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December 01, 1995

A New Orchestra for a New Time

It's been a festive period for Russian classical music these last couple of years. In 1994 the Borodin String Quartet celebrated 50 years of performing and the State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov, enjoyed its 30th anniversary. This year, the Russian National Orchestra (RNO) marks its fifth anniversary. And so far this relatively modest milestone is enjoying all the attention that a precocious youth can bring.

In 1990, the Russian National Orchestra became the first independent, private symphony orchestra in Russia since the 1917 revolution.

Independence has had its advantages and disadvantages. While there was no state financing or access to acoustically suitable halls for rehearsals, the orchestra has enjoyed complete freedom to choose what, where and how to play. But these realities are only part of the reason that the RNO’s five years is seen to be such a remarkable achievement.

The RNO had to break the most rigid of molds. When it arrived on the scene in 1990, there were five or six major orchestras in the capital and about the same number for the whole of the rest of the country. Conductors held unassailable positions, generally for life, and their orchestras fell into a strict hierarchy, beginning with the State Symphony Orchestra and ending with the smaller regional orchestras. Promising young conductors usually had to spend years in the provinces, and even that did not guarantee them recognition.

That the RNO was able to buck this trend is, in large part, attributable to the tenacity and drive of the orchestra’s conductor, Mikhail Pletnev. Pletnev (pronounced Pletnyov in Russian) burst onto the Russian musical scene in 1978 when he won the coveted Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the age of 21, standing head and shoulders above his peers.

Just over ten years later, when perestroika opened up Russian culture, providing new opportunities for individual initiative, Pletnev became the first pianist/conductor to assemble a private orchestra. His unusual and striking character immediately made its mark. Indeed, for Pletnev, conducting is not to be taken lightly.

"The main thing in the work of a conductor," Pletnev explained, "is your authority as a musician, and that's not something you can be taught. When you take the stand, a hundred musicians have to believe that you know more about music than they do.


"It's one thing to come as a touring conductor and dance around in front of the orchestra to everyone's pleasure," he continued, "and quite another to work with an orchestra for say, twenty rehearsals."

Indeed, it is Pletnev’s talent and mastery of his music that has earned him the love of audiences around the world. Of course it also helps that his repertoire has so closely matched public tastes. Still, in post-perestroika’s cacaphonous and confusing cultural milieu, Pletnev has earned a well-deserved and rare reputation for originality, elegance and virtuosity.

And while Pletnev’s elegance, impeccable taste and inspired originality have been echoed by the orchestra as a whole, he can hardly be accused of autocratic tendencies. After the orchestra's first American tour  in 1993, Pletnev asked his musicians to write him anonymous comments about the successes and failures of the tour. And discussion of musical decisions takes place at open meetings.
In pre-1987 Soviet orchestras, such workplace democracy was unthinkable. The head conductor was, to most, more terrifying than God himself, or about as terrifying as the local party secretary. Even slightly aberrant behavior, personal or professional, by a member of the orchestra, could, depending on the mood of the head conductor at the time, deprive an artist of rare opportunities to tour abroad, possibly for the rest of his life.

Luckily, the RNO’s internal glasnost has never been an end unto itself. Instead, priority is given to quality, professionalism of delivery and choice of repertoire.

“In a musician you have to look first and foremost for the musician,” Pletnev noted. “He needs creativity and creative development. That’s the first condition. And the second is money, decent living conditions and trips abroad.

"It seems to me that our respected conductors have lost sight of the first condition," he continued. "Musicians have come to this orchestra to get away from mediocrity and be creative.”

And they have stayed. In the five years of the orchestra’s existence, not a single musician has left. This contributes to a very high level of orchestral cohesion, and may be one of the key causes of the RNO’s creativity and dynamism. Indeed, compared with the long and often slow work on new compositions by some orchestras, RNO's work is impressive: new programs are prepared on average within four rehearsals.

Which is not to say RNO productions are superficial. Indeed, leading western critics have repeatedly given RNO recordings their highest marks. The RNO’s debut recording of Rachmaninov was hailed as the definitive interpretation of this work; the RNO recording of Tchaikovsky was touted as the best CD recording of the year.

Still, western acclaim is just part of the picture. The orchestra’s Executive Director Sergei Markov stresses that the RNO’s work in Russia is the most important for its creative development, while tours abroad (which currently make up two thirds of the total number of concerts) are simply a source of cash.

“We work in this country,” said Markov. “I want my musicians to work here but live without financial worries.” Thus, all 120 musicians receive income from record sales, foreign tours, and sponsorship, allowing freedom from the financial life support machine of the state

"It's not really normal for an orchestra not to have state support," Markov notes. "But in these abnormal times, I believe it's great."

RNO musicians receive $10,000 a year in salary, considerably higher than the national average for musicians (around $800). This relieves them of the need to work abroad or in dubious, fly-by-night orchestras, which presently appear and disappear almost daily.

And this is important, because significant financial support from Russian citizens (beyond the fairly expensive, by Russian standards, season tickets, at $60-70) is still not forthcoming. For their part, the well-to-do ‘New Russians’ seem to prefer pop music. Yet this may change as this socio-economic group evolves.

Meanwhile, the RNO is aiming to win over a more accessible audience – provincial music lovers. Next year the RNO will conduct a major tour of 12 Russian towns on the Volga. For Markov, provincial Russia is a favorite topic of conversation.

“I hope that organizational difficulties involving poor hotel accommodation and roads, and trains not running on time will be more than offset by audience reaction,” Markov said.

The orchestra can well expect warm reactions from provincial audiences that rarely get to hear much of what is played in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Otherwise, the orchestra’s future plans are relatively modest. The RNO's contract with Deutsche Grammophon (the first such contract by a Russian orchestra) for the release of ten CDs of Russian symphony music will guarantee long-term financial stability. However, funds are not sufficient for major expansion, and, in coming years, Markov said he will content himself with perfecting the orchestra's musical output. His aim is "to preserve the orchestra in its present form... Our resources allow us only to subsist, not to grow."

But this is a subsistence at the highest level. The RNO is a world class ensemble in a city where in Pletnev's words, "life has become difficult for people who don't want to be financed by criminal sources."

The ability to overcome these difficulties is a triumph for the Arts in any part of the world.

 

 

 

Tags: pletnevclassical musicorchestra

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