29.05.2012

An interview with Alexander Raskatov

Alexander Raskatov

Alexander Raskatov (biography)


 

 

 

Do you find it hard to be a composer in the 21st century? Do you never have the feeling that “it’s all been written already?”
Writing music is easy, but expounding your own experiences has always been difficult – be it in the 16th, 17th or 18th centuries. As Stravinsky said, “writing music is becoming harder, but that was always the case.” It’s another matter that previously, say two hundred years ago, there were not the sharply defined boundaries between a composer and the audience that exist today.
Nowadays everything is planned three or four years in advance. Following the premiere of my opera in Amsterdam, which was a huge success, the theatre’s director said to me “It is a great pity that we are not living in the era of Verdi. Then we would have signed a contract for a new opera together, immediately, but, as it is, I have a Dutch composer for 2013 and a German for the year after that...”
In that sense, science and technical progress are equally proportionate to the productivity of the creative mind (I now refer only to composers’ work). When I look at the dossier of correspondence I have gathered about my works it terrifies me. I need an entire room just to store these papers that are of no use to anyone!
Once I had a relatively important commission. I couldn’t start work until the client who ordered it had signed the contract. In that case more time was spent on three pages of correspondence than on the two hundred pages of the score itself!
If we were to say that everything has already been written and that it is impossible to create anything new, then in my opinion these are very fatalistic theories. As long as the secret of birth, the secret of death, the secret of love and the secret of the universe exist, then you can’t write anything that places that final full stop.

Living abroad, do you still think of yourself as a Russian composer?
The longer I do so, the more so that is true. Something strange is happening here, I have thought about it a great deal. I was born in Moscow and lived there for forty years. At some point I began to be interested in what was happening in the West, I bought sheet music and discs... I remember on one trip to France I brought back a veritable pile of scores by Xenakis and Scelsi.
I am still a member of the ACM (Association of Contemporary Music) which was founded by the late Edison Denisov. In 1993 in Paris a festival was established with his assistance. The renowned oboist Maurice Bourgue and the Orchestre de Radio France performed my Oboe Concerto. The hall was packed and even Henri Dutilleux was sitting on a step. Then Dumont released my first original disc, which sold like hot cakes.
Andrei Volkonsky, Arvo Pärt and Serge Tcherepnin, who were curators of the German publishers Belyaev, all heard this disc. They decided to ask me to visit their publishing house and they gave me some kind of grant. So it was at their invitation that I moved to Germany.
When I finally settled down there I had a strange feeling. I was surrounded by music that was totally unusual. The music of the composers that was performed there was founded in pure technology, while the problem of “what?” was completely replaced by that of “how?” It was then that, for the second time in my life, I felt the desire to sail against the current.
I thought about these problems a great deal then and I was much assisted by György Kurtág who offered me his friendship. He awarded me 1st prize at the Easter Festival in Salzburg. I said to him “I can’t understand at all if I should change anything within myself? Here the music is totally different.” He replied to me “You don’t have to change anything, you just have to know yourself better.” Since then I have been trying to discover more and more about myself, although in a foreign language environment that is very hard to achieve.
I would compare a composer to a pendulum, the swings of which cover the vast geopolitical spaces between East and West. You want to be everywhere – both here and there, and the broader the range the more people can be infected by their inner selves.
In that sense the opera A Dog’s Heart is very important. This opera was an immense success in Russian in Amsterdam and in English in London, while in March 2013 it will be performed at the Teatro alla Scala under the baton of Valery Gergiev.
I am a Russian composer and without this opera being performed in Russia my happiness can never be complete, though unfortunately due to the demands of Bulgakov’s heir, Mr Shilovsky, the chances of this opera being staged in Russia are zero. For the same reasons, a performance of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera planned for 2015 has been cancelled.
Interestingly, Bulgakov himself dreamed that one day someone would write an opera based on the novel’s plot. The archives of the Bolshoi Theatre, where he earned some extra money reworking libretti, hold a letter in which he wrote openly of this.
At present the famous Parisian lawyer André Schmidt is working with Shilovsky and me. This work is progressing extremely slowly, though I believe that in the end it will all work out. As I said to the lawyer, A Dog’s Heart was once “arrested” on ideological grounds; the second time the reasons are economic. They can’t be allowed to laugh at us in the West – they say that Russians can’t even agree among themselves.
The idiocy of copyright law today is such that you can’t take some lines without the permission of the writers’ relatives who are, at times, very remote from literature and music and are interested only in money. But imagine how many works we would have missed out on if Mozart had had to ask permission from Beaumarchais, Musorgsky from Pushkin’s children of Shostakovich from Leskov’s grandchildren. Thank God I was totally unaware of that law, or I would never have composed A Dog’s Heart.

