A Conservatory in Peril

Rumors, potent as legal tender in Moscow, have always figured in the history of the celebrated Moscow Conservatory. The hallowed walls resonate with countless memories of inimitable music-making. It has an incomparable pedagogical legacy. But though stories of the school’s poor condition have circulated amidst the Russian musical community for years, the recent closing of the Great Hall’s balconies set off seismic shock waves. Cries of “The balconies are falling!” and “It will have to be sold!” ricocheted through the city and out into the world’s musical community, where the alarm caught international attention. In truth, the balconies are not falling, the hall will not be sold, and the school will continue. But the realities of the school’s poor condition have gained new urgency: structural engineers have confirmed that the 103 year-old building is not only creaking – it’s very nearly floating.

The Conservatory’s gracious façade looks the same as it always has; Tchaikovsky still sits atop his monument, his gaze fixed and resolute, his arms outstretched to gifted young musicians from all over the globe. But behind its pale yellow walls, the elegant Neoclassical building, begun in 1895, begs even simple maintenance. Despite the school’s prominence as one of the world’s premiere musical institutions, conditions have been deteriorating for years. And no one seems to have understood the severity of the problems until a major fire in December 2002 prompted engineers to thoroughly examine the structure. Their findings are startling: original stone foundations have cracked and weakened, causing serious stress and instability to the walls of the three-storied building. Authorities closed the balconies of the Great Hall for fear of their collapse into the audience. “Since its completion in 1901, the school has undergone no renovation save minor cosmetic work,” said Yelena Sorokina, Vice-Rector of Performing Arts and Research. “Without major renovation in the very near future, the building may indeed collapse. Already some of the buildings around the Conservatory have been condemned and must be demolished.”

But how has this Russian cultural jewel come to such a state of crisis? Well, to begin with, the original buildings on what is now Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa, some of which date to the 18th century, were built over three underground rivers. Indeed, the geological conditions of Moscow, founded on a swamp in the 11th century, have always complicated structural integrity. “Many places in Moscow are not favorable for construction, due to underground water,” said Alexei Zuyev, Vice Rector of Moscow Conservatory for Administration and General Services. “One of the negative factors that affect most buildings is the so-called ‘erosion hazard,’ which shows itself throughout the city’s older buildings. During the last decade, the level of underground waters has changed due to various man-made developments. As the ground settles and shifts, sand gets into cracks in the limestone foundations and causes craters.”

That the Moscow Conservatory was built on such problematic terrain is understandable. These peculiar geological conditions were not well enough understood one hundred years ago. But while such compromising conditions make repair difficult, it is not impossible. “New technologies now allow for construction of buildings of almost any height throughout the city,” said Zuyev. That the Conservatory has been so heavily used and so long neglected, however, complicates the task immeasurably.

Though many builders used wooden piles for ground compression in Moscow up until the late 19th century, engineers have found no trace of them under the Conservatory. “The foundations have no wooden components,” Zuyev said. “They are largely made of natural stone, strengthened by a limestone solution. As the binding limestone washes out, the foundation weakens and loses its weight-bearing capacity. Now, in many cases, we can dismantle the stones with our hands. The other peculiarity is the reduction of weight-bearing capacity of the ground, the base, due to changes in hydrological conditions, and the dynamic affects of traffic and other man-made factors. This is true of the Conservatory buildings located on Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa and in Sobinov pereulok. In fact, the building on Sobinov pereulok has so deteriorated, due to uneven settlement, that we can no longer use it.”

Though the condition of the foundations has necessitated the closing of one section of the Great Hall’s balcony, repair is possible, Zuyev said. “The technology for such a repair has already been tested and used many times in Moscow, with good success. We can inject a special solution into the foundations, which will provide suitable connective (bonding) material to fill the foundation’s cracks and bond it to the base ground.” But just strengthening the foundation will not prevent settlement. Only the installation of piles, an expensive process, can do that.

The condition of the Great Hall is not currently hazardous, however. “The structural integrity has been thoroughly checked and analyzed,” Zuyev said. “As a result, we have defined a relatively small zone of the balconies where it is not desirable for the audience to be. However, wear and tear of the hall is ongoing, and prevention of further deterioration will require renovation of a number of weight-bearing support structures under the balconies and the floors.” But for an institution chronically under-funded, such repairs, while structurally possible, remain financially out of reach. Since 1904, not only has there been no renovation; there has been little maintenance.

The fire of December 2002 was almost inevitable, given the decrepit state of the building’s wiring. Ignited by an electrical short in a second floor classroom, the fire raged for hours through one wing of the main building; the Great Hall suffered no visible damage. As is common, the water used by firefighters proved more destructive than the flames. Flooding saturated the library, where it damaged priceless manuscripts, scores and letters, and buckled whole sections of flooring. Water damage not only stripped plaster off walls but also exposed remaining shreds of insulation off an electrical system installed in the 1940s. Sixteen historical grand pianos were damaged or destroyed. For weeks, students stepped around charred and waterlogged debris, without electricity, phones or heat.

