Russian Strings

Unlike the balalaika and the harmonica, the guitar is not yet established as a musical symbol of Russia, yet its importance for Russian culture is hard to overestimate. Among other essential elements of Russian culture, the guitar conjures up images of traditional romances and Gypsy songs, and more recently was the instrument of choice for the bardy of the Khrushchev-era thaw (see Russian Life, Jan/Feb 2009). These days, “guitar” is usually taken to mean the six-stringed version of the instrument closely associated with Spanish music and popularized during the twentieth century by musicians such as Andrés Segovia. With even most Russian guitarists now using this type of guitar, the seven-stringed version — which has a much longer history in the country, where it has been played for well over 200 years — has fallen out of favor, a far cry from its peak of popularity in the nineteenth century, when dozens of composers wrote hundreds of works for it.

All may not be lost, however. By an irony of fate, it is in the U.S. that the Russian seven-stringed guitar is making something of a comeback. Held in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, IA, the annual Russian Guitar Seminar and Festival celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2010. The festival is the brainchild of Oleg Timofeyev, a long-time advocate and virtuoso exponent of this rarer form of the guitar. Timofeyev took up the cause of the seven-stringed guitar — or, as it is affectionately referred to, the semistrunka — when he moved to the United States to study at the end of the Soviet era, eventually obtaining a Ph.D. in performance practice from Duke University.

“The repertoire for the seven-string guitar is enormous, and even today it remains little studied,” Timofeyev said. “In the context of nineteenth-century Russian culture, it is a priceless musical layer that I am trying to resurrect by any means possible.” As part of this mission, he has recorded more than a dozen discs of Russian music, both as a soloist and with various ensembles, and said that Western audiences are receptive to the music’s beauty. The annual festival that he founded in Iowa, meanwhile, encompasses genres from early music to Gypsy romances to contemporary compositions.

By contrast, the Virtuosos of the Guitar festival organized by the Moscow Philharmonic Society and held in its Tchaikovsky Grand Hall in March was entirely dedicated to the six-stringed version of the instrument, and showcased leading exponents from across Europe. The festival offered Moscow audiences a rare opportunity to hear several evenings of classical guitar music.

As is the case in concert halls around the world, the guitar is not a regular guest at classical music concerts in the Russian capital — even though it has, over the last hundred years or so, come to be accepted as a bona fide classical-music instrument. This is largely due to one man, Andrés Segovia, who not only trained a whole generation of leading guitarists (such as John Williams), but also transcribed countless compositions written for other instruments. Segovia’s arrangements make pieces by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and many more sound like they were originally written for the guitar. In addition, many composers — from the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini to the enfant terrible of the avant-garde Pierre Boulez — have written for the instrument. It has also had some success as an ensemble instrument, featuring for example in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony and Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck.

But the guitar does not have as many famous exponents as, say, the piano or the violin, and concertos for the instrument are more difficult to squeeze into a symphonic program than more traditional compositions. This makes the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s initiative all the more valuable. Over the past six years, the festival has staged concerts by, among many others, Dimitri Illarionov, Alexey Zimakov, Ksenia Axelroud, Joan Benejam, Roland Dyens, Aniello Desiderio, the Katona Twins, Jérémy Jouve and Judicaël Perroy.

This year, Moscow audiences were treated to performances by artists including Gabriel Bianco, Goran Krivokapi, Vladimir Gorbach, Antal Pusztai, Pavel Steidl, Duo Melis and Irina Kulikova. Particularly memorable were the appearances of Duo Melis, whose rendition of the “Miller’s Dance” from Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three-Cornered Hat was so convincing that the piece sounded as though it had been written for a guitar duo rather than an orchestra; and also Steidl, whose brilliant communication and mastery of the instrument made a striking contrast to the rather self-satisfied technical accomplishment of Pusztai in the first half of their joint concert. Steidl’s program was also notable for its variety, incorporating works by Czech composers of the Baroque era alongside sonatas and fantasias by Paganini and contemporary Italian guitarist and composer Carlo Domeniconi. For the most part, the rest of the festival was dominated by Spanish music, though it was illustrative of the guitar’s status as a concert instrument that even the noted conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev confessed that it was the first time he had ever conducted a performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, the most famous piece in the repertoire and one that is performed at the festival every year.