For you, is music more to do with feelings or the mind?
Both. If there are neither of these factors then that in itself means some degeneration. A work should be executed with fire in your soul. If you feel nothing when composing music how can you hope to affect an audience? Music is a kind of virus that is passed on. But what is written with fire in the soul must subsequently be checked by a cool brain and sober mind.
If there is no intellectual component to a composition it is easy to end up with graphomania. If there are no feelings or the desire to reach the human heart the result will be dry analytical opuses.
Here I meet with the latter more. Several years ago I was invited to Canada and was present at the “births” of works by new composers. Even before the work was written the student had to provide a scientific analysis of it. The results were depressing. Who wants to eat caviar that has already been eaten?
Thank goodness there is a secret that is impossible to explain. Because if it were possible to explain music in words why would we need it as an art form?

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement in life?
For me the most important thing is the fact that through all my trials I have come to some inner freedom. I understand that I owe nothing to anyone with my music, that I have my right to a “message.”
I am not an institutional person at all, I don’t teach anywhere, I have no festivals of my own and I find it very difficult to keep that sense of truth to myself. I am always playing in someone else’s arena. In Great Britain when I staged my opera I had the sensation that I alone had come to compete against Chelsea and Manchester United at the same time. The system of protectionism for your own is so highly developed that that issue is for another interview.

Do you like football? Which is your favourite football team?
I’m from Moscow and I’ve supported Dynamo FC my entire life, I even saw Yashin himself when I was a boy. But now, regardless of the fact that they recently lost, I support Barcelona FC. I don’t think there has ever been such a team in the history of football. In Britain I like Arsenal and Chelsea, but I can’t stand Manchester United – or any German football for that matter. The French championship isn’t interesting at all. Just like everyone else I’ll be supporting Russia this summer. I’m delighted that Russia has won the right to host the World Cup; that will distinctly improve the level of football throughout the country, not to mention all the huge new stadiums that remain as a legacy to the next generations of players.

Do you have any hobbies to which you devote a lot of time?
I would love to play chess – not with anyone in particular; or go and gather mushrooms – nowhere special; or tell a couple of funny stories, to someone... I watch football whenever I can and I don’t really have time for anything else. My main hobby, albeit against my will, it damned administrative work. It takes up every minute of people’s spare time. If anything is going to kill Europe then that’s what it will be. I’ve been told that the average Frenchman spends one day a week just to deal with official letters and office papers. It’s like a plague which, thank God, has not yet reached Russia.

In your work, do you divide your music into the commercial and “for the soul”?
When I lived in Russia I worked a great deal in film. That fed me and gave me the opportunity to work for the soul. Moreover, working in film had another important “plus” – you were able to hear what you had written performed live immediately. Sometimes ideas intended for film turned out to be important to me and could end up in a work “for the soul.” Although to be honest, I commercial music I have always tried to avoid slapdash work and be sincere to the work.
Here, in Europe, the commercial music world and what I do are totally different things. It’s very rare indeed that a serious genre composer is given the opportunity to compose music for films, and the examples of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Schnittke are not really possible in this context.
On the other hand, if a work is the source of your existence then you can’t allow yourself to work without a commission and that can lead to several important ideas never being brought to fruition. And when you are commissioned to write something you have never thought about and will be paid for you have to say “yes.”