Two years later, only some of the damage has been repaired; students and faculty continue to suffer dim, musty corridors, crumbling plaster, substandard plumbing and electrical systems. Worse, the fire and subsequent water damage have accelerated forces that have been undermining the building’s structural integrity for decades. Like most Russian public institutions, the Moscow Conservatory is a federal institution largely supported by government financial allocations, which do not, alas, include fire insurance. Since the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991, federal subsidies have been on the decline, just as the building’s long-standing problems have grown to a point of crisis. The entire musical world could indeed lose one of its greatest treasures.

An Incomparable Tradition

The Moscow Conservatory, cradle of a pedagogy central to Western musical culture for over a century, has reigned as one of the world’s greatest musical institutions. Graduates best known in the West include Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Scriabin, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, David Oistrakh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lazar Berman, Bella Davidovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Spivakov, Ivo Pogorelich, Mikhail Pletnev, Yuri Bashmet, Vladimir Feltsman, and Nikolai Lugansky – and scores more if we add those known mostly in Europe. Hundreds more graduates, having won one or two international competitions, have gone on to tour as soloists, play in the world’s best orchestras, and teach in conservatories and colleges around the world. Even today, after suffering immense hardship through the economic and political chaos of the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the school continues to produce an astonishing number of world class performers who carry on an inimitable tradition that has infused all Western music.

The beautiful complex at 13 Bolshaya Nikitskaya, composed of several lecture buildings and three major concert halls, came together over a period of years – 225 in fact. The original plot of land on which the campus stands dates back to its first owner, Prince V. N. Prozorovsky, a general in the Russian army, who purchased the land in 1717. In 1755, he sold it to one Prince Nikolai A. Dolgoruky, who in turn sold a major portion of the plot to Princess Yekaterina Dashkova in 1766. It was she who, in 1780, directed the famous architect Vasily Bazhenov to build the first stone house, which was later enlarged into a two-story structure with an attic and side wings, presumably in the Neoclassical style made popular by Catherine the Great. Upon the princess’s death in 1810, her nephew, Count M. S. Vorontsov, inherited the property. A hero of the 1812 War against the French, he returned from battle to find the house so badly damaged by fire during the invasion of Napoleon’s troops that he tried to sell it. Unable to find a buyer, he eventually opted to reconstruct it according to plans drawn up by architect Francesco Camporesi.

By the second half of the 18th century, Russian musical life had begun to blossom, largely due to the influence of Western artists, thinkers and professors imported by Catherine the Great (1762 – 1796). One of the first to arrive, 20 year-old Irishman John Field, settled in St. Petersburg in 1802 and, over the next 35 years, greatly affected Russian musical culture. Field taught Glinka, considered the “father” of Russian music, and Charles Mayer, the influential German pianist who taught and composed prolifically in Russia until his death in 1862.

Soon Russian aristocrats and intellectuals, eager to join the explosion of progress so enjoyed in the West, began to pursue European traditions of philosophy, art and music with zeal. Despite being shackled by tsarist autocracy throughout the reign of Nicholas I (1825 – 1855), the country began to achieve cultural parity with the West. By the mid-19th century, nobility routinely maintained private orchestras and cadres of musicians, fine instruments and works of art. Musical life burgeoned in the cities, particularly in Moscow, where the newly-founded Russian Musical Society vigorously promoted professional musical education as well as highly popular concert performances.

But the country had no musical education institutions until Anton Rubinstein founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, a development of great interest among European musicians, who did much to encourage the growth of Russian music and pedagogy. In fact, Richard Wagner, Clara Schumann and Hector Berlioz, convinced of the need for a similar school in Moscow, all gave benefit recitals toward that end. Four years later, in 1866, Anton’s brother,  pianist, conductor and composer Nikolai Rubinstein, then leader of the Russian Musical Society, founded the Moscow Conservatory and began classes in the Vorontsov house.

After renting the mansion for seven years, the Russian Musical Society bought it for their Conservatory in 1878, only to realize it was too small for the rapidly expanding school. By 1893, the RMS decided to erect a new building on the site of the century-old structure, and hired architects Vasily Zagorsky and Aleksei Niesselsohn, and sculptor Aleksandr Aladin to draw up plans. Construction, funded by the tsar and a coalition of industrialists, merchants, prominent musicians, as well as the State Treasury and the State Council, began on June 27, 1895, largely under the supervision of the school’s director, Vasily Safonov.

