“It is necessary to support young composers now,” says the festival’s artistic director Zalina Kardanova. “It is difficult to promote this kind of music alone: I think it is difficult to attract the general public. For young composers, our project can become a professional creative platform for self-realization and demonstration of their creativity.”
The first concert of the festival featured works in the categories of choral music and chamber music; in the second, the audience heard miniatures by Irina Latysheva, Sergei Bagauri and Erdzhanik Oganesyan. The solemn opening of the festival was held by the Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory and its permanent conductor Alexander Solovyov, who was directly involved in the selection of works. His team proudly bears the title of one of the best performers of modern academic music; it is difficult to enumerate how many newly written premieres it performed; hence the choral works of the participants of “Art XXI”, his senior colleagues Rodion Shchedrin, Efrem Podgaits and Elena Atrashkevich appeared in first form.
The range of images, ideas and concepts in the works of young authors was very diverse. A student of the Moscow Conservatory, Ilgiz Torobekov, captured the image of a beautiful girl in his choral miniatures; in “Koren Nury”, Farhad Bakhtiyari drew on the polyphony of Near and Middle Eastern traditions, and Maria Saitbatalova was inspired by Rachmaninoff’s Spiritual Concert “The Mother of God Who Never Sleeps in Prayer”. The winner of the international Tchaikovsky competition, pianist Valentin Malinin, who, as it turned out, writes music with talent, deserved special attention from the audience. The chamber choir performed the world premiere of Valentin In bono veritas, imbued with philosophical ideas: at the climax, the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates sounded heart-rending: “Everyone has the sun”. It is in this, according to the author, that one sees the guiding thread of liberation from the vicious stage from the dark labyrinth of the “irretrievably lost century”.
Another choral group that supported the work of young people was the Moscow Synodal Choir under the direction of Alexei Puzakov. They had the honour of performing another world premiere by Valentin Malinin – the choir “In Memory of the Unknown Soldier”, created on the poems of a front-line poet mourning the death of his best friend and composer, who deeply perceived with his musical sensitivity the sounds of war around him and transferred them to musical paper. Taking up the idea of the festival, young conductors also brilliantly performed at the opening concert – Taras Yasenkov, Natalya Laikevich, Alexey Komarov and Mikhail Kotelnikov. Mikhail not only brilliantly worked with the Moscow Synodal Choir, presenting works by Maria Kosheva and Alexei Novikov, but also presented to the audience his composition “Now the Powers of Heaven”. “Melodies of the New Century” – that was the name of the evening – clearly showed what inspires and how interesting young composers think. Perhaps the future of modern academic music lies with them.
