We have started from the Northern Ossetia, where one of the most terrible tragedies in human history happened 7 years ago. Terrorists took hostage several hundred children in a school and held more than 1000 people in the sport hall for three days without any water or food. More than 350 children were killed then.
Nobody would ever forget about that monstrous act, and no day in that tiny town passes without people remembering what happened to them.
There is no family in this town who has not lost their child, or friend, or relative, or acquaintance. Mