute, piano and percussion instruments describes the composer’s impressions of his visit to Syria. Very intricately expressive in terms of mood, incorporating some Eastern-sounding exoticisms, it was performed by Porfiryeva, Semkin and Krylov.
Similarly romantic in mood was Kalimoullin’s “Poem-Fantasy #2″ for clarinet and violin, containing a fair share of virtuosic passages and contrapuntal interplay between the two instruments all of which were given due prominence in the performance by Philip Bashor and Asya Meshberg.
“The Frankfurt-Luxembourg Train” for saxophone quartet, masterfully performed by the “Xasax” ensemble, had a decisively neo-classical slant, tonal in harmonies, dynamic and vivacious in mood, containing a fair share of lively regular rhythms. It depicted the composer’s impressions during his trip on the train from Frankfurt to Luxembourg in October 2000, when he was attending the ISCM World Music Days festival there.
Fantasy #2 for exotic wind instruments was a very lively piece, very colorful in its textural sound world, making full use of a motley assortment of timbres.
“Night forest” for bass-clarinet, piano and percussion was more pensive, very expressive in its emotional mood, vividly conveying a nocturnal mood by its serene atmosphere and colorful instrumental writing.
Quite different was the Fantasy-Improvisation for alto-saxophone, which combined elements of traditional music, featuring a tonal centricity, with a fair share of avant-garde extended techniques.
“Fantasy for Percussion Instruments” continued along that line, incorporating a moderately avant-garde style as expressed in a colorful textural sound world. The composition utilized the most diverse textures, ranging from the bass drum and snare drum to cymbals, triangles, xylophones and vibraphones. Dynamic rhythmic patterns were masterfully combined with soft, intricate textures. The piece was given a dynamic performance by the Freiburg University Percussion Ensemble.
The last piece on the program formed the highlight of the concert: was “Hawaii” (with the additional subtitle of “Sounds of the Forest”) for string orchestra, vividly performed by the string orchestra “La Primavera,” directed by Roustem Abyazov. The piece, which depicted the composer’s trip to Hawaii, had a lush, expressive mood and very colorful textures, incorporating occasional exoticisms, meant to imply a depiction of Hawaii. Varied in mood, with contrasting fast and slow sections, depicting a lyrical serenity, as well as a dynamic vivacity, it made a very favorable impression on many audience members.
The second day of the festival featured a marathon of three concerts, all of them in the “Kazan” National Cultural Center. Mostly devoted to chamber music, they included some vocal music, folk music and other genres involving small numbers of performers. The first began at 3 PM, opening with Elena Anisimova’s two-movement “Diptych-Fantasy” for accordion, performed by Anton Popov. The first movement was slow and elegiac, albeit with a dramatic touch. It had a decisive tonal minor harmony, following in the footsteps of Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, presenting dramatic contrasts between loud and soft sounding sonorities, interspersed with a few fast virtuosic passages.
The Moscow-based composer-cellist Yaroslav Sudzilovsky came next, presenting an eccentric appearance with his suit and archaic-looking hat. He performed his own solo cello work, a “ballad for cellist” titled “The Emperor has No Clothes.” It featured a lot of slow notes and pizzicato chords, as well as a fair number of non-standard techniques for the cello, including taps on the bridge, strumming on the strings, and a few percussive effects. The music featured some melodic passages over a drone pedal-point on the lowest string, at times involving microtonal effects and frequently creating allusions to ethnic music. Less impressive were his attempts at making vocal effects, which included mumbling under his breath some barely audible spoken texts in German, interspersed with squealing sounds akin to singing rock music in falsetto. Added to these were some poor attempts at mime acting, featuring a set of distorted facial expressions and gestures with hands, the aim of which was to create a greater dramatic gesture than the composer thought he could have achieved with his music played on the cello alone.
Next was a composer from Turkmenistan, Maral Yakshieva, currently a Moscow resident, who performed her own composition for piano called “Maracanda,” the ancient name of the city in Central Asia presently known as Samarkand. A programmatic piece, involving a romantic story, the work presented an organic blend of the French avant-garde tradition with Asian melodicism, at times bringing in allusions to the style of Scriabin’s piano music. It presented an assortment of very delicate textures, which were successful at expressing a mysterious romantic mood by its numerous brilliant sonorous piano effects. Though at times hinting at being inspired by improvisation, the work was structurally and emotionally very fulfilling.
Yakshieva next performed music by another Turkmenian composer, Alisher Latif-Zadeh: three contrasting pieces from her cycle of piano pieces titled “Splashes of Feelings, Soul and Idea.” They likewise featured sonorous sound effects on the piano, conveying a sound world blending the romantic and European avant-garde traditions, at times recalling Debussy’s, Scriabin’s and Messiaen’s piano music. This was joined by a heartfelt melodicism of a Central Asian brand.
Kazan-based saxophonist Vlad Bystrov gave a superb rendition of a piece for saxophone and electronics by the South Korean composer Isang Yun, titled “Chinese Pictures.” The piece was in four contrasting movements, during which he switched from one sax to another (soprano, alto and tenor), along with a couple of non-standard exotic woodwinds called the “hulusi” and the “evi.” The electronic sounds, produced by means of MIDI, created special reverberations and echo effects, which proved an effective accompaniment to this exotic composition, the sound world of which was clearly slanted towards ethnic Korean folk music, while the sole “avant-garde” aspect of the music was reduced to a few coloristic effects resembling bird calls. At times the saxophone sounds were incorporated into the electronic accompaniment, providing for a more complex relationship between the two contrasting sound worlds.
A digression from modern times into historical times was brilliantly presented by Moscow-based musician Natalia Golubinskaya, who brilliantly performed a traditional Japanese work from the 17th century called “Rokutan” in six movements on the Japanese koto. Golubinskaya, a devoted participant of Moscow Conservatory’s Department of Asian music, dedicated to performing Chinese and Japanese traditional music, presented a worthy rendition of this piece, written mostly as a one-voiced melody with only a small number of added chords, demonstrating the classical Japanese six-note minor mode.
Next Golubinskaya performed as a vocalist, singing a Japanese song dealing with a tragic narrative, while accompanying herself on the koto. It was a plaintive song in the Japanese minor mode, accompanied with sparse notes on the koto, the end result producing a very intricate, texturally polyphonic sound world.
Romanian percussionist Mircea Ardelianu gave a brilliant performance of the Swiss composer Gerhard Zinsstag’s piece with a Serbo-Croatian title “…u vremeni rata” (in time of war). During the piece the performer read snippets of texts in Serbo-Croatian. The piece was very virtuosic and colorful, utilizing a wide assortment of percussive and other timbres in contrasting juxtapositions. Many of the effects sounded like movie music, some quite innovative and unusual, at times loud and at other times very soft yet dramatic. Some of the effects depicted scenes of war including gunfire and explosions, while other places included depictions of funeral processions.
Ardelianu closed the concert with a performance of a piece called “Original” by Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu. The work’s title implied many different shades of meaning, chiefly dwelling on the ancient Romanian musical tradition of exquisitely complex rhythms, mainly coming from Northern Romania. The piece was quite dynamic, at times nerve-rattling, as it incorporated juxtapositions of loud, deafening strokes with soft intricate ones. A focal point of the piece involved regular rhythms, beaten out on the bass drum with very gradual, barely noticeable changes, which formed the slow development of the main rhythmic idea.