Anton Rovner
"Europe-Asia" Contemporary Music Festival in Kazan
Among some of the grandest musical events which happened in Russia this past spring was the Fourth International Contemporary Music Festival «Europe-Asia», which took place in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. Though technically part of the Russian Federation, Tatarstan obtained a status of autonomy in 1992, so to a great degree its government has control over its own territory in a number of important issues, most notably its economy. As a result Tatarstan has access to money, which the rest of Russia does not have, which enables Tatarstan to establish contact with many Asian, most notably Middle Eastern countries as well as with Europe and, most importantly, set up some cultural happenings of its own. One of the most prominent of the latter is the international «Europe-Asia» Festival of Contemporary Music.
The Tatars are a distinct ethnic group within Russia, who have a unique ancient history and culture, as well as strongly found and held Muslim tradition. The Tatars are descendants of the Bulgars, who lived on the Volga more than a thousand years ago, while the theory of their relation to the Mongol Horde of Chinghis Khan is strongly disputed and argued for and, for the most part, against. Many important Russian cultural figures have also either lived in Kazan or visited there for lengthy periods of time and the city contains important landmarks and historical documents tied with many notable Tatar and Russian historical figures and events.
The «Europe-Asia» Festival has been established in 1994 in Kazan by the head of the Composers' Union of the Republic of Tatarstan, Rashid Kalimoullin, a charismatic musician, who has been successful in establishing strong musical connections between Tatarstan and an assortment of European countries, as well as Japan and the United States. The first festival, which took place in 1994, was devoted exclusively to Tatar and Japanese music. Since then the festival, which has taken place in Kazan every two years in April, has expanded its horizons and has included musicians from Europe and the United States. The format of the festival has usually been three full days of concerts in Kazan, featuring two concerts daily, as well as a limited amount of lectures. On the fourth day a selected group of musicians along with Kalimoullin himself travel to one of the adjacent cities within the Republic of Tatarstan, such as Naberezhniye Chelny or Almetyevsk and perform there.
Over the years, Kalimoullin had established many important musical contacts in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and a host of Western European countries and his music has been performed in various music festivals in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Chisinau and in various European cities, most notably in Amsterdam. He had visited the United States in April 1997, when his music was performed by the “Cygnus” Ensemble in concerts organized by the Composers' Guild of New Jersey, during which time he presented a number of lectures about his music and Tatar music in general. In April 1998, a number of musicians from the United States, including pianist and composer Robert Pollock (then the director of CGNJ), percussionist Peter Jarvis and guitarist William Anderson, the head of the “Cygnus” Ensemble, came to Kazan and took part in the Third Europe-Asia Festival. This showed the active contact which Kalimoullin and the festival had with the United States, a contact which was further broadened in this past Fourth festival.
The opening concert of the festival took place on April 14, 2000 at 7 PM in the grandiose Large Concert Hall, a new landmark of Kazan, built around five years ago. Large as the hall was, it was packed with people to the brim, so that there was virtually no place to sit. The program started with an arrangement of “The River of Saidesh's Melodies” by Tatar composer Salikh Saidashev, whose hundredth anniversary was marked this year. The arrangement was made by a younger Tatar composer, Shamil Sharifoullin, and it presented itself to be a Fantasy-potpourri for chorus, soloists and organ. This performance by the Opera Studio Choir of the Kazan Conservatory was a world premiere of the piece. It was a tonal, lyrical composition, based essentially on a choral melody of a Tatar folk music type. The piece was essentially sweet and sentimental in character, switching to slightly more atonal harmonies over a low bass ostinato towards the end, followed with a return to the initial tonal harmonies at the very end of the piece.
“Impañt” by Chan Wing-Wa of Hong Kong for four percussionists, performed by Idris Sabiriyanov, Adel Sabiriyanov, Dmitri Antonov and Sergei Khopynov was loud, bombastic piece, which was technically virtuosic, rhythmically busy and extremely loud dynamically. The piece, which was not very lengthy, ended with a loud theatrical flourish of sound at its close.
American composer and bassoonist Johnny Reinhard, the director of the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York, performed his theatrical solo bassoon piece “Zanzibar” in a very effective way, bringing out a wave of great, enthusiastic response from the audience. The performance involved taking the bassoon apart, clapping on a part of it with his hand as if it were a bamboo stick, blowing into the bassoon without the reed, as if it were a bamboo stick, playing on the fingerboard, and gesturing theatrically – which looked almost like a choreographed dance. The performance involved a sock and a ping pong ball, both of which were used as mutes for the bassoon and respectively thrown off in a dramatic way, after playing the bluesy main theme, as well as a conglomeration of reeds, used to create a sound portraying elephant calls. After singing out the main theme toward the end of the piece in the manner of a roaring lion, he finished off the piece in a series of dramatic tremolo flourishes, which was followed by a wild, cheering applause from the audience. The piece was very effectively programmed as one of the openers of the festival, and it certainly fulfilled this role in catching the audience's attention.
This was followed by “Duo for violin and clarinet” by Rashid Kalimoullin, the festival's director, performed by two musicians from the United States, violinist Asya Murtazina (of Tatar origin, born in Crimea) and her husband, clarinetist Philip Bashor. The violin began and then the clarinet joined in, playing simple, melismatic, repetitive passages, involving melismatic ornamentation around one note. This idea was then developed and extended, broadening out the melodic, rhythmic and, after a while, the dynamic range of the music. The beginning of the piece featured a lot of repetitive, texturally elaborative figurations, which remotely carried allusions to folk music. This was followed by more straightforward type of virtuosic passages for the two instruments, which nevertheless still revolved in texturally regular patterns. The end of the piece involved more sparse, single-line textures, and involved a more blunt, almost Stravinskian usage of folk material.
“Viola” for soprano and viola by Swedish composer Frederik Oesterling was performed by a very artistic Swedish violist Anne Pajunen Lindmann, who both sang and played the viola in this performance. The piece started with the violist standing with her back to the audience and playing soft, slow and sparse harmonics on two notes together, simultaneously singing two or three-note motivic fragments, almost humming them. The passage with the harmonics gave way to another one with alternating double-stops and regular notes, followed by a third on, featuring alternating two-note harmonics with ordinary-note double-stops, all of which had a continuously static mood, the main variety being produced was that of the short incursions of singing by the soloists. Gradually more dynamic and rhythmically varied and agile passages found their way into the piece, becoming more prominent, at times alternating with the regular, static textures. As the piece progressed towards the climax, the violist walked around the stage, sang in a voice resembling a purring cat and played passages in the extreme high range with dramatic textures, all of which gradually dissipated towards the end of the piece. The piece was very effective and its performance did full justice to it.