Do you think that Russian – and more broadly – European culture has a future? The world is changing so fast...
It has a future, otherwise I would change my profession. The global problem lies in the fact that in the 20th century, for all manner of reasons, there was a complete dehumanisation of art and, in particular, of music. On the one hand, there is music that serves the interests of billions of people, while on the other there is elite art for groups of snobs. Both of these are equally remote from true human values. The aim of music is not to compose better than the man next door or for millions of people to flock to it. You have to seek out the narrow path to salvation and each person finds it by himself.
Interestingly, now many highly respected composers have been captivated by the dances of cannibals in New Guinea or the drum fights of African tribes. This music, too, is not human, it dates back to the pre-humanist period. It brings together these two historical eras – the contemporary avant-garde and ancient folklore.
But I think that the world can change for the better as well if the ideas of humanity come home. We have come to some limit, and I hope that the pendulum will swing back in the other direction.

In the course of your life you have probably met many wonderful people. Which meetings do you remember particularly well?
You don’t have to leave Russia to meet wonderful people. I lived in Moscow for forty years and am sure that the huge variety of rare personalities we had twenty years ago is something you’ll never see again. Once I wrote music for a theatre production in which Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Oleg Yefremov were engaged. They were to sing my music in that film. And, one day apart, they both came to my house. I remember Smoktunovsky coming in and modestly introducing himself – “Hello, I’m Kesha.” I had a great time together with both of them, but I never even thought of taking a photo. I thought things would always be that way. I believed that everything that happened was normal. Because what was normal at the time became unreal. Basically I should write a book about everyone I have known.
Here acquaintanceships, even close ones, can have a business-like and therefore one-off character. They are limited from the very outset. The most curious thing was someone I met in Strasbourg. I once had to take part in a concert dedicated to the battle against cancer that had been organised by the European Parliament. At one concert I performed with Johnny Holiday and Jane Birkin, a major Anglo-French actress. We met, and here they are cult figures.

Previously, in the Soviet Union, freedom in art was limited by ideology. Are any restrictions placed on it by the world of show business, which today may be considered part of the world of classical music?
I can’t say I am a proponent of any “clamping down,” but there was one plus in the USSR.
The fact is that any action causes a reaction. But for that to happen you need at least some minimal current. Otherwise, as Pushkin said, “But whither shall we sail?” In the USSR the current was tremendously strong, and so those who went in the opposite direction achieved the most amazing results. People like Shostakovich and Schnittke.
Then suddenly everything was possible and it transpired that when everything is possible you can’t do anything. In his letters Musorgsky wrote very ironically about people who consider that the world of sound is unlimited. Yes, the world of sound is unlimited, but the human brain is not.
Show business is a different story. It places no less frightening restrictions on everything. These are economic rather than ideological restrictions. That is much worse because it is all about quantity, not quality. As humanity is breeding as uncontrollably as rabbits this could have fatal consequences. If you think of culture in the form of butter that you spread on a sandwich and then increase the size of the sandwich to incredible proportions then the butter will simply vanish.

Audiences of contemporary academic music are not very large in number. Why do you do what you do?
I don’t really agree with the way you put the question. Academic means frozen, stopped in its development. There are, indeed, sects of composers who are sufficiently influential and powerful. They take care of themselves as it’s easier to survive in a group. But personally I don’t associate myself with any school. That results in certain difficulties, though I’ve probably been lucky. When my works have been performed – at the Concertgebouw, at the Herkulesaal in Munich and Festival Hall in London – the auditoriums were packed. There were eight performances of my opera in Amsterdam and seven in London – in both cases some five hundred people tried unsuccessfully to buy tickets for the final performances and were left outside. I think that is a good indicator as to the music.
Our mistake is that we are turning contemporary music into a bugbear, a scarecrow. I think that the best way forward is to have regular mixed programmes. You can’t create reservations as has been done for native tribes for the music that is being composed today. It has to live within the context of works of the past – only then can it appear in fresh colours.
Yet another global problem is the complete zombification of audiences. Now, thanks to the internet, people can gather information very quickly; but the expansion of their minds and independent thought are inversely proportionate.
Everyone complains about being incredibly tired. People don’t want to think. They want to have fun.
Recently at one major French opera house there was a performance of Wozzeck, an almost classical opera. The review said “Why do the French need Wozzeck? Why would a tired person coming home after work want to listen to this music?”
I believe that the very term “contemporary music” is completely false. Didn’t Schubert compose contemporary music? Each composer writes in the age he lives. You could place a negative subtext in the phrase “contemporary music” – in that case it is music that is born and that will die with its own era.
In all other cases, for me it is simply music.

Speaking with Yekaterina Yusupova

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