Duo Melis

The soloist for the Rodrigo was Artyom Dervoed, who although not officially the festival’s artistic director is one of its main driving forces. Dervoed was pleased with this year’s incarnation. “Unlike in previous years, the festival was completely free of any atmosphere of competition,” he said. “None of the participants was worrying about who was getting the loudest applause.” Still, Dervoed said he has to be careful when deciding on the festival’s program, mainly due to one consideration: money.

Artyom Dervoed

“Ninety percent of the festival’s budget, if not more, comes from ticket sales. If people decide not to come to the festival, then next year there won’t be a festival. This year we managed to attract several sponsors, but the money involved was peanuts,” Dervoed explained. “It’s more profitable for the Philharmonic Society to invite those who have already performed at the festival. When the audience knows the artists, they are much keener to come to the concerts. For example, although the concert given by Antal Pusztai and Pavel Steidl was one of the most interesting at the festival, it was not sold out like a gala concert would be. It was clear from ticket sales that people did not know these names. But we also have to invite new performers; the festival needs new blood.”

With the festival exclusively showcasing the classical six-stringed instrument, what does Dervoed think about using the platform that he has to reintroduce Russian audiences to the country’s “native” form of the guitar? “I would like to have seven-string players — why not?” he said. “I have suggested the seven-string guitar and the lute before, but neither of these suggestions have aroused much interest yet. Although the seven-string would be a hit with the audience — there’s an enormous amount of nineteenth-century repertoire that is played in arrangements on the six-string, albeit not very often.”

* * *

the nineteenth century — particularly the first
half, according to Timofeyev — marked the heyday of the Russian seven-stringed guitar. Indeed, when people in that era spoke about the guitar, they invariably meant the semistrunka. The instrument was richly reflected in the literature and folklore of the age, such as Apollon Grigoryev’s romance “Oh, at least you will talk to me / my seven-stringed friend!” In the 20th century, the instrument was taken up by Soviet “bards” from Vladimir Vysotsky to Alexander Galich to Bulat Okudzhava to Yury Vizbor. Most of them started out using the seven-stringed guitar — and writing about it. For example:

My guitar once again refuses to be silent. On moonlit nights its sings,
As in my youth, with its seven silver strings!
— Vladimir Vysotsky

In our age the simple things have little place.
From the past only old signet rings are fashionable.
I myself am a fan of jazz bands,
But I believe in the seven-stringed guitar
— Yury Vizbor

The seven-stringed guitar is also closely associated with the Gypsy tradition, although today most Russian Gypsy performers play six-stringed instruments. Today’s bards are also using the semistrunka increasingly rarely. But in these circles you will at least occasionally encounter the seven-string. In the concert hall, though, it never makes an appearance. According to Timofeyev, one reason for this is that today’s seven-string players stick mostly to known repertoire, “as though we were in Spain or Latin America! I don’t mind this, but we once had our own original, distinctive guitar culture.” Dozens of composers wrote original music or arranged existing material for the instrument. Today, though, this music is still waiting to make it onto the modern stage, while the names of the composers — Andrei Sychra, Semyon Aksyonov, Mikhail Vysotsky, Alexander Vetrov, Nikolai Alexandrov, Vasily Sarenko, Fyodor Zimmerman and many others — are largely forgotten.

The history of the seven-string, Timofeyev said, is littered with errors and misapprehensions. “One of the most common prejudices regarding our instrument is that it’s easy to learn how to accompany on it, but that’s about all you can do. Anyone who doesn’t play the instrument will tell you that it’s easier to accompany on the semistrunka than on the Spanish guitar. And yes, because of the way the strings are tuned, it’s easy to play a C major chord and then work your way up the frets — C sharp major, D major, etc. However, beginners expend as much sweat and blood on learning minor chords as they do on the six-stringed guitar — even though we have one string more!”