A world premiere of “Fantasy and Variations on Two Folk Melodies of the Crimean Tatars” by Kazan composer Alexander Mirgorodsky followed, performed on the organ by Rubin Abdoullin. It was a dynamic, rhythmically and texturally varied and disjunct piece, which juxtaposed loud and soft dynamics as well as thick and sparse textures. The piece incorporated bluntly tonal, a-la-Bach harmonies, which alternated with chaotically atonal harmonies, as well as all the gradations between these extremes. Thick chordal clusters alternated with thinly-textured quasi-fugal polyphonic developments. The piece was generally episodic in form, gradually becoming more bluntly episodic, demonstrating its theme and variation form. It ended very dramatically with an alternation of grotesque, atonal clusters with a bombastically loud triadic chord.
Rashid Kalimoullin's “Fantasy no.2” for saxophone solo was performed by the well-known French saxophonist Pierre-Stéphane Meugé (accent aigu over last e), a regular participant and a long-term favorite of the Europe-Asia Festival. The piece involved repetitive sequences and elements of folk music, organically combining Stravinskian neo-classical textures with traces of European avant-garde stylistic elements. Chromatic weaving in delicate semitone quavers, predominating in the piece, gave way to incursions of almost purely tonal melodic patterns, while the mood of the piece alternated contrastingly between the introvertive and the extrovertive.
Next was a piece “Dos a dos” (“Back to back”), Composition for Two Wind Players by Vinko Globokar, performed by Meugé on the saxophone and by German trumpet player Lutz Mandler. With the stage lights turned off at the beginning of the piece, the two soloists stood back to back to each other, with flashlights attached to them, playing episodic fragments of a pronouncedly atonal, athematic character. After a while the musicians start walking on stage, creating an impression of a well thought-out choreographed piece and in one section of the piece they intermingle their playing with short spoken phrases, creating an effect of a «dialogue»: “If” – “If”, “I love you” – “I hate you”, “I hate you” – “I love you”. The piece, essentially a crowd pleasure, fulfilled this goal and was charmingly amusing in its essence and performed by the musicians with great candor, zeal, virtuosity and humor.
“Questions” for violin, viola and cello by Tatar composer Rezeda Akhiyarova was premiered by three out of the four members of the «Lumina» String Quartet from the United States: violinist Lynn Bechtold, violist Boris Devyatov and cellist Melissa Westgate. The cellist came out on stage, playing a rhythmically steady eighth-note passage of moderate, “tonal-centric” atonality. Then the other two musicians, first the violinist and then the violist alternately came out on stage and respectively start to play in two-to-one and one-to-two counterpoint with the cellist. This way, the piece started out by sounding like a Bartok-like fugue, after which the music switched to more Romantic melody and accompaniment textures for a while. At a certain point in the piece, the violinist put on a metronome, which started ticking regularly, and left the stage. The violist and cellist returned to the two-to-one contrapuntal passages of the beginning of the piece, after which the violist got up and left the stage, leaving the cellist by herself to finish off the piece with the same rhythmically regular solo passage. After the cellist finished, got up and left the stage, the metronome continued to tick on stage for a while before it was turned off.
The next performance, though falling out of the category of modern music, was very innovative and in this sense “contemporary” in the context. It featured Japanese folk musician Kakujo Nakegawa perform on the biwa (a Japanese type of guitar) an arrangement made for the instrument by composer Kinshi Tsiruta of an ancient musical piece, the “Dan-no-wura”, which recounted a Japanese epic story of 800 years ago, telling of a great battle between two Japanese clans, an absolutely traditional piece of Japanese folk music. Dressed in an exotic, purple Japanese costume, she held a large triangle-shaped object, which turned out to be the plectrum for the biwa, with which she played it. The music featured sparse nasal-sounding textures on the instrument, to which the musician chanted in an epic style with an equally nasal vocal sound, generally presenting highly ornamental melismas around one note. At times the chanting stopped and only the biwa was heard by itself. Later on in the piece grotesquely timbred repeating three-note patterns appear with strong emphasis on the downbeat, which was sporadically cut off and followed by unaccompanied chanting. Other vibrant, repetitive patterns occurred in various other spots in the music, and some extremely grotesque, unusual timbral effects on the instrument were used, creating the effect of the most innovative type of avant-garde music. The rhythmic patterns gradually became more and more intensive and dynamic, though each one of them was periodically interrupted by a cessation of the biwa playing and unaccompanied chanting. The music, extremely intriguing and inspiring at first, went on somewhat too long and its effect had gradually worn out. After a while it even became tedious for most of us, who did not know Japanese and could not understand what the text was about. Nevertheless, despite its redundant length, to sum it up, it was a very impressive and exotic performance. After the musician finished playing and singing the audience showed its heartfelt appreciation by cheering and raving wild for a lengthy period of time.
The last item on the program was a folk-music performance of folk music guitarist Enver Izmailov, a Crimean Tatar from Simferopol, Crimea (presently part of the Ukraine). Wearing an exotic Crimean Tatar hat, he presented a very extravagant figure on stage. His performance, featuring a wide assortment of arranged folk music for guitar, was titled as “Crimea Album” and it featured a number of pieces, most of which he called out the names of from the stage. His guitar was amplified electrically and he was standing very close to the amplifier, which created a very amplified sound. He started by playing rhythmically emphasized pentatonic passages, which gradually became rhythmically more and more intensive, gradually acquiring almost ostinato percussive patterns. Repetitions and sequences of rhythmic and limited harmonic cells followed by extravagant layerings of rhythmic patterns on top of each other in the manner of Steve Reich's «Piano Phase». One of his musical numbers, which he announced as the “Moldavian classical lezginka” (?!) was rhythmically more vibrant, featuring runs in 32nd notes, though dynamically it was softer. The piece aroused a wild cheer from the audience at its end. Another piece, featuring a gypsy-sounding scalar mode, contained exciting rhythmic patterns with sudden dramatic interruptions of minute pauses, after which the music continued as before, adding additional zest. After a while the music switched to purely percussive, non-pitched, running rhythmic passages, after which the gypsy-scaled music. Each musical number was followed by wild, enthusiastic applause, shouting and whistling from the audience, after which he played the next number, towards the end asking the audience “You want more music?” to which the audience enthusiastically shouted “Yes!!!” after which he continued with more guitar playing.
