Previews

Kavkaz

“In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.” M. Y. Lermontov (1814 - 1841) “A Hero of Our Time”

Thomas Dworzak is a Magnum photographer, which describes what he shoots, how and where he works better than any press release. Dworzak was born in Kötzting, Germany, in 1972 and grew up in the small town of Cham in the Bavarian Forest. Towards the end of his high school studies, he began to travel and take photographs in Europe and the Middle East, living in Avila, Prague and Moscow. After photographing the war in former Yugoslavia, he lived in Tbilisi, Georgia. He documented the conflicts in Chechnya, Karabakh and Abkhazia as well as working on a largerscale project about the Caucasus region and its people. Based in Paris from 1999, he covered the Kosovo crisis, mostly for US News and World Report, and returned to Chechnya the same year. After the fall of Grozny in early 2000, he began a project on the impact of the war in Chechnya on the neighbouring North Caucasus. Dworzak became a Magnum nominee in 2000 and a member in 2004.

March 2-April 1 13:00-20:00, Tuesdays-Saturdays Pobeda gallery, Red October Chocolate Factory Bolotnaya embankment 3 building 4

Describing his “Kavkaz” series of photographs which in September 2011 was published as a book of photographs by Schilt Publishing, Dvorzak says that the Caucases for him were love at first sight. In the spring of 1993 he decided to spend a couple of months in Tbilisi, Georgia before beginning his university studies. But instead he stayed for a couple of years, falling in love with the local hospitability, beauty of languages, rapid changes, wars and conflicts, bravery and cruelty. The current exhibition at Pobeda gallery is an extended version of the photography book and is presented in Moscow for the first time.

Contemporary art from Japan

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art together with the Japan Foundation presents Double Vision, which takes place simultaneously in two venues of the museum and dedicated to modern Japanese artists. The “double” in this context also stands for the two curators who prepare the show. The exhibition is jointly curated by Elena Yanchikova and Kenjiro Hosaka and presents 30 artists working in different styles between the 1970s and 2000s. The project is composed of two parts: Reality/Ordinary World and Imaginary World/Phantasms. Reality/Ordinary World, gives the “Japanese” perspective on reality through 20th century world history, a reflection of the present-day social structure, the interaction with urban space and the quest of poetry in everyday life. The show will also feature the works by Yoko Ono—the famous Cut Piece in the 1965 and 2003 versions and the sound

March 14-May 6, 11:00-19:00, every day except Mondays Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 10 Gogolevsky boulevard and 17 Ermolaevsky lane

installation Cough Piece (1961). The exhibition will also present the works by Kishio Suga, an essential figure in the Mono- Ha (literally, the School of Things) movement— the Japanese alternative to the Western Modernism. The photo section will include the works of Toshio Shibata, Takashi Homma and Lieko Shiga. The pieces of art, which make up the second part of the project, will feature a world where imagination runs without any limitations. They evoke the Japanese pop culture, imaginary worlds, naivety and myths. These two exhibitions within one exhibition are designed to reveal two extremes of the Japanese art, which, despite their polarity, are bound together in actual reality.

Kasabian

Kasabian released their first album in 2004 and it was destined to become one of the brightest debuts in England’s newest history of music. “Club foot” and “Lost Souls Forever” were listened to even by those who knew nothing about the band at all. Mark Ronson released his version of the latter in his “Version” album and pushed it around the clubs. The 2006 disc resulted as number one in British charts for the most popular album. “Velocipator!” is their latest album and the

March 8, 20:30, Stadium Live

group starts a tour in its support. Moscow is the location of their first ever concert in Russia. When journalists asked Kasabian why they chose to name their album the name of a dinosaur, the guitarist Sergio Pizzorno answered: “Velocipators used to hunt in packs of four. They were the rock’n’roll band of the dinosaurs,” he said.

Livre d`artiste

Until the late 19th century, book illustrations were limited to being descriptive; when an illustrator –most often a professional engraver tried to depict a visual equivalent of an episode of the narration. Livre d’artiste (artist’s book) as a notion emerged in the early 20th century, and stands for an equal collaboration between poets and painters with the rising role of publishers who often created the concept of the future book. Ambroise Vollard— a French art-dealer was one of the first publishers of this kind of book, when he presented the first edition of Paul Verlaine’s poems illustrated with Pierre Bonnard’s lithographs, unbound (en feuille), in a limited print run of 50, presuming that in such a format there is more credit and interest compared to separate designed sheets. Another art-dealer Daniel-Henry Kahlweiler went further, and published his “stories by a painter and a poet.” His Éditions de la Galerie Simpion came out with a print run of 80.

The Pushkin Museum of fine Arts (private collections department) for the first time presents such a large exhibition of this genre in graphics. For those who were scared off from the recent exhibition of Dali’s works by huge queues around the museum, the current show will be a huge delight. Dali’s graphics, along with printed works by the prolific Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Juan Gris, Antoni Tapies are also on display.

