Conductor Konstantin Khvatynets: I would like to ask Janacek a lot of questions

16.04.2014

KONSTANTIN KHVATYNETS: I would like to ask Janacek a lot of questions

- Konstantin, we are talking to you after series of our “Vec Makroupoulos” performance. The spectators accepted the opera as the premiere.

– I think this is due to the performance of Natalia Zagorinskaya. For me it was a revelation, this is the first time I encountered such a master in opera. In Operetta Theater, where I am a chief conductor now, a lot of artists have high level skills of drama. And it is the combination of music with dramatic saturation of an opera is very rare. I think because of this such love of opera as an elite art. There is a need for such actors and singers on stage, who can reincarnate and convey feelings the way your People’s artist of Russia Natalia does. This is intelligence.

- Please, tell me, how you agreed to the Helikon’s proposal to conduct  Janacek’s music?

– I am very hungry and very greedy to perform ingenious music. Such is life, not only me, but especially young conductors have to play music not the one they want. It is a fact that when you play the music that you love very much, it gives you back when you invest in it, it is very satisfying.

- So, this is such a deep-seated love of Janacek. Have you already worked with his music?

- Honestly, this is my first contact. Debt of study, I was engaged in "Glagolitic Mass", but a creative collaboration with this author was for the first time.

Generally, I feel a great pity that our operatic repertoire in Russia is not filled with Janacek's operas, as you rarely find a western opera composer, who is linked with the Russian culture. After all, he was so fond of our literature: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and our Golden and Silver Ages, their philosophy, attitude to life, their attention to the problems of a little man. "Katya Kabanova", "The House of the Dead". His rhapsody for Orchestra "Taras Bulba" is all inextricably linked with Russia. And melos, which he used, was Slavic. He was also engaged in collecting Moravian songs in the 80- 90s of the 19th century, and this nation was linked with the Slavs in their musical vocabularies, they were very close. I think that there will be time for Janacek opera life of Moscow and St. Petersburg. “Vec Makropoulos” was staged in Saint-Petersburg in Saint-Petersburg in 2010. As I heard, Bolshoi Theatre had plans for production of "Jenufa". And "Katya Kabanova” was staged somewhere in Russia for the past 10 years. "Katya Kabanova" is really a "Thunderstorm" by Russian dramatist Ostrovsky.

- Great passions attracted Janacek, in my opinion. Literary component of his works, even symphonic, is impressive and very powerful. How did you prepare for this job?

- Last year I conducted the same opera. I can honestly say that the chief conductor of Helikon-opera Vladimir Ponkin is my first teacher in symphony conducting. I remember, that at the premiere of "Lulu" I ran backstage to Vladimir, and he worked with me, even without changing clothes after the performance. This was before my entering the depatment of symphony conducting. But when I entered, I got to Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Me and Dmitry Bertman worked together at the performance of "Die Fledermaus" by the 90th anniversary of Georgy Ansimov at Operetta Theatre. That's where we met professionally. I think after that I received an invitation to conduct Helikon’s performance.

"Die Fledermaus" is the oldest in our performance Operetta Theater. It was staged by Georgy Anisimov once, who was the Artistic Director then. Each performance of "Die Fledermaus" is still sold out. And the set is outdated and faded already. Of course, the eye does not see it, but we want, of course, to freshen it up a little. But what an essence and a construction of the performance! He is so entertaining that the video may not be necessary. Georgy is a unique person for Russian music and is very significant for opera. He was Dmitry Bertman’s teacher.

- You have a very plastic performance. тичный спектакль. I know that you worked at the Summer ballet seasons.

- At the Summer Ballet Seasons I was able to realize myself as a ballet conductor. Because if you treat everything correctly, the art of conducting a ballet music is quite complicated. And it is appreciated in the West, perhaps even more than opera’s. You must have the skills.

After that I had been closely connected with Melikov and Gordeyev’s entreprise ballet troupes. Every year we toured abroad. I even was a musical director of "Romeo and Juliet" production, I made the music edition of the performance and I worked with such a master as Lavrovsky is.

As to “Vec Makropoulos”, I feel that the work has just started. The score is endless and requires a maximum concentration from musicians.

- You are fond of the theatre, as I guess.

- Vera Pashennaya was my grandmother’s teacher in Maly Theatre. Kachalov examinated my granny. I connect my love to the theatre with that fact. I simply love do everything to the end.

- Returning to Makropoulos, you have worked with two different casts, which determined two different performances.

You are also included in this game. On the one hand, you are only nearby, you are not a player, but a shadow beside other players. Svetlana Sozdateleva is a wonderful actress and singer, and I just fell in love with Natalia Zagorinskaya. Her each replica is motivated. She knows exactly what she says, she is working for her partner.

 This opera is constructed the such way, that the characters appear through her and suffer from her. She destroys everything. Because it is abnormally to live 337 years! Hence the diversity of Emilia Marty’s character, at first she appears as such an enchanted, mysterious woman, there's even a side note, when she appears, the light changes, becoming greenish. And what most, we have prepared for her appearance with the enthusiastic remarks by Christine, and Gregor, who did not realize whom she was talking about . And so she goes, and music instantly reacts to her appearance . The orchestra plays the color, the principle of orchestral palette is engaged: one moment it is a clear drawing, another moment it is a watercolor, which is suddenly changing to oil and becomes a huge Puccini orchestra, with such emotional subitos and pianos, such emotional explosions and at some point everyone goes to a minimalism: a letter is highlighted with minimal means.

- What are your impressions of this series at all? Still, immersion in another theater, in another musical world is a piece of life. How this piece influence you now? Was there something you have you taken from it? What you have taken with you?

- I did not come out. I was literally sleeping with this opera, I saw the score in my dream. Everything shifted. And still shifts. It is as if to look at the bottom and see the key there, you think I 'll grab it now, but when you swim to it, you realize that he is moving away from you, like the horizon . All the time the score is approaching and moving away - it doesn’t have the bottom! All the time I find something that I had not noticed before. It seems, here it would be so nice to build a balance, so that it began to sound perfectly...

– Seems you are very fond of music!

–  Yes. Generally, it is the main task of a conductor. If he doesn’t like music which he conducts, it is all down the drain. And, even when you play music, bout which you say ... a year later, at the moment when you conduct it, you must love it. As Toscanini said: "I ​​love music, which I conduct and I conduct the music which I love!" This is necessary, because the conductor is the only defender of the composer. There is a book by Leinsdorf, American conductor, "The Composer's Advocate": there is a conductor between the composer and those who would torment music now, and the conductor protects its rights as a lawyer. He is responsible for its purity, integrity and truth.

- I’d like to ask you a very banal question, the answer to which can be very interesting. Would you like to wish something to yourself?

 - First of all, I’d like to wish myself to be all the time in music and do not dry out! Because life is such that many orchestra artists, my classmates, loose their thirst for music. Love for music. All this begins to be practical. Half of the orchestra goes to work. We all work, we cannot live without it, but the feeling, due to which we chose this profession once, and we chose it not to earn money, but because we cannot live without it, the feeling is lost if you do not keep the flame. A flash in the beginning, and then it comes down, if you do not keep it. The different feelings arise. That is why the imperishability of the feeling in music, keeping the flame is the main thing. The rest will be added!

Interviewed by Anna Gribkova-Tkhostova on April 3^rd 2014