Music in Rousse in 2008
The city of Rousse where I am sometimes based has a lively musical life for a city which is about the size of Galway. I first came here in 1996, when a piece of mine, Samsara for orchestra, was being recorded on the VMM label with Arts Council assistance by the Ruse Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Tsanko Delibosov. At that time, the orchestral musicians were very overworked and very underpaid, and our recording project was one of a number which their enterprising leadership had lined up for them that season. Sadly, twelve years on the Ruse Philharmonia as it then was no longer exists, having been amalgamated with the Ruse Opera Orchestra to form the Opera Philharmonia Ruse, a development which was inevitable given the economic conditions of the emerging East-European democracies in the 1990’s and the fact that a city of a little over 100,000 people was supporting two full-time orchestras.
The new orchestral entity was pared down from being the sum of the two merging orchestras to one with around 50 players, an exercise which inevitably resulted in some hard losses for some of the musicians and which was resented by many as a further indication of what they saw as the lack of importance which the administration placed on musical culture, a point of view I find at odds with my own experience, for I have only Ireland, where there are two professional symphony orchestras for the entire country south of the border, to use as a comparison.
The first steps towards a professional musical life in Ruse are taken by many musicians in the Spetsialna Musikalna Uchilishta, a secondary school which teaches core subjects but which places a very special emphasis on music. It’s difficult to be accepted as a student here and standards are high. Specialisation in Bulgaria begins early, but is a necessary feature of any musical education when it is the work done before puberty which lays the basis of the musician’s future technique, and no student who hasn’t already attained a sound basic technical foundation in their instrument would be able to attend the Musikalna Uchilishta.
Many students, after finishing the Musicalna Uchilishta, would go on to study in Sofia in the Conservatoire, and then take up jobs in orchestras either in Bulgaria or abroad, where a great many emigrant Bulgarian musicians have found work in bad economic times. The Rousse Philharmonia and the Opera Orchestra lost many of their best young players to places as far afield as Argentina, Spain, Germany and other countries where opportunities were available and a musician's pay was enough to live on and raise a family. Now conditions are better, but musicians, being subsidised by the local councils, are still poorly paid, and many do other work to supplement their meagre incomes.
Much of the performances which the orchestra are called upon to do are based around the normal symphonic repertoire, but a far wider choice in programming is discernible, and pieces by national composers both living and dead are far more frequently featured than would be the case in Ireland, RTÉ’s contributions in this area notwithstanding. Additionally there is all year round opera presentation in the Opera House, and the standards of production are very high not just in terms of the musical presentation, but also in terms of mises-en-scene and lighting.
The highlight of the Rousse musical year has just finished: the 2008 March Music Days. This is two weeks of music playing from orchestras across Europe and Bulgaria, and with soloists and chamber ensembles from all over the world. Standards vary from the pedestrian to the spectacular, and this year was no exception.
The closing concert by the Plovdiv Opera-philharmonic Society conducted by Georgi Dimitrov was disappointing, in spite of the superb soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto consisting of Paris-based trio Svetlin Roussev (violin, one of Rousse’s sons), Elena Rozanova (piano, from Odessa) and Sebastien Van Kuijk (cello). I put the failure for this concert to ignite down to the fact that Dimitrov’s conducting is of the “Here comes a climax” variety, and since neither the Beethoven, nor Mahler’s first symphony (the other work in the programme) are in any way built out of climactic gestures, it seemed as though Dimitrov just didn’t know what to do with the plain ordinary bits to make them glow.
By contrast, one night previously, the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Romanian conductor Horea Andreescu gave scintillating performances of an early work by Ligeti, the “Concert Romanesc”, the Brahms Violin concerto with American Elmar Oliveira as soloist, and Beethoven’s ubiquitous Fifth Symphony. The difference in the conducting approaches was evident: while Dimitrov conducted the big themes, Andreescu conducted the accompaniments, very much like I have seen Gerhard Markson do with the NSOI, focussing on the inner detail and so allowing the larger gestures to stand out in relief without needing to force them.
The great Yuri Bashmet conducted his Novaya Rossiya Orchestra, but really he should stick to playing his instrument and forget about conducting because while he has a huge musical intelligence, his conducting is lamentable. His Schnittke Viola concerto was intense, but only because he was the soloist, not the conductor. Anyway the programme itself was grim: Emil Tabakov’s Ad Infinitum, which lived up to its title, the already mentioned Schnittke, one of his darkest essays, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth symphony which under Bashmet had to be one of the grossest performances I’ve ever heard.
Other highlights of these two weeks for me were Gidon Kremers “Kremerata Baltica” which played Haydn’s “7 last words”, Desyatnikov’s “Wie der alte Leiermann” and Piazolla’s Suite “Punta del Este”. I am not a religious man, but during the Haydn I was brought close to the concept of God; during the Desyatnikov I was brought closer to my fellow Humanity, and during the Piazolla I felt I was being seduced down into Hell. It was all sinfully delicious.
The festival has a masterclass element as well. During my first March Music Days experience a few years ago, there ware composition masterclasses which I sat in on given by German-based composer Bojidar Spassov. This year it was the turn of conductors and their presentation was notable in that all four conductors under the tutelage of Simeon Pironkoff gave renditions of pieces none of which dated from before the early 1930’s, the composers represented being Anton Webern, Salvatore Sciarrino, Morton Feldman, and Tristan Murail. This was a very impressive concert and one which I feel holds the key to my empathy with this city and its musicians, and it’s the sense that contemporary music is very much a part of the musicians lives, not something which is done out of a sense of duty.