Marga

Alla Dul is a painter born in St. Petersburg , but now residing mainly in a Himalayan monastery in India 4300 meters above sea level. Curator Isabella Tarasova presents Alla’s exhibition which includes the works she makes in India. The showcase is entitled Marga which translated from Sanskrit means “path” and is closely related to understanding what a path of love, devotion and self-transformation actually means. Alla’s principal theme in painting are people. But the characters of her portraits are depicted outside their social status, as if outside of time and any external attributions. Her paintings grasp meditative and contemplative faces, sometimes calm sometimes rigid, and narrate about that path of internal transformation through devotion and veneration without which human life makes no sense. Over the years Alla has spent in India, she has developed a personal style and chosen materials for her works, picking canvases and wooden panels some of which are more than three hundred years old. On the one hand her Western trained realism style is seen in every portrait, and on the other hand, the emotional and contemplative component deriving from the Eastern tradition is strongly felt.

Dawn of innocence by Nouvelle Vague

To imagine a musical project that survives nowadays only on performing cover versions of previous years’ hits is one thing, but to know that such a project can be successful for many years is another. Critics call the French band Nouvelle Vague “an inventive concoction of clashing but surprisingly complementary moods and styles.” The band’s two producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux are faithful to their verified formula: punk, new wave songs are filtered through the French savoir-faire, sung by siren-like soloists in a bossa nova style. And they are never perceived with a grain of hostility even by those who composed them for their original performance. Nouvelle Vague’s new programme based on “dark songs” of the 1980s is a collaboration with French fashion designer Jean- Charles de Castelbajac, who has worked on the visual component of the

March 17, 20:00 Arena Moscow

performance. “In this production I meant to create a show that would make passion, art, music and fashion interact with emotions,” Castelbajac comments. Nouvelle Vague are regular guests in Moscow, but as their name makes us guess, their performance will unleash another fresh new wave of music here.

The music of Mendelssohn

One-master musical festivals long ago became special symbols of the Moscow House of Music. Each festival tries to render a portrait of a great composer, even if sketchy, bringing to the surface either unknown compositions, productions or interpretations. This spring’s musical forum is dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn.

Today Felix Mendelssohn Bartholody is generally considered to be one of the greatest personalities in 19th century European music, with his vast scope and variety of musical styles he felt at ease in.

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 into a highly respected Jewish family. His grandfather –Moses Mendelssohn was a great philosopher of the age of enlightenment, his father Abraham was a banker. In 1816 Felix’s father baptized him and his brothers and sisters into Christianity. As a result, Felix became a mediator between those two religions and this influenced his musical education as well. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Niccolò Paganini were all friends who enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere of Mendelssohn’s home.

His father encouraged the young Felix when he showed an interest in the piano. At the age of nine he became a pupil of the highly-respected Ludwig Berger and performed as a pianist in public for the first time. Shortly after that, he began to write his own compositions and was introduced to the head of the Berlin Singakademie—Carl Friedrich Zelter who played a significant role for Mendelssohn as a composer, making him familiar with Bach’s contrapuntal technique and Mozart’s late works. At the age of twenty Mendelssohn performed Bach’s “Saint Mathew Passion” with the Berlin Singakademie. Today music historians admit that it was Mendelssohn who revealed the genius of Bach to his contemporaries through his own meticulous research of the composer’s works. Mendelssohn became the youngest ever conductor at the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, aged only twenty-six, and became the initiator of the Conservatory of Music—the oldest university school of music in Germany in 1843. Before his early death at the age of only 38 he created more than 750 musical pieces, many of

March 11-21 House of Music For programme see www.mmdm.ru

which were scattered around, not attributed and not published for some reason until the 1960s. Only recently in dedication to his 200th anniversary at Saxony’s Academy of Sciences a full catalogue of Felix Mendelssohn’s oevres was published, based on extensive research by Dr. Ralf Wehner, who over a period of several years studied materials from 1500 libraries, 12000 letters and many other materials including auction catalogues. The current Moscow festival comprises a wide programme featuring Mendelssohn’s choral, vocal and symphonic compositions, featuring musicians from Russia, Germany, Lithuania and the USA.

International festival dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich

This is the third festival dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich in Moscow. For the Russian audience Rostropovich is one of the most significant musicians of the 20th century, without whom it is difficult to imagine today’s musical culture. His talent and inspiration influenced his contemporary composers to make music for him, and the foundation of his name has reared several generations of musicians in different genres. The Mstislav Rostropovich festival is directed by his daughter— Olga Mstislavovna, and attracts leading musicians from different countries.

The 27th of March is Rostropovich’s 85th anniversary and the opening date of the festival which this year will present an unprecedented list of performers. “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” by Dmitri Shostokovich will be played at the festival opening. This will be conducted by Dmitry Yurovsky, and features soloists from the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra and also several English orchestras. The Moscow Conservatory, the Tchaikovsky concert hall, the House of Unions hall; the halls with the best acoustics in Moscow will host the comprehensive musical programme. Among those taking part are: Rudolph Buchbinder (piano),

March 27-April 27 www.rostropovichfestival.ru

Yuja Wang (piano), Enrico Dindo (cello), the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, maestro Yury Temirkanov, the Orchestra of the National Academy Santa Cecilia (Rome) conducted by Antonio Pappano, the Orchestra of Paris conducted by Paavo Yarvi, Glenn Miller orchestra, Maxim Vengerov and many others.