The school opened its first classroom building and the 435 seat Small Hall in 1898. A series of marble plaques beside the hall’s door lists the names of famous alumni – Sergei Taneyev (1875), the first graduate to win the Gold Medal for both composition and piano; Alexander Siloti (1882), Sergei Lyapunov (1883); Yosif Levin, Sergei Rachmaninov and Alexander Scriabin (1893).

Early teachers included Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Vasily Safonov and Anton Arensky (all graduates of the St. Petersburg Conservatory), Vladimir Odoevsky, Nikolai Kashin, Herman Laroche, Nikolai Gubert, Nikolai Zverev and Sergei Taneyev. Prominent musicians visiting from Europe often found themselves so impressed by what they found in Moscow that they stayed to join this burgeoning musical school and community. By the 1880s, the Moscow Conservatory was generating its own teaching staff from its already outstanding ranks of graduates. Indeed, the development of the Moscow Conservatory progressed so rapidly that, by the end of the 19th century, it had spawned its own “Russian school” of composition in the works of Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and Medtner. The performing arts department also flourished, and, by the early 20th century, the piano, violin and cello divisions had become world famous.

The first of several important rectors was Sergei Taneyev (1885-1889) who, in addition to being a superb composer, was also one of the greatest music scholars of his time. It was he who devised enriched theory courses, and laid the foundations for what we know as the Conservatory’s unique “in-house” tradition. He made the conservatory, not the university, as is so often the case in the West, the chief academic institution for the most thorough, scholarly and professional study of music. This famous “Russian system” remains today as it was then. It was also during this time that the school erected a second conservatory building of lecture halls and studios, and the smaller “White Hall” next to the main new building, at 11 Bolshaya Nikitskaya.

Safonov, during his tenure as rector (1889-1905), created one of the school’s greatest treasures, the Great Hall, in order that students could have immediate access to the city’s most outstanding musical events. Completed in 1901, it seats 1,740 and boasts magnificent portraits of great composers: Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, Chopin, Glinka, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov among them. Though the Great and Small Halls, as sites of important world premieres, competitions, and festivals, are important musical landmarks, they still essentially belong to the students. Young conservatory musicians appear regularly as soloists and instrumentalists in orchestras, ensembles, choirs and operas on both stages.

A third illustrious property was added to the campus in 1923. From the mid-19th century onward, this lovely example of 18th century architecture, located at 11 Bolshaya Nikitskaya, was occupied by a synodal religious school. When, in 1886, the school was granted full status as a secondary school in its own right, its Council added four presiding musicians – Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Arensky and Safonov – whose work and careers were tied directly to the Moscow Conservatory. Under their leadership, in 1898 a magnificent concert hall (later named the Rachmaninov Hall) designed by Vladimir Sher was built within the school. In 1918, the revolutionary government designated the synodal school the “People’s Choir Academy. “ In 1923 it became the Choral Music Department of the Moscow Conservatory. Though taken over by the Law Department of the Moscow State University after World War II, the building was returned to the Conservatory in the early 1980s. Since 1983, when it was restored, music has resonated through the halls and classrooms, most especially the Rachmaninov Hall, which seats 250. The famous statue of Tchaikovsky, sculpted by Vera Mukhina, was added to the forecourt in 1954. Opening notes of some of his most famous works figure into the intricate pattern of the surrounding railing, but the fact that he seems to conduct has always amused students and faculty – Tchaikovsky hated conducting.

The Soviet Era

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Moscow Conservatory’s history grew complex, and sometimes dark and perilous. The new government’s designation of the school as an official government institution afforded it permanent financial support – but at the price of the strict control under a totalitarian regime. Though Russian musicians fared better than scientists and writers, the Conservatory’s faculty nonetheless came under considerable ideological pressure and censorship through the 1930s and 40s, culminating in 1948 with the firing of the great Dmitry Shostakovich, professor of composition. Yet this period of censorship and repression proved to be, paradoxically, one of the school’s richest. For, in its struggle for artistic integrity, the Conservatory’s traditions were, if anything, only strengthened. Performing arts flourished during a particularly fertile period of “ideological years,” when a new generation of teachers appeared, such as Heinrich Neuhaus, Aleksander Goldenweiser, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Grigory Ginsburg, and later Yakov Flier and Yakov Zak in the piano division; violinists Lev Zeitlin, Mikhail Erdenko, Boris Zibor, David Oistrakh, Yuri Yankelevich, Leonid Kogan, and cellists Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and Mstislav Rostropovich.

It was during the Soviet period that the Conservatory’s phenomenal performing school became widely recognized at international competitions for the extremely high quality of its graduates, the products of a unique pedagogical system that actually begins long before the collegiate level Conservatory years.