Next day, April 15 featured two concerts, a day-time one and an evening-time one. The first concert took place in the Cultural House of Menzhinsky, and featured an assortment of chamber music. “Treasures of Koubratkhan – Virtual Impressions for Violin and Piano” by Tatar composer Larisa Khairutdinova was a moderately innovative atonal piece with lush chromatic qualities and a vibrant virtuosity, giving both instruments a chance to demonstrate their soloistic capacities, both in ensemble and in solo passages for each instrument. The harmonic language of the piece bore a slight resemblance to Ives and Carl Ruggles in their harmonious blend of innovative and romantic qualities, as well as the dramatic with the intricately lyrical. Some of the highlighted effects of the piece were high-range trills as well as melodic semi-arpeggiated passages in the violin as well as intricately sparse arpeggiated passages in the piano. It had a very descriptive character and carried the effect of depicting epic images of Tatarstan. The performance was by Marina Bondarenko on the violin with the composer at the piano.
String Quartet by young Tatar composer Svetlana Zoryukova was another impressive piece. It started with an atonal recitative-like solo line, played by the unaccompanied cello. After a while the other instruments came in together, playing a tonal, repetitive motive, over which the cello started playing a melodic line, then respectively the viola and the violins came in contrapuntally, each playing its own melodic line, the resulting contrapuntal weaving gradually becoming more and more atonal and dramatic. The quality of juxtaposing contrast between an almost Expressionistic dramaticism with an Impressionistic pictorial type of lyricism, almost of a folk-like simplicity, presented itself as an important element of the piece – though the dramaticism of the piece did not exceed that of Bartok's string quartets. The latter part of the quartet featured more overtly tonal, lyrical passages, a few passages with bouncy neo-classical rhythms, as well as the sequentially repetitive accompanimental passages in the upper instruments with the melodic lines presented in the viola or cello.
“Two Poems on Poems of Pushkin and Goethe-translated-by-Lermontov” by Tatar composer Ildus Yakubov, sung by Elvira Khakimova with Tatiana Sergeyeva at the piano, was an entirely tonal, Romantic song cycle with a lushly virtuosic and at the same time lyrical piano part and a lyrically melodic voice part, presented purposely out of tune at times. Both the composition and the performance had a quaintly naive charm to them. The second song was shorter than the first and had more of a two-voice polyphony in the piano part as well as a gentle minor-mode melodicism in the voice part, enhanced by delicate melismas.
Trio “Septima” for two violins and piano by Tatar composer Farida Faizova (maybe put two dots over «i» in «Faizova», since it is pronounced like «naive») was performed by violinists Oleg Moroz and Aidar Lotfoullin with Violina Blinova at the piano. It was a quizzical, moderately avant-garde piece with atonal harmonies and moderately innovative textures. It had a predominance of lyrical textures, which were interrupted with sudden, abrupt changes of textures, the sudden changes greatly adding to the piece's quizzical qualities. A curious combination of romantic, emotional qualities with cerebral, intellectual, neo-classical textures and rhythms provided a further addition of this quality.
“Three Page Sonata” written by Charles Ives in 1915 on three large pages, was a vibrant, texturally lush piece, used as its basis a chorale-type texture along with the BACH theme in its various transpositions, greatly enhanced by polyrhythmic activity and a highly spirited emotional mood, which at times subsided into a gentle lyricism, organically merging Romantic almost Chopinesque textures with predominantly atonal harmonies. Joshua Pierce from New York performed the piece in a highly virtuosic and expressive manner, bringing out the most subtle contrasts in the textural and harmonic languages of the piece and evoking a most favorable response from the audience.
Johnny Reinhard presented a world premiere of his new bassoon piece “Ultra”, which he wrote on the plane on the way back from Moscow to New York, last year, following his trip to Russia in May and June 1999. It was another effective piece for bassoon, but a totally different type from “Zanzibar”. Starting with key clapping and playing a low note on the instrument for a long duration of time, the composition went on, combining lyrical, melodic qualities with a quizzically sounding sparse textural approach, making up a much more introvertive type of piece. Essentially it had a combination of a reservedly lyrical and a more rationally cognitive approach to texture, suggesting a quality of intellectual discoursiveness – with just a few incursions of more extrovertive music. It was performed with Reinhard's unsurpassible originality, virtuosity and innate theatricality – present in even such special features as turning entirely around while fluttertonguing on a low note of the instrument.
Reinhard followed his composition with an improvisation, featuring his unlimited fantasy for novel musical effects. The improvisation started with emitting squealing sounds from the mouthpiece, followed by clapping on the fingerboard and, most effectively, putting a vacuum cleaner tube into the top part of his bassoon, producing a sound resembling a double-bass. After a while he produced an additional theatrical effect by shaking himself along with his bassoon while playing, causing the tube to rotate, which evoked great amounts of appreciative laughter from the audience. This dramatic flourish of sound with intermingled with a few subdued, introvertive sound passages, played both by means of fluttertonguing and ordinary playing. While essentially formless in terms of any coherent structure, this improvisation provided a great deal of effective theatricality and dramatic zest, which the audience greatly enjoyed.
A world premiere of “Three Pieces for String Quartet” by Kazan's prominent composer, Boris Tchetvergov sounded out next, presenting a sturdy, Neo-Classical piece of a pronouncedly traditional character, tonal harmonies, well-built form and a good sense of dramatic contrast between the three movements for the instruments. The piece was very well written for the instrumental ensemble and the musicians played it with great zeal.
The last two pieces on the program was “Cicladas” and “Interactive Hits” for three percussionists and electronics by David Clark Little, an American composer living for many years in Holland. These pieces, performed by Adel Sabiriyanov, Idris Sabiriyanov and Dmitri Antonov, turned out to be very exquisitely textured avant-garde sounding works, which provided a wide assortment of exotic textures, all mingled together to produce a real feast for the ears. Among the percussion instruments used in the pieces were xylophone, tam-tam, cymbals, rattles, triangles, and a lot of others, which were very successfully and tastefully combined with the electronic sounds.
The evening concert in the Large Concert Hall combined the genres of small solo and chamber works with large, orchestral compositions. It started with Anne Pajunen Lindmann this time demonstrating her talent as a singer, singing the extravagant “Aria” by Cage. The piece, meant to convey sounds produced from sleep and dreaming, contained a wide assortment of unusual sound effects and extended techniques, featuring a wide array of words from many different languages, as well as such extended effects as hissing, whispering, screaming and producing many other humorously extravagant noises, creating an effect of an extended circus. Ms. Lindmann did a very god job in bringing out the piece's extravagant qualities and humorous theatrical effects, all of which were greatly appreciated by the audience.