Popular misconceptions about the Russian seven-stringed guitar have been perpetuated by the internet, but Timofeyev said they go back much further than that. “In 1961, a book came out called Guitar in Russia, by Boris Volman, that laid the foundations for this confusion. Volman was a wonderful musicologist but, not being a guitar player, he could not understand the significance of the Russian legacy for global guitar culture. The book has a lot of useful historical information for any musician, but it comes to the thoughtless conclusion that the Spanish six-stringed guitar is suitable for professional playing and the seven-string for domestic music-making.”

"The Guitarist," by Vasily Tropinin (1823). Look closely and you will count seven strings.

Volman reached his conclusion, Timofeyev reckoned, because of the success at the time of the Soviet bards, who were playing seven-stringed guitars. “Moreover, it was easier at the time to buy a semistrunka in the shops. It seems that Volman was surrounded by the sounds of student guitar-playing, and came to the wrong conclusion, as though the Russian guitar could only play this type of music. Maybe he typed up his manuscript while listening to an old Segovia record, and then suddenly heard a singer-songwriter using a seven-string, and the one thing subconsciously weighed on the other.”

Even before Volman, however, the seven-string guitar had struggled to throw off myths about its origins — in particular the commonly held belief that it was invented by Andrei Sychra. “This idea dates back to Mikhail Stakhovich’s Sketch of the History of the Seven-String Guitar, which came out in 1854,” Timofeyev said. “Like Volman’s book, it is a very useful and interesting text, but one that contains an abundance of inaccuracies. It is known for certain that the seven-stringed guitar existed in Russia before Sychra, although the name of its inventor remains a mystery.”

All of the earliest seven-string players in Russia, Timofeyev said, were Czechs — Sychra himself, and his predecessors Ignaz von Geld and Josef Kamensky — and it is this geographical curiosity that gives an important clue as to the origins of the Russian seven-stringed guitar. “The so-called ‘English guitar,’ a pear-shaped instrument with metallic strings tuned to a major chord, was widely used in Bohemia at the end of the eighteenth century. The Russian seven-string owes the shape of its body and the material used for its strings to the European six-string, and its tuning and several other features to the English guitar.”

Interest in the guitar waned in the late 1800s in Russia as it did everywhere else, but picked up again around the turn of the century with the appearance of Valerian Rusanov, the founder of Guitarist magazine. “There was no distinction between six-string players and seven-string players in those days. Guitarist wrote about both instruments,” Timofeyev said. But just a few years later, the guitar became one of the many victims of the Bolshevik Revolution. “For Soviet authorities, the guitar was an instrument of the ‘merchant class,’ or the Whites, a symbol of vulgarity and so on. Even so, Segovia came to the Soviet Union in 1926, and so it was decided that the guitar was a beautiful and worthy instrument — but only the Spanish six-string. So there was a paradox that the Soviet press, even while trying to prove that ‘Russia is the motherland of the elephant,’ trampled our guitar heritage into the dirt. Without exception, seven-string players began to switch to the Spanish instrument; it was a long and painful process, as they had no one to compare themselves to. No one was playing the six-string guitar in Russia at that time at a truly professional, Western level. We only learned how towards the end of the century, with the appearance of Alexander Frautschi and other masters.”

* * *

another of the undoubted stars of the new russian (six-string) guitar school was Nikita Koshkin, one of Frautschi’s pupils. Listing Koshkin’s many achievements would require an article longer than this one. His breakthrough came with the suite The Prince’s Toys, which was first performed in 1980 by the noted Czech guitarist Vladimir Mikulka and hailed by Classical Guitar magazine as an enormously important addition to the repertoire. Koshkin has performed across Europe — including at such celebrated venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Megaron in Athens, the Berlin Philharmonic and Oslo’s Nobel Institute — and has toured the U.S. and South Africa. Guitarists around the world know the music of Koshkin, who has also written several cycles of pieces for music schools. The man himself has a reputation for being sincere and uncompromising, even outspoken; perhaps for this reason his compositions are not that frequently heard in Russia.

