"Europe Asia" Festival in Kazan

April 2-4, 2004, Kazan, Zelenodolsk, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia.

by Anton Rovner

From April 2 to April 4, 2004 the Sixth International Contemporary Music Festival "Europe-Asia" took place in Kazan the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. Established in 1992 and organized by the well-known composer Rashid Kalimoullin, the festival was successful in creating a creative atmosphere and a meeting place for composers and performers from Europe, Russia, Asia and the United States, among other places. This year's festival has once again been successful in creating a festive atmosphere for the arts.

The festival included two large concerts at the newly built Big Concert Hall, featuring larger compositions for large instrumental ensembles and choral groups as well as pieces for smaller ensembles and solo pieces. A few other concerts took place in the Concert Center "Kazan", featuring smaller ensemble pieces, but also some extravagant theatrical pieces including dancers and actors. One concert was dedicated to electronic music. There was also a trip to the nearby town Zelenodolsk, where the musicians repeated for an enthusiastic Zelenodolsk audience some of the compositions, previously played in Kazan.

The festival opened on April 2 with a festive, pompous composition by Kazan composer Alexander Mirgorodsky, the Third Polyphonic Suite for organ, performed by Rubin Abdullin. Its traditional style and majestic mood was a good piece to open the program of the festival.

One of the features of the festival was its inclusion of both contemporary composers of the academic avant-garde and traditional trends and a wide assortment of ethnic music from both Tatarstan and various Asian and European countries. This was represented by numbers of Indian traditional music, performed in a masterful and colorful manner by Indian percussionist Anil Deeksheet, who played on the tabla, as well as by a group of Turkish instrumentalists and singers, who performed exotic numbers of Turkish folk music, abundant in exotic, percussive effects, Arabic modes and extravagant instrumental textures, enhanced by colorful singing by a number of male singers, who also made extravagant dance movements on stage.

The bridging together of cultures, advocated by the festival, was especially prominent in the composition "Three Chinese Poems" by Axel Borup Jorgensen from Denmark, which combined elements of Danish folklore with Chinese exoticism, as demonstrated in the vibrant performance of Danish mezzo soprano Agnethe Christensen and Kazan guitarist Vitaly Kharisov.

Japanese composer Yuki Morimoto, a resident of Vienna, presented his piece "Collision" for violin and piano, an impressive, emotional piece, combining innovative harmonies textures with a vibrant expressivity in a very organic manner.

Quintet for clarinet and String Quartet by Rashid Kalimoullin was a well-built piece, organically combining elements of traditional language with traces of textural experimentation in the avant-garde vein, all homogenously merged by a broad emotional expressivity.

Especially impressive was the piece "Yalvaru" (meaning "Prayer" in Tatar) for chorus, flute, double bass, prepared piano and percussion, in which a moderately traditional tonal harmonic language combined with colorful effects for the combination of instruments, a warm expressivity and elements of folk exoticism.

Karlheinz Stockhausen's famous Klavierstuck N.4 was played in a very dynamic and virtuosic manner by German pianist Werner Barho, who masterfully combined the effects of the dramatic and the subtle.

An extremely contrasting effect was created by Two songs for voice and piano by early 20th century Japanese composer Kosaku Yamada, written very much in the vein of German art songs, pertaining to the tradition begun by Schubert, yet possessing a very distinct Japanese flavor in its subtle melodic turns and delicate lyrical mood. They were performed in a very impressive manner by two Japanese musicians studying in Moscow, soprano Asami Hattori with Maki Sekia at the piano. These two musicians performed additional selections of songs by Yamada, very much of the same type, each time presenting a charming and eloquent addition to each concert.

Swiss composer Jean-Luc Darbellay's "Sanctuaire" for voice, violin, viola and basset horn was a masterful piece, marked by an imaginative textural usage and a lyrical type of expressivity. They were performed in a duly qualified maner by the Swiss "Orion" ensemble, headed by the composer's son Olivier Darbellay.