This was followed by a world premiere of “Tatarica”, a Fantasy for flute, oboe, bassoon and piano by the well-known Kazan composer Anatoly Luppov, which was a large, pictorially descriptive piece with pronouncedly tonal harmonies and thematic material predominantly based on folk material. The textural language of the piece alternated between sweet, lyrical contrapuntal writing, with instruments entering one by one and playing melismatic lines, to robust, bouncy neo-classical rhythms and tutti textures. The piece ended very anti-climactically with a passage for solo piano, which was a nice, unexpected way to end a piece.
“Tsurunosukomai” was another performance of Japanese folk music by a performer on a sukokhati and wind instruments, the name was meant to depict calls of cranes. The musician came out on stage and explained some of the extended techniques for the instruments, such as tremolo, fluttertonguings and others. The music itself featured long, extended repetitions of one note, as well as two-note patterns and elaborate melismatic ornamentations around one note. There was a general usage of what in the Western musical tradition would be called «extended techniques», which in the context of Japanese music were usual, natural instrumental effects. Among the latter especially impressive was the effect of holding onto one note for a long time while using circular breathing.
Another work by a Tatar composer followed, namely “Nuptial Dance of Geese” for female chorus by Masguda Shamsudinova. It was very rhythmically pronounced, dance-like and derived from dance folk music material, which though being Tatar sounded somewhat like Russian folk music. The piece created the impression of being an arrangement of folk material, which nevertheless was very virtuosically written and utilized all the various possibilities of a women's folk ensemble, including soloistic passages, elaborate contrapuntal and percussive effects, including here less than standard vocal effects of chirruping, warbling, clicking with tongues, humming rhythmically and other percussive vocal effects. Despite the very impressively descriptive effects and overall quality of the piece, its stylistic boundary was still very limiting. The second song was slower in tempo and more lyrical and elegiac in mood. It involved effective two-voice polyphonic effects and towards the end some imitation of warbling geese.
The second part of the concert was devoted almost entirely to orchestral music by Tatar composers. A world premiere of Shamil Timerbulatov's “Music for Chamber Orchestra” was performed by the Kazan Chamber Orchestra “La Primavera” conducted by Rustem Abiazov. It was a traditional, tonal, neo-romantic piece with some moderately extended harmonies. Starting with very slow, soft and subtle music with strings holding long notes, and a few subtle solo flute or oboe entrances, it gradually expanded to more lively, robust music with bouncy rhythms. After a dramatic climax and cadential point, it went back to the slow, subtle instrumental timbral efects, among the latter especially impressive was the interplay between the strings and winds entering and holding static notes.
“Memories for Chamber Orchestra” by Violetta Dinescu, performed by the same ensemble with the same conductor, was an even more pronouncedly tonal and academic piece. It started out with slow, broad, plaintive music with strings predominating, broad melodic lines in the cello as well as tonal clusters and textural layerings on top of each other. As the music developed it featured steadily recurring alternations between slow, static music and quick, dynamic music with bouncy rhythms.
“Stained Glass Windows from Florence”, Suite for flute, harpsichord and string orchestra by Kazan composer Lorenz Blinov was premiered by the same ensemble and the same conductor with flutist Vladislav Zakharov and Zelfira Abiazova on the harpsichord. It was a tonal, romantic piece in four contrasting movements, with colorful, imaginative orchestration and great pictorial qualities, almost as if depicting scenes on the streets of Florence from the Medieval or Renaissance times. Its first movement, slow and meditative, featured layering of different textures one on top of the other, juxtaposition of contrasting rhythmic figures as well as joining of contrasting registers – extreme high with extreme low. The second movement was fast and busy, depicting the bustling streets of the Italian city, featuring a lot of textural intricacies and virtuosic flourishes of both the flute and the harpsichord. The third movement was slow and combined extensive solo flute passages with homophonic chorale music in the strings, while the fourth movement was fast, lively and picturesque with gently swaying dancing rhythms and descriptively elaborate orchestration, most notably featuring virtuosic interplay between the flute, harpsichord and strings.
“Film Nightdreams” by Alexander Rudenko for piano and string orchestra with Zelfira Abiazova at the piano, was a four-movement suite, which was a conglomeration of movie-music effects, very romantic and sentimental in texture in mood. A quotation of the “theme of wisdom” from the beginning of Skriabin's Prometheus added some dramatic zest to the melodramatic composition.
The last piece was “Batique” for seven percussion instruments by Marcel Wengler, composer from Luxembourg, and it was performed by an ensemble of percussionists featuring Alexander Vinnitsky, Idris Sabiriyanov, Adel Sabiriyanov, Sergey Khmyrov, Dmitri Antonov, Sergey Krylov and Yana Mingaleyeva. It was a very extravagant, robustly loud, rhythmically pungent piece, presenting a lot of noise and vigor, which nevertheless held the balance very well and did not overdo the percussive effect. It started with exclusively non-pitched instruments, later adding pitched instruments such as bells, vibraphone. The initial noisy music was followed by quieter dynamics, though the rhythms remained regularly fast and rigorous. The piece presented great textural variety and imagination, rhythmic vigor and an exquisite musical taste, not to mention a charming sense of humor.
The third day of the festival, April 16, featured an afternoon concert at 3 PM at the Menzhinsky Culture House. It started with a piece by Tatar composer Renat Enikeyev, “Elegy” in memory of Baki Urmanche for cello and piano, which was performed by Larisa Maslova on the cello and Ekaterina Balandina on the piano. It was a traditional, Neo-Romantic piece, resembling Shostakovich, slow and elegiac in mood with thick, tonal harmonies and a moderately dramatic, lyrical mood.
“Doppelbelichtung Seelensturze” (“Double storms of the soul”) for trumpet solo by Karl Wieland Kurtz from Germany was performed by German trumpet player Lutz Mandler. This was a tragicomical portrayal of a suffering clown, who tries to do different things and continuously comes up with disaster and failure. It was an athematic, avant-garde piece, with an overall emotionally dramatic mood and a big variety of contrasting textures and extended techniques, including playing in the mouthpiece separately, creating a whistling sound, stamping feet, breathing and singing into the trumpet (in one place even coughing into the trumpet). In one place the player bent down and played noises sounding like gargling, as if he was throwing up. Throughout the piece, notwithstanding the effects the drama-tic athematicism continued, getting quite loud and screaming at times with plenty of feet stamping.
