We are happy to present a recording of the concert (at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on 15 April, 1982) which has not only a great artistic but also a historic significance.
It was the first and, arguably, the last time in the history of the Soviet music when three large pieces by Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina, the informal leaders of Soviet avant-garde, the “Russian Three” as they were dubbed overseas, were performed during one night.
It was 1982, a turning point for the Soviet culture. It was the last year of the so-called stagnation period and, at the same time, a year when the tide started to turn leading to loosening of the total control over culture and final collapse of all censorial bans three of four years later. Not long before that all of the three composers had been officially ostracized from the tribune of the Union of Composers and from the pages of the Pravda newspaper. One really had to have a reputation of Gennady Rozhdestvensky to put these names together in a concert programme as bold as this. One had to have a genius of Rozhdestvensky to put such a programme together in the first place. With those compositions by Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina. And to conduct it with so much splendour.
A short March which opened the programme and presented on this disc as a bonus track was one of its savoury moments. For Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina who had closely collaborated through the 1960’s, when the second wave of Soviet avant-garde only started to rise after a long period of Stalinist low waters, by the early 1980’s were not only far ahead of their former selves, but also drifted apart.
Notwithstanding a playful nature of March, which was written specially on Rozhdestvensky’s initiative, it is an absolutely unique as a fact of art. Probably the audience of 1882 would have been not that surprised to hear a collective piece by Rubinstein, Balakirev and Mussorgsky. The 20th century, an age of industrial styles, when the boundaries between arts and barriers between the world cultures were erased, separated the three of the most prominent Russian composers to live in the worlds of their own.
A pictorial and plastic dimension of Denisov’s music, a mystic power of numbers and names which becomes a pure expression for Gubaidulina, and Schnittke’s nostalgic feeling for the world culture and existential pain are all clearly heard in Peinture, Offertorium and The Census List, respectively.
Each of these compositions is a peculiar emblem of the country which was created by the work of each of the composers.