This was contrasted by a very vibrant, virtuosic composition by Henri Pousseur "Madrigal" for solo clarinet, performed in a dynamic, masterly manner by Belgian clarinetist Stephane Vermeersch.

The concert closed with a dynamically exotic composition by Kazan composer Anatoly Luppov "Shurale's pranks" for bassoon, drum and xylophone, a very theatrical and lively piece with a saturating textural sound world created by the very unstandard set of instruments and utilizing a moderately traditional harmonic language.

Next day featured a lecture by Moscow musicologist Valeria Tsenova, who gave a broad overview of the stylistic traits of various composers, living in Moscow.

Following the lecture, there were four concents in a row, separated by short intermissions in between. The first concert opened by Kazan composer Boris Trubin's suite for woodwind quintet "Chants and Incantations for Spring", a traditionally styled work with a warm, mellow sound world and delicately expressive mood. It was performed by members of Kazan's Ensemble of New Music, headed by Anna Volchenko.

Danish singer Agnethe Christensen performed a number of Swedish folk songs, titled as "Hymns and songs of Dalarna" in a very exquisite manner, bringing a fresh scent of Scandinavian folk culture and mythology to the festival.

Bohuslav Martinu's "Variations on a Theme by Rossini, a moderately traditional composition by the famous Czech composer, featuring a very free interpretation of the original Rossini theme, embellished with Martinu's personal stylistic traits, was given a superb performance by Roustam Komachkov on the cello and Roustem Kudoyarov at the piano.

Tatar composer Ilfat Davletshin's "Bait 'Sak-Sok'" for flute, clarinet, cello and piano featured a traditional style with very exotic, colorful instrumental usage and a tasteful incorporation of elements of Tatar folk music.

A more robust sounding piece was Tatar composer Zulfia Raoupova's Music for two horns, timpani and piano, featuring an exuberant type of music, making adequate usage of the martial character of the instrumental ensemble.

At the close of the first concert Jean-Luc Darbellay presented two of his instrumental pieces, "Chant d'Adieux" for violin and viola, a plaintive, lyrical piece, where the composer's avant-garde style borders with a Neo-Romantic tendency, and "Questions pour le millennium", a more humorous, theatrical type of piece for singer, violin and viola, where short, fragmented passages for both instruments were artistically interspersed with the violinist singing some passages as well as insertions of spoken parts for both instrumentalists, featuring a dialogue about the prospects in the new millennium. Both pieces were performed by Noelle Darbellay on the violin (who also sung the vocal part for the latter piece) and Francisco Rafael Sierra on the viola.

Tatar composer Mirsaid Yarullin's Partita for String Quartet, a large scale piece with an extended form and dramatic, emotional content was given its due performance by the State String Quartet of the Republic of Tatarstan. Moscow composer Pol Dvoirin's dramatically expressive piano piece "Parable" was performed in a superbly expressive manner by Moscow pianist Mikhail Dubov. Japanese Yuki Morimoto, living in Vienna had two pieces performed - "Once in Arcadia" for solo violin, a emotionally vibrant and technically elaborate, virtuosic piece for violin, and a piece for violin and string ensemble "The Dawn Shadows" where the expressive and virtuosic qualities of the violin inherently blended with a mellow sound of the ensemble. Jean-Luc Darbellay's "Espaces" for solo basset horn, a short, lyrical, melancholy sounding piece, almost entirely tonal in its melodic language, was performed by his wife Elisabeth Darbellay. A more extroversive and robust piece was Kazan composer Lorenz Blinov's "Partita for two trumpets", making full usage of the trumpets' sonorous effects as well as their contrasting soft sound, which the composition combined, creating a sturdy formal pattern and a saturating dramatic content. It was performed by Ivan Nikolayev and Andrei Krasnov.

The second concert finished off with Kazan composer Oleg Lubinets's Octet for Woodwinds and Piano was a lively, vigorous, sonorous piece, immersing the listener into the timbral sound world of this distinct instrumental ensemble, saturated with plenty of drama and zest.

Part 2 >>