Music in Moscow

This will be my final post on Russia before returning to our regularly scheduled programming.

There are few other nations on the planet with as distinguished a musical history as Russia. In fact, this aspect of the country was what originally got me interested in learning Russian and traveling here years ago: any nation that can produce Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Schnittke - not to mention a huge portion of last century's great instrumental virtuosos - must be endlessly fascinating. The richness of Russian musical (and literary) life impelled me to dive into the richness of Russian culture in general, leading to my 10+ year condition of Russophilia.

Moscow's Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, alma mater to Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Khachaturian, Gubaidulina, Schnittke, etc.

The value Russians put on the arts is enough to make any artsy American jealous. In the US, "concert music" is ghettoized to the conservatories and concert halls and is seen as a symbol of class and advanced age. This phenomenon has been documented in numerous historical studies: classical music in America has long been deeply tied to the classist ritual of getting dressed up in a tux and heading out for an evening of civilized, continental entertainment. The fact that the JP Morgans of US history have had to support the arts (as opposed to the generous government subsidies so common in European nations) is a telling indication of this. Unlike Germany, Italy, or Russia, we lack a deep history of native "art composition," and thus this music is not firmly embedded in our collective cultural identity. For much of industrialized American history, classical music has represented a sort of inferiority complex where the most civilized classes embrace the European musical legacy in order the bask in the golden glow of High Culture, a quality lacking in our own land.

Of course, this is a simplification - Americans, it appears, have always been suspicious of the "high/low" dichotomy inherited from Europe, and our most significant contributions have come from between the cracks, not from the world of "art music" proper (see Stephen Foster, jazz, the blues, ragtime, Gershwin, Copland, Ives, etc.). In American music, race has played an integral and dynamic role: as Dvorak predicted so many years ago, our greatest musical contributions to the world have come not from the upper echelons of society, but from the bottom. In this important respect, it is impossible to compare the musical life of America with that of Europe because the models we are following are so completely different. This huge complexity aside, however, I am always amazed when I travel around Europe just how vibrant classical music is to contemporary life. An opera in Prague (at the same opera house where Mozart debuted Don Giovanni, no less!) is cheaper than a movie; Wagner's third "Ring" opera cost $6 to see in Vienna, and the hall was packed with young people.

Classical music is a hugely important part of modern Russian life: one can see massive ads promoting the latest version of Boris Godunov when driving down Moscow's wide avenues; the Bolshoi Theater is one of the city's most important architectural gems, right up there with the oldest cathedrals and the Kremlin (it is also situated right in the heart of town); amazingly competent amateur chamber orchestras set up and play Mozart in the subways, much as a lone saxophonist would do in New York. I asked Katya if the average person there knows who Valery Gergiev is (the director of St. Petersburg's famous Kirov Opera and a regular guest conductor at the MET), and she looked at me as if I just asked her if Russia has cold winters. He is a celebrity there. We in the states have not seen a celebrity conductor since the days of Toscanini and Bernstein - even many culturally literate people have no idea who James Levine and Michael Tilson Thomas are.

But Russia is not just rich in its classical music life, as I found out during my stay in Moscow. I had the opportunity to see a variety of live shows, from opera (the Bolshoi Theater company performing Verdi's late masterpiece Macbeth), to klezmer-rock and avant-garde jazz. The klezmer outfit Nayekhovichi (self-styled "garage rock klezmer"), led by the well-known independent singer Vanya Zhuk, was a playful group that reminded me a lot of the experiments taking place in New York's downtown scene. Zhuk's lyrics were a polyglot combination of Yiddish, Russian and English (which meant that I could understand every third word), but for me the star of the show was the band's virtuosic clarinetist, who clearly understood the idiom of Naftule Brandwein and David Krakauer as good as anyone around today (see myspace link above for song samples).

Nayekhovichi at the Moscow Jewish Center

Russian jazz musicians have consistently impressed me. With the Iron Curtain keeping Western culture at bay and having not been privy to the developments of the style for the last fifty years or so (besides illegal samizdat tapes), when the wall came down all of a sudden Russian jazzers got an ear-full. Sonny, Coltrane, Miles - it all came at once, and many Russian musicians play with an excited delirium and a sort of "look what I can do!" innocence and enthusiasm.

At a cozy little Moscow club, I saw an amazing jazz trio (pno/bs/trp) led by trumpeter/composer Vyacheslav Gayvoronsky. The idiom here was something akin to Medeski Martin and Wood at their freer moments: deep grooves would give way to sonic chaos, which in turn would morph back into chunky, danceable rhythms. The highlight of the show to me was an original that featured a militaristic drum tattoo and march-like bass pattern; over this martial mix, Gayvoronsky screamed command-style exhortations into his trumpet. The whole performance was a ripping and witty satire of the meaningless absurdity of war. (For a sample of Gayvoronsky's music, go here.)

Vyacheslav Gayvoronsky Trio at Moscow's Dom

Like any independent music scene, Moscow's avant-jazz musicians are all involved with one another in a dense web of projects. The bassist for the trio above (Vladimir Volkov) is also a member of a very well-known indie rock group called Auktsion ("Auction"). Their music strikes me as possessing both a Radiohead melodic impulse and a Downtown experimental sensibility. Their most recent record, Dyevochki Payut, features Downtown regulars Marc Ribot, John Medeski, Frank London, and Ned Rotherberg. (Go here for a representative sample, a song called "Zhdat.") Like Stravinsky, Mussorgsky and many others in the hallowed pantheon of Russian musicians, the experimental scene in Moscow today is steeped in both wild-eyed revolution and folk-inspired tradition.