Return of the Master

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Composer Sergey Slonimsky, one of the most prominent figures in Russian music, is preparing to celebrate his 80th birthday along with the outstanding conductor Vladimir Yurovsky, the leader of the new musical generation. The highlight of the evening will be a concert performance of Act I of the opera The Master and Margarita.

“The idea of writing an opera based on The Master and Margarita occurred to me as soon as the novel was published”, says Sergey Slonimsky. “I was immediately captivated by the philosophical and romantic character of Bulgakov’s prose. What attracted me was not the buffoonery, the entertainment, the comedy, the variety, or the clownery, but the philosophy of the novel, its two fundamental ideas. As Margarita says, “Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world?” and also “Every kind of power is a form of violence against people. The time will come when there will be no power”.

The Master and Margarita is returning to St. Petersburg 40 years after its premiere. The opera was first performed in April 1972 and was immediately banned.

“Some outstanding people who understood the role of art came to the premiere to support me”, Slonimsky recalls. “The packed concert hall at the House of Composers included four Lenin Prize winners: Georgy Tovstonogov, Evgeny Mravinsky, David Oistrakh, and also Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who conducted the premiere. However, it wasn’t they who decided the future of the opera, but the ‘workers of the invisible front’. At precisely 10 o’clock the next morning a call came from the regional committee: the opera was banned from being performed”.

This outstanding opera was mothballed for 17 years. Only in 1989 was it possible to performThe Master and Margarita in Moscow: a concert performance of Act I in the Great Hall of the Conservatory, conducted by Mikhail Yurovsky. The opera was seen in full for the first time at EXPO-2000 in Hannover, also conducted by Mikhail Yurovsky; it was performed in German in the German pavilion.

Another exceptional event in the gala concert will be the world premiere of Sergey Slonimsky’s 32nd Symphony, also conducted by Vladimir Yurovsky. Works by Slonimsky’s students Alexander Radvilovich and Nastasia Khrushcheva will be conducted by Alexey Bogorad.

Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Слонимский) is a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and musicologist.

He was born in 1932 in Leningrad, studied composition under Shebalin, Evlakhov, polyphony – under Nicolai Uspensky, the author of the reading book “Samples of Ancient Russian Vocal Art”, piano – under Artobolevskaya, Savshinsky, Nilsen.

Sergei Slonimsky is a professor at the St. Petersburg state conservatory named after Rimsky-Korsakov and Samara Pedagogical University, Winner of the Glinca state Prize and of the St. Petersburg Government Prize, Academician of the Russian Academy of Education, the People’s Artist of Russia.

The composer’s father was a Russian writer and an active member of the literary circle “The Serapion Brothers” – Mikhail Slonimsky (1897-1972); his uncle Nicolai Slonimsky (1894-1995) was a famous American musical expert, the author of fundamental musical encyclopedias; his father’s cousin Anthony Slonimsky (1895-1976) was a famous Polish poet and political dissident.

Sergey Slonimsky is the author of such operas as “Virinea” (1967), “The master and Margarita” (1972), “Mary Stuart” (1980), “Hamlet” (1990), “Tsar Ixion” (1993), “Ioann the Terrible’s vision” (1995); of ten symphonies (The Tenth – “Circles of Hell” after Dante – recorded on CD in Russia), the ballet “Icarus”.

“Virinea” was staged in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Perm; “Mary Stuart” was staged in Samara, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, Olomouts, Alma-Ata. Dramma per musica “Hamlet” is on in Samara and Krasnoyarsk. The ballet “Icarus” was shown in Bolshoi Theatre, on the stage of the Kremlin Palace of Congress (choreographer and performer – Vladimir Vassiliev), in the Mariimsky Theatre of St. Petersburg (choreographer Igor Belsky) and in Brno (choreographer Daniel Visner).

Sergei Slonimsky the author of more than a hundred compositions, among them – Concerto-Buffo (performed several times in the USA and England conducted by Yuri Temirkanov), Organ, Violin, Oboe, Balalaika, Electric Guitar Concerts, recently finished Piano Concert (“Jewish Rhapsody”), Cello Concert, 24 preludes and fuges, which are played in Russia and abroad and are in the pedagogical and concert repertoire of pianists.

Theatre and symphony opuses of the composer were perfomed by such famous conductors as Temirkanov, Gergiev, Kondrashin, Yansons, Grikurov, Rozhdestvensky, Chernushenko, Sinaisky, Simonov, Ermler, Chistyakov, Talmi, Krents, Class, Sondetskis, Dalgat, Nesterov, Provatorov, Kovalenko, Shcherbakov and many others.