“Flashes” by Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim for button accordion (Russian bayan) was played by the famous performer on the instrument Ivan Ergiev from Odessa. The piece started with one solitary note, which was held for a long time, gradually getting louder and then softer. This was followed by an unaccompanied melody, which was then joined by accompaniment of sporadic sounds. An atonal, avant-garde piece, it was very abstract and athematic with many disjunct sounds but with an over-all concise, dramatic mood, written very tastefully and with great mastery.
“Sea Scenery” for bayan and violin by the famous Russian composer Sergei Berinsky, who passed away in 1998, was written in 1996 and dedicated to Ivan Ergiev and his wife, violinist Elena Ergiev, by whom it was performed in the concert. It was a moderately tonal, lyrically exquisite and descriptively colorful piece with very elaborate textures, featuring a great amount of repeated sequences on the bayan with sporadic, rhythmically irregular melodic lines for the violin.
Piano Trio by the famous living Russian composer Alexander Vustin was performed by violinist Rustem Abiazov, cellist Irina Lapteva and pianist Julia Blinova. It was a very serious-sounding piece with a moderate avant-garde slant combined with more pronouncedly Neo-Classical techniques. The piece demonstrated an overall philosophical mood with somber textures and a combination of busy, sporadic movement with reserved, withdrawn moods. It included some typical Romantic piano trio gestures – long, broad lines for the two string instruments over busy, arpeggiated textures in the piano. Towards the end the music became very slow with sparse, somber textures and featured the musicians doing some whispering, intermingled with a few sporadic loud and sharp sounds. The piece ended with a loud octave, resembling a “tonic”, which was dissonant in the context of the atonal music, preceding it.
“Hyperion's Tumble” by David Clark Little, an American composer living in Holland, named after Hyperion, the satellite of the planet Uranus, was an extravagant electronic piece with some video effects, including a combination of random and arranged musical arpeggiations, meant to depict the rotation and revolution of Hyperion around Uranus. It was a very abstract and cerebral piece, featuring a lot of sporadic computer sounds, juxtaposing long and short durations of sounds. It started in a sporadic manner and continued in a very busy, bustling manner, with plenty of bell-like sounds. Then it became more sparse and soft, and had some very high timbres resembling chirruping crickets, later joined by more low-pitched bell-like sounds. The music was accompanied by interesting slides, showing very colorful abstract paintings, shapes and designs, among which were shapes resembling spiders, sea-monsters, amoebae, Muslim rugs, fir tree branches in snow, glass tubes as well as abstract geometric shapes.
Another electronic piece “Electronic Frescos” for bassoon, percussion and tape by Radik Salimov, a three movement piece, was performed by Denis Tcherednichenko on the bassoon and percussionist Adel Sabiriyanov. This was a very theatrical, extravagant piece, which combined Middle Eastern-sounding folk music effects and avant-garde technique with rock music effects, especially in the loud percussion part. The theatrical elements of the piece included video and smoke effects. The video was less abstract than in the previous piece, since it showed more concrete things, such as pages with texts of the Koran and streets in Turkey, since the piece was meant to depict anxiety after an earthquake in Turkey.
Next was a String Quartet by American composer Allen Cohen, titled as “To the New Life”, which was performed by the “Lumina” String Quartet featuring Asya Murtazina, Lynn Bechtold, Boris Devyatov and Melissa Westgate. It was a large-scale dramatic work, which successfully combined a subtle neo-romanticism, sonoristic atonal textures and a blithe neo-classical rhythmic agility.
“Silent Odalisque” for solo flute by one of Estonia's most important composers, Lepo Sumera, was performed by Vladislav Zakharov. It was a very effective, colorful and expressive piece, combining tonal harmonies with avant-garde textural thinking, with an abundance of extended techniques (such as fluttertonguing, etc), trills, shrill high notes, as well as sequentially repetitive phrases.
“Cycle Races” for piano duo by Tatar composer Ilgam Baitiryak was performed by Julia Blinova and Violina Blinova. It was a rather traditional, academic type of neo-romantic piece of a boisterous, dramatic character, featuring plenty of bombastic textural effects.
Another piece of Japanese extravaganza, namely “Mutako” (Cranes) by Samei Sapo of Japan for the traditional ethnic instruments was performed by Kakujo Nakegawa on the biwa and Akikazu Nakamura on the sukukhati. It was very quiet and delicate, pointillistic music, which was barely audible, despite the fact that the musicians asked for the ventilator to be turned off during the performance. It started with the biwa playing what sounded like extremely Western avant-garde type of music. After a while, the sukukhati entered with its froggy sound, playing extremely slow and soft music. One could sense that time itself had become very extended for the two instrumentalists. Towards the second half of the piece the music switched from avant-garde techniques to more mainstream type of Japanese traditional music.
The last piece on the program was “Bosch Triptych” for four trombones, prepared piano and percussion by Kazan's venerable composer Leonid Lubovsky, dedicated to the 550th anniversary of the great painter. It was performed by the Trombone Quartet of the Kazan Conservatory, which was directed by Grigori Reutfarb, with Julia Blinova at the piano and Idris Sabiriyanov and Adel Sabiriyanov playing the percussion. The piece, essentially tonal in harmonic language, started with a trombone solo, after which the other trombones and the percussion joined in, playing fanfare flourishes in Lydian mode, remotely resembling Renaissance music. Later the piano and triangle joined, altogether producing a very colorful, descriptive, pictorial type of music. There was plenty of contrapuntal and timbral interplay between the instrumental textures. The music freely oscillated between loud, military sounds with soft, delicate sounds. The second movement started with more boisterously military neo-classical rhythmic music, later on switching to soft trombone textures added with bells and rattling drums. The third movement started with a merry type of solo trombone tune, followed by the other trombones joining in to play contrapuntal passages resembling a fugue of Renaissance ricercar. The piece was very theatrically effective and presented a very worthy way to finish the concert.
The evening of the 16th of April presented a huge gala concert in the Large Concert Hall, which started at 7 PM and lasted for four hours until 11 PM. The program of the concert listed only the performers and not the pieces or the composers, since those were presented as a surprise by the performers and announced prior to each performance.
The first piece on the program was “Double-holiday” for piano by American Meredith Monk, performed by Japanese pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, who lives in Holland for many years. This was a minimalist piece of a very absurdist and dadaist and generally silly character. The pianist started singing a minor pentatonic tune, then bringing in the piano “accompaniment” of a simple-minded character, starting with a one-voice “accompaniment” and gradually expanding to thicker piano textures. Throughout the piece, essentially one harmonic diatonic pattern was repeated, though the textures were continuously varied and expanded. The pianist sang throughout the piece in a very casual sing-play manner. Her voice was fluctuating from a humming to an almost laughing quality, and from a silly children's song to a grotesque quality of a crazy lady singing. At times the pianist shook and rolled her head around in a quizzical manner, adding to the “crazy” quality of the piece, which was a very amusing and extravagant way to start a huge gala concert.
“Elegiac stanzas” for saxophone and piano by Moscow composer Grigori Voronov was performed by the famous Moscow saxophonist Alexei Volkov with pianist Natalia Zaparozhchenko. It was a moderately avant-garde, atonal piece, which had a moderately expressive quality, featuring a rather Romantic, though fragmented type of accompaniment in the piano with broad atonal melodic passages in the saxophone, with a few dramatic passages for solo saxophone. The second movement was slow and dramatic and contained an assortment of segmented fragments. The saxophonist played into the piano strings while fluttertonguing, which produced an impressive timbral quality. In the third movement the momentum built up and the music became loud, fast and frivolously dance-like, almost rowdy.
A world premiere of Rashid Kalimoullin's Duet for two saxophones was performed by Alexei Volkov and Pierre-Stéphane Meugé (accent aigu over last e). It was a lively piece of a very linear and polyphonically elaborate type, successfully combining a pronounced modal language with vibrant 20th century techniques, and contained a dramatic type of lyricism. At times the music seemed to parody of Bach's two-part invention, after which the music switched to vibrant trills, tremolos and snippets of stylization of Tatar folk music.
Vitaly Kharisov's Guitar Quintet was performed by the Kazan Guitar Quintet directed by the composer. It was a tonal, lyrical piece, featuring gentle repetitions of tonal rhythmically pronounced passages, generally static harmonically, staying on one chord for the most part of the piece.
“Omneus tempo habeat” for solo soprano by the famous Swedish composer Arne Mellnaes (who is presently the President of ISCM), a text setting of the Ecclesiastes from the Bible, was sung by soprano Anne Pajunen Lindmann. It was a lyrical atonal piece, freely utilizing the unaccompanied soprano, though containing some remote allusions to church music traditions, namely Gregorian chant, which did not upset the piece's avant-garde qualities. It also contained effects bordering on sprechstimme, as well as vocal glissando, not to mention theatrically articulated staccatti, occasional bouncy rhythms as well as echo effects of repeating a sung phrase slower and softer when singing it the second time. It was a very effective, colorful and theatrical piece, which contained remote resemblance to Berio's “Sequenza” for solo voice in its abundance of extended techniques, though still being more lyrical, expressive and “humane” than the latter.
“Little Concert Music for String Quartet and Clarinet”, an extensive four-movement piece by Kazan's Anatoly Luppov was performed by the Lumina Quartet with Philip Bashor on the clarinet. Starting with the clarinet solo, then joined the quartet, the first movement started out by being tonally ambiguous, after which it switched to a purely tonal field, containing Impressionistic textures with a great assortment of timbral possibilities. It was a very colorful and emotionally inspiring piece with a predominantly lyrical and pastoral mood. The second movement was a Scherzo and featured grotesque repetitions of rhythmically pungent phrases. The slow movement was very static texturally, and featured the violins playing pizzicatto passages with the other instruments holding chords, later switching to dramatic string tremolos with contrapuntal melodic weaving in the upper ranges. The fourth movement as fast, jovial and rhythmically agile and finished off the piece in an effective way.
“Lupu yu” by Romanian composer Violetta Dinescu was performed by Elena Ergiev on the violin and Ivan Ergiev on the bayan. It was a lyrical type of avant-garde piece with sparse, fragmented segments, which nevertheless combined to produce a unified musical entity. The moderate usage of extended techniques in both instruments complemented the lyrical quality of the piece in a tasteful manner. The bayan sounded at times both like an organ and an electronic synthesizer, which was probably the way it was meant to sound by the composer.
After this Elena and Ivan Ergiev dispelled the serious mood of the previous piece by performing a popular hit – Astor Piazzola's “Adios Nonino”, which was straightforward tango music, the function of which was to serve purely as entertainment music, though nevertheless it was a sweet and inspiring type of music.
Two movements from the “Sonata for Timpani” by American composer John Beck was performed by Adel Sabiriyanov. It was a dynamic, rhythmical piece performed with great vigor and virtuosity. The first movement started very softly, then gradually got louder and presented a rhythmically repetitive pattern of an almost ostinato type, which later on became a bit more varied without losing its predominant rhythmic regularity. In certain places the soloist intertwined hitting the timpani with sporadic clapping. The rhythmic regularity gave the movement qualities of a dance piece. The second movement was even louder and more dynamic and dramatic, presenting a loud, regular 16th note pattern throughout. The ideas of the first movement were extended and intensified in the second movement.
The second half of the gala started with Rashid Kalimoullin's theatrical opus ”The Dream of the Expanded River”, which was performed by Zulfia Assadulina on the cello, Adel Sabiriyanov playing the percussion and the Dancing Theater “A Way from the City”. It was a very extravagant theatrical piece, featuring a great deal of virtuosic music, performed by the two soloists of a steady modal, harmonic content and texturally very imaginative. The dancers performed an exotic type of dance, possibly stemming from the traditional Tatar folk dance. The piece was meant to portray a scene from a Tatar folk legend.
Joshua Pierce from New York performed John Cage's “Daughters of a Lonesome Island”, written by the composer in 1945, on the prepared piano. The prepared piano produced an assortment of exotic bell-like percussive effects, sounding like Chinese or South-East Asian gamelan instruments. The piece featured a busy, steady rhythmic textural pattern, resembling gamelan music and was at the same time very lyrical and emotional in mood. It was performed by Pierce in a very musical and expressive manner, which successfully brought out both the experimental, modernist and the traditional, expressive qualities of the piece in a most successful manner.
Johnny Reinhard and Joshua Pierce performed in a bassoon and piano duet the “Meditation on Two Themes from the Day of Existence” originally for cello and piano, by one of the first pioneers of microtonal music, Russian composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky. A tonal, Romantic piece, which alternated a spirited, exhalted with a more lyrical and almost tragic mood, the piece employed quarter-tones and sixth-tones in the cello (and, subsequently, the bassoon) part. The performance of the piece by Reinhard and Pierce, possibly one of the first ever in Russia, was one of the most inspired ones that they ever did together, since they performed in an unsurpassably virtuosic manner and also successfully brought out the piece's exhalted mood in a truly inspiring manner. After their performance the audience applauded wildly, cheered and raved to show their extreme appreciation of both the piece and the performance.