Indeed, the “system” starts at age five, which is why the Conservatory is not one institution, but several. Admission to the select Central Specialized Music School, which offers regular education as well as an intense program in solfeggio, theory, harmony, musical literature, chorus, and rhythmic dance to 270 particularly gifted students, ages 5 to 18, is determined by a panel of teachers and administrators specifically charged with seeking out gifted children via auditions throughout the country. (Families not infrequently move to Moscow so a child can attend the school; tuition is free.) Central School students who pass examination may go on to the Conservatory Musical College, a specialized secondary school of 700 students (ages 12 through 18) that offers further regular and music education toward a degree enabling a graduate to teach. The best known, of course, is the Conservatory, which offers a five-year program to over 1000 students aged 18 to 24, culminating in the equivalent of a master’s degree. All applicants to any program, including international students, must pass rigorous entrance examinations, but admission to the Conservatory is the most demanding of all.

Outgrowing its first home in the main building, the Central School eventually moved to a separate four-story structure of spacious classrooms and corridors on Sobinov pereulok in the interior yards between Nikitskaya and Arbat Square. Shortly after the Nazis invaded in 1941, the government evacuated the Central School to the provincial town of Penza in central Russia, where most of the students and some of their parents were housed in dormitories and musical life and lessons went on.

After the war, the regime, eager to show signs of its superiority, actively promoted Soviet musicians on the competition circuit. The result is that, even today, few music conservatories can boast so large a number of competition prize winners, most especially in piano, violin and cello. In 1958, the school established the renowned International Tchaikovsky Music Competition, held every four years, for pianists, violinists, cellists, and singers. Despite decades of ideological repression, Moscow Conservatory students have always achieved the highest of international standards – indeed, set them – sending hundreds, if not thousands of virtuosi soloists, ensemble instrumentalists and singers to orchestras, choruses, schools and stages across Russia and around the world.

The painful transition to a market economy, however, turned the Russian state-supported arts world upside down. Many of the country’s gifted musicians left the country for secure positions in the West, if they could. That a dedicated few professors remained at the Conservatory to continue the tradition of musical excellence bears witness to the incomparable spirit of Russian artists. The school has continued to produce an astonishing number of world class performers.

But though socio-economic conditions have improved for most Russians in recent years, the artistic community still faces daunting challenges. A particularly vexing problem is the lack of good instruments available to student musicians, even though many exist in Russia. “There have always been excellent instruments in this country,” explained Edvard Grach, virtuoso violinist and prestigious professor of violin at the Conservatory for over 25 years. “Through the 18th and 19th centuries, Russian aristocrats bought many fine violins and cellos from European makers, especially Italians. Confiscated after the Revolution, these instruments were placed in a special State collection and lent out at no charge to artists for performances and competitions abroad.” But since 1991 the government has charged high rental and insurance fees for these instruments’ use, which, of course, no artist or student can afford. “So now,” said Grach, “when Russians compete, instead of playing the best instruments, they play the worst and the collection is not used. Today students must use violins of modern Russian and Chinese makers, very cheap and very bad, but these are all they can afford.”

Fundraising efforts in post-Soviet years have been marginally successful. Philanthropy in Russia is still virtually nonexistent, or perhaps more correctly, still misunderstood and ill-used. While some observers have alleged that the Conservatory has been the victim of fundraising mismanagement and has, in the past, squandered goodwill and trust, the school has now established a responsible control mechanism for handling money coming in as a result of some positive new developments. One boon to the entire Russian artistic community has been the recent appointment of Alexander Sokolov, formerly president of the Conservatory, as Russia’s new Minister of Culture and Mass Communications. He has allotted 280 million rubles for renovation, some of which has already begun. Currently, the building is usable, and constantly checked by the best professionals in the city. The various halls and classrooms are not hazardous, and areas damaged by fire are to be renovated during the summer, when the students are away.

Another sign of progress has been the establishment of the Friends of the Moscow Conservatory, based in New York City. One founder, Peter Tcherepnin, grandson of composer Nikolai Tcherepnin, has already donated $10,000 for the cash-strapped Taneyev Library, which promptly used every dollar for much needed books. The group, like several prominent Russian musicians and groups, are also considering new joint fundraising models (concerts, auctions, dinners), which render significant funding in the West, but very little in Russia, where big donations come from corporations only when the government twists arms, or in exchange for a kick-back to the decision-maker. “Even a few thousand dollars can help so much toward purchase of decent quality instruments,” Sorokina said. “The students deserve no less.”

And yet, the Moscow Conservatory, which is deteriorating rapidly, remains the most urgent problem. “If the ground and the foundations are not strengthened, the buildings can be seriously deformed,” Zuyev said.

So, while hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed to save one of the music world’s most important buildings, everyone knows the Conservatory, like the country itself, will go on. “It’s Russia, after all,” goes a popular lament.

Outside the Conservatory entrance, Tchaikovsky still sits atop his pedestal, as he always has, his outstretched left hand gracefully crooked as if cueing a delicate caesura in music only he can hear, as he gazes, rapt, into some distant prospect only he can see.   RL