“The classical guitar has joined the family of classical instruments almost everywhere, in terms of concert platforms and musical education and repertoire,” Koshkin said. “We long ago overcame the lagging behind of the early twentieth century. But the Moscow Conservatory is one of the few in the world that still doesn’t have a guitar program. It’s a very sad situation, but around the world as a whole the guitar is generally prospering, with festivals, competitions, concerts, master classes, summer schools and so on. There are festivals and competitions in Russia, too, but they’re quite a long way from being world-class.”

Some Russian music schools, such as the famous Gnesin Institute, still class the guitar as a folk rather than a classical instrument, which Koshkin said is an “extremely unpleasant characteristic of the Russian classical-guitar playing world. At one point, it seemed as though things were getting better, because people began to realize the absurdity of the situation and some music schools began to move their guitar classes to the strings department. Now, however, the ‘folkies’ don’t want to give up the guitar, because they’d be stuck without it. Folk music classes are dwindling, and there aren’t many young people coming in to fill the gaps. Meanwhile the popularity of the guitar is increasing, so the folk musicians want to hold onto it like a drowning man clutching at straws.”

Koshkin writes a blog “for friends only” (at nikita-koshkin.livejournal.com) that he has used to voice his at times strident opinions on the state of guitar-playing in Russia today. From his blog posts, it is clear that he is no fan, for example, of what he sees as the inflated egos of some members of the profession. “I can’t speak for other professions, but ours has been taken over by arrogant, aggressive and deceitful PR; that’s why all sorts of people end up getting the top jobs,” he said. “It ruins a lot of things, because these people’s level of professionalism is extremely low. As a result, things don’t move forward, or if they do then only very slowly. A large number of talented students are leaving the country for places that provide proper support for classical musicians and where guitarists can achieve their professional goals and also earn enough money to give themselves a dignified existence. The reluctance of young people to live in poverty in Russia is entirely understandable. Unfortunately, the prospects for our classical guitarists are rather bleak, and there’s no sign of things getting any better.”

Koshkin is also active as the jury head at several guitar competitions, many of which include his pieces in their compulsory programs. In 2010, the inaugural Nikita Koshkin Competition was held in the Indian city of Kolkata, with the maestro himself chairing the jury. But while Indian audiences have taken to their hearts a man that the festival describes as “a living legend,” Russia has been slower to recognize Koshkin’s achievements. The Kolkata festival was the first such event dedicated to the classical guitar in India, Koshkin said. “Some wonderful musicians were invited, including Marcin Dylla from Poland, the talented young Frenchman Gabriel Bianco, the wonderful Czech guitarist Pavel Steidl, the Chilean virtuoso José Antonio Escobar, Finnish contemporary music specialist Petri Kumela and the noted Bosnian Denis Azabagic. One of the showcase events was a concert by my wife Asya Selyutina, including the world premiere of eight preludes and fugues from my cycle 24 Preludes and Fugues for Solo Guitar’” Koshkin said. “The competition [which formed part of the festival] was dominated by Europeans — Indian musicians aren’t ready to compete with them yet. The international jury was unanimous in its decisions, and I can only be proud of winners like the Hungarian Andras Csaki, the Ukrainian Mark Topchy and Sanel Redzic of Bosnia.”

The Maimonides Academy in Moscow, where Koshkin teaches, recently established a guitar orchestra, which Koshkin directs. Such ensembles are a frequent feature of music festivals — Koshkin called them a “very democratic part of the program that gives even beginners the opportunity to play.” But professional ensembles are few on the ground; in Russia, Koshkin said, there is one in St. Petersburg and one in Belgorod.

Koshkin is proud of his new collective. “Our orchestra is a special phenomenon. It’s big, with almost 40 people. All of the players are experienced, with no beginners. This means that we can tackle some very difficult repertoire. I was a bit taken aback when they offered me the director’s position, as I hadn’t conducted in 28 years and did not really have much idea of how to go about the task. But it’s interesting, and gives me a chance to test myself in a new setting and work with a new set of people. I had only written two compositions for guitar orchestra, so I had to create almost the entire repertoire from scratch. Since October I’ve made more arrangements than in my whole life up to that point.”