The next piece was a composition by Johnny Reinhard, performed by the composer, titled «Urartu». This was a piece, meant to describe ancient civilizations of peoples from the Northern Caucasus region and was written «for bassoon and audience participation». Its conception was to find, trace and recreate ancient civilizations and their lost cultures. Reinhard began the piece by giving some explanations (which were translated on stage by a lady from the organizational committee), of how the audience should participate and how it should follow the instructions given from the stage. He then started the piece by giving a command to snap fingers, which the audience eagerly did, after which he shouted «Ico», which meant «one», which the audience repeated a number of times. Then he started to clap in a regular rhythm, which the audience repeated by clapping too. Then the «musical» part of the piece began, when Reinhard started playing slow yet virtuosic improvisatory sounding music on the bassoon. Then he said «Keg», which meant «three», which the audience repeated once, while Reinhard shook a sand-rattle. After which the piece continued with just bassoon playing without any theatrical elements or audience participation. The music was of an abstractly discoursive and philosophical type, and at the same time moderately extrovertive and theatrical to a certain degree. When the piece finished the audience cheered and applauded loudly for a lengthy period of time.
“Composition for violin solo” by Vladimir Beleaev, a composer from Moldova, performed by the esteemed Rustem Abiazov on the violin, was a quiet and subdued piece of a moderately tonal type, generally elegiac in mood. It started out with a plaintive melody, with a few intricate harmonics, then went on to a passage of double-stops and pizzicatti and then continued in a lyrical, elegiac manner with a few slight incursions of more extrovertive music.
An extravagant number followed, played by German trumpet player, Lutz Mandler – namely German composer Nicolas Heider's “Piece for Alphorn”. The piece began with Mandler starting to blow into his instrument, resembling a big tube, which was curved at its end. Throughout the performance the sound was amplified with an amplifier and echoed by means of a computer standing on stage. First he produced a whispering noise with it, then he started to scratch along its side as well as to hit it with his fist, producing a percussive effect. Then Mandler blew into the Alphorn, while scratching at its side, simultaneously, producing a deep sound, accompanied with an added chirruping sound – this effect was also echoed by the amplifier and computer. This was followed with a sound, similar to an effect of a brass fanfare. Throughout the piece Mandler produced a chain of successive unusual, exotic sounds on his instrument, totally unlike what is usually produced on an Alphorn, though a few sounds slightly resembled a natural concert horn. The audience was greatly impressed by this piece and the virtuosic performance and wildly cheered after it was over.
An improvisation by Pierre-Stéphane Meugé on the saxophone followed, in which Lutz Mandler accompanied by hitting a large tube and then blowing into it as if it were an Alphorn or a trumpet. The music played by Meugé involved an assortment of exotic, extravagant sounds including a variety of trills, tremolos, elaborate melismatic ornamentation, glissandi and fluttertonging. The music was for the most part melodically static, while being very active and impulsive texturally and dynamically. At a certain point towards the end of the improvisation, Mandler stuck his tube into Meugé's saxophone, producing a comical visual effect, and they both played for a while in that pose before the music subsided into complete silence, followed by loud applause and cheering from the audience.
Following this, Meugé performed another piece together, even more extravagant than the improvisation preceding it. This was “Double pas” or “Play on Mouthpieces” by Ernst Papier, which was in a sense an improvisation for two mouthpieces. With two tables set up on stage for the performance, Meugé and Mandler sat down at the tables and started to put the mouthpieces of their respective instruments on the tables and then to take them off in a loud manner, creating noises as if they were playing chess. The theatrical gestures were as much a part of the performance as the sounds which created the “music”. After a while this action of hitting the mouthpieces against the table was joined with that of putting the mouthpieces into their mouths and clicking into them, producing an additional percussive effects. Gradually the percussive effects started to accelerate in speed and to produce an accelerated rhythmic effect. At certain points they simultaneously turned the pages of their scores (showing that they were following the music scrupulously), causing the audience to laugh. After a while they started to play successively into several mouthpieces from different instruments, producing melodies from the successions of different sounds of the different timbres and pitches involved. After a while the sounds became distinctly two-voiced polyphonic. They were joined with some very funny screeching sounds as well as glissandi, curiously enough, produced on the mouthpieces, as well as percussive slaps on the tables and blowing into mouthpieces. This was followed by a gradual acceleration of sounds, leading to loud shrieking done by both musicians on their mouthpieces, followed by hitting the mouthpieces on the tables, producing percussive effects. Though a bit over-long, the piece held the audience's attention throughout, by its supple theatrical and musical gestures. They ended in a loud rumble of diverse sounds, which caused the audience to cheer. Then they finished off by playing a two-voiced polyphonic theme by Bach on their mouthpieces, during which they left the stage, showing that the piece had ended, after which the audience raved and cheered wildly.
Next, Crimean Tatar guitarist Enver Izmailov entertained the audience with another assortment of folk tunes on his instrument, involving ethnic music of Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Moldovans and other peoples, all in his uniquely brilliant and virtuosic manner. Some pieces involved unusual percussive effects on the instrument, such as, for instance, a piece called “Tatar Blues”. Another piece was an improvisation in the Tatar pentatonic mode, while a third piece was a gypsy dance, very pointedly rhythmic in quality with a 7/16 rhythmic meter – parts of the piece were played with exclusively non-pitched percussion effects. This was clearly meant to be a final number for the gala concert, meant to cheer the audience with some light music and to dispel the seriousness of some of the more heavy-weight music played previously.
As a final number to the whole concert, all of the performers who played in the gala did a joint improvisation on a theme by Tatar composer Rustem Yakhin, “arranged” for all of the instruments of the members of he gala by Rustem Abiazov, who “directed” this improvisation. It started with a very Romantic, emotionally-sounding melody, played in melody-and-accompaniment fashions, the “vocal” part sung by Abiazov, first in Tatar and then in Russian. Then the instrumentalists started to improvise on the melody each playing their own kind of music in their own speed, the overall result was a pop-folk style of music. This provided for a triumphant conclusion for the concert and for the Kazan part of the festival, which was greatly cheered by the audience. After this all the participants of the festival were taken to a restaurant, where we all wined and dined and pronounced spirited toasts prior to drinking the vodka.