Despite the novelty for most participants of playing in an ensemble, Koshkin said that the orchestra has made enormous progress in the last six months. The main problem is instruments: “For now, all of the members are playing on their own guitars. But we need some specialist instruments, like bass guitars, which are an octave lower than normal guitars, and high guitars. I tried to have some made in Russia. Elsewhere, orchestral guitars are cheaper than concert instruments, but our guitar-makers demanded exorbitant prices. So I had to order bass guitars from Spain.”

Koshkin remains optimistic about the future of the classical guitar, as more and more well-known composers are writing pieces for the instrument. But he also sounds a note of caution. “I’m very worried by the recent trend toward pop music. This is bad, because the guitar, having only just escaped being a ‘street instrument,’ could turn into something that’s only associated with amusement, leisure time and entertainment. I wouldn’t want my beloved instrument to lose its hard-won face.”

Koshkin said state support is essential if opinions of the guitar — both from the public and among fellow musicians — are to change. “Russian guitarists are amateurs, for the most part. But people need to see what their prospects are and how they will achieve their professional aims. With our salaries, unfortunately, they have to rely solely on their love for what they do.”

Although he has had his differences with the organizers of the Moscow festival, Koshkin said that Virtuosos of the Guitar is an extremely important event, taking place as it does in one of the Russian capital’s most prestigious concert venues. “The key part of the festival is performances with the orchestra. We’ve heard some of today’s leading musicians — like Marcin Dylla, Goran Krivokapi, Jérémy Jouve and Flavio Sala — as well as Russian artists who we’d given up hope of seeing, such as Roman Vyazovsky, Irina Kulikova and Vladimir Gorbach. The guitar world can seem to be quite closed from the outside, so this Moscow festival can help to overcome that insularity,” he said.

Koshkin’s new concerto Megaron was supposed to receive its Russian premiere at the festival with Elena Panadreou as soloist, but the concert was cancelled at the last minute. Koshkin says: “The reason was the profoundly egotistical interests of the organizers. It seems that my concerto won’t be performed in Moscow, as I don’t have the strength to organize it myself. I have become persona non grata for the festival; my music is taken off programs as though the organizers are trying to fine me. It’s like nothing has changed — my name was erased everywhere in the Soviet Union just like it is today.”

* * *

Even while the six-string continued its apparently inexorable rise to domination, some devotees remained loyal to the semistrunka. In the 1920s, the composer and cellist Matvei Pavlov-Azancheyev staged some concerts in an attempt to demonstrate that most of Segovia’s repertoire could be played on the seven-stringed guitar. Two amateur guitar historians in Moscow, Vladimir Mashkevich and Alexander Larin, also tried to demonstrate the superiority of the seven-string in the 1950s-1970s.

A few determined enthusiasts thus survived, playing polkas and marches. But a sign of a nascent revival in the instrument’s fortunes came in the 1960s, with the appearance of Sergei Orekhov on the variety scene. “Orekhov’s style was the result of studying the classics of the semistrunka, Sychra and [Mikhail] Vysotsky,” said Oleg Timofeyev, “as well as some aspects of jazz technique, the Latin American rhythms that were popular at the time, and the music of Moscow’s Gypsy musicians, who back then were still faithful to the semistrunka.”

“Orekhov had originally been trained as an acrobat in the circus, so he achieved unbelievable levels of virtuosity and embellishment on the guitar,” Timofeyev continued. “So whatever was said in the 1970s about the natural advantages of the six-stringed guitars, seven-string players had a powerful trump card in Orekhov.” As a result of Orekhov’s popularity, a younger generation of seven-string players appeared, playing their hero’s arrangements “at nearly the speed he did, and with almost his energy,” Timofeyev said. “But most of them are just copycats, rarely creating anything new.”

Nevertheless, Timofeyev said he is not deterred by the current preference for the six-string guitar. “I don’t let it get me down — quite the opposite, I now have a mission in life, which is excellent.” And he’s confident that the seven-string instrument will eventually make a comeback in its homeland. “Sooner or later, like any Western fashion, the revival of the seven-string guitar will come to Russia as well — back to its birthplace.” This year’s International Annual Russian Guitar Seminar and Festival (IARGUS 2011) is scheduled for October 6-9 in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. RL