The final concert of the festival took place not in Kazan but in a smaller city in Tatarstan, Nizhnekamsk, one of the centers of oil business of the Republic of Tatarstan. A select group of the performers, led by Kalimoullin went on a big bus, which drove for about six hour before we reached the town. Unlike Kazan, Nizhnekamsk is architecturally quite an ugly town, built in the typical contemporary Soviet style, except for a very impressive huge modern mosque, built about five years ago in the center of the town. The concert in the evening of April 17th at 7 PM, took place in the Concert Hall of the Nizhnekamsk Music College, and was attended for the most part by the students and faculty members of the college, as well as by the sponsors of the oil companies. The concert was led by esteemed Kazan musicologist Alexander Maklygin in his usual witty and artistic manner.
Zubarzhat Sadykova, a composer from the city Yelabuga in Tatarstan presented her poem “Tatar Kyzy” for soprano and piano, part of her opera of the same name, which was sung by soprano Indira Temirkhanova, accompanied by the composer at the piano. It was a Romantic, epic piece, with a moderately chromatic tonal harmonic language and a plaintive, lyrical mood and it showed the deep enrootedness of the composer in her native Tatar musical and literary traditions.
Charles Ives' “Three Page Sonata”, was performed the second time by Joshua Pierce, who took a somewhat more rational and cerebral approach to interpreting it this time, while maintaining all the brilliance of his pianistic technique.
“Sage” for solo violin by New York composer (and head of NYU School of Education composition department) Dinu Ghezzu of Romanian origin was performed by Asya Murtazina. The piece was not very typical of Ghezzo's style, since it was a modal, lyrical piece with a moderate amount of chromatic alterations. It was moderately virtuosic, and contained a reserved type of expressiveness, which manifested itself, among other ways, in a fair share of expressively sounding double-stops. The second part of the piece was pronouncedly livelier than the first, essentially presenting itself as an Allegro. The violinist brilliantly brought out the piece's expressive and virtuosic qualities.
A world premiere of “Johnny Spielt Auf” for solo bassoon, written by the writer of this report, was performed by Johnny Reinhard to whom it was dedicated. The piece, which contained a fair share of microtones and a few theatrical gestures, such as singing by the bassoonist, playing on the keys of the instruments, and doing a theatrical gesture of the performer's own choice, was masterfully performed by Reinhard, who met all the technical challenges of the piece and artistically brought out both the lyrical qualities and the theatrical gestures of the piece. Unfortunately the college students of Nizhnekamsk, who attended the concert and who had never before heard this kind of contemporary music with the extended techniques and theatrical gestures expressed their appreciation of the piece in a somewhat uncivilized manner by cheering and applauding in the middle of it and laughing at some of the overtly comical sections of the piece, particularly the singing and the place at the end, where Reinhard undid the top part of his bassoon and then looked at it as through binoculars, then took off his glasses, raised them over his head and looked at them from below. In a couple of places the laughter and cheering of the teenage students went louder than the piece itself. After the concert it took some effort on behalf of Reinhard to convince the writer of this report that he shouldn't be upset at this interference of these unruly students, and that in reality it marked the success of the piece with the audience.
Next, Johnny Reinhard performed his own “Dune” for solo bassoon, which, written on the theme of a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, displayed an assortment of new techniques for the instruments and used these techniques in an expressive way, governed by a well-built form. The performance of the piece was just as brilliant as that of the previous piece and just as well-received by the audience, who this time behaved better and expressed their appreciation after the performance and not during it.
Japanese pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, who lives in Holland, performed a piano piece by Dutch composer Toek Nyman, titled as “Tuweel” (or “Velvet”). This was an energetic, virtuosic piece, which utilized greatly an assortment of heavily percussive rhythms and vibrant neo-classical textures, modernized in a typical Dutch manner with more forward-looking textural elements. A great portion of the beginning of the piece involved a very percussive-type repetition of one chord (to which the unruly uneducated college students clapped along for a while), while the end of the piece was quieter, more sparse and involved a subdued chorale texture.
Elena Ergiev on the violin and Ivan Ergiev on the bayan performed another piece by Astor Piazzola, called “Tango Dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich”. Once again, this was a light, popular type of music, pleasant and easy to hear, which fit very well the ensemble of violin and bayan for which it was written and dispelled the seriousness of the music played previously. It reminded sentimental movie music of older films from the 1950's, and contained some extensive musical development, adorned with some tonally complex modulations as well as some exquisite glissandi for the violin.
Soprano Anne Pajunen Lindmann from Sweden and Russian pianist Evgeny Mikhailov performed Two Songs for Soprano and Piano by Arne Mellnaes, which were extremely sift and intricately delicate in both voice and piano textures with gentle atonal harmonies. They were performed with good taste and great devotion and technical mastery by the two musicians.
Rashid Kalimoullin's Fantasy N.2 for solo clarinet was performed by American clarinetist Philip Bashor. It was a moderately lyrical, modal piece, starting with a distinct melodic segment of a folk-music type of contour, which was then sequentially repeated and then elaborately developed in a very harmonious manner. The frequent sequential repetitions brought a certain amount of dramatic intensity to the piece and helped sustain its overall lyrical mood.
Just as a few of the previous concerts, this concert ended with another performance by Enver Izmailov on the electric guitar, who entertained the audience with his brilliant performance of a whole assortment of ethnic and folk music of various nationalities, bringing in elements of jazz, blues and even rock. His playing included some overtly extended techniques for the instruments including some virtuosic non-pitched percussive effects as well as a few distinctly comical effects, such as almost literal imitations of airplanes, cats, cows, sheep and pigs in one number called “The Kolkhoz (collective farm) named after Lenin”, both the title of which and the comical effects of which greatly amused the audience, which cheered, yelled, whistled and raved after each number and demanded more music from him. His performance brought the concert and the whole festival to a triumphant conclusion.
After the concert the performers were pleasantly overwhelmed by a large number of very pretty girls all of whom were students of the Nizhnekamsk, who were coming up to the performers, swarming around them and asking for them to sign their autographs. After this we were taken to another restaurant, where we celebrated the triumphant conclusion of the “Europe-Asia” festival in Kazan and Nizhnekamsk in the year 2000. The festival was one of great merit and it was very successful in bringing together a wide variety of highly qualified musicians from Europe, USA and Japan, and to connect them with a host of other qualified musicians from Tatarstan, Russia and the Ukraine, altogether creating a truly international, interstylistic and intercontinental musical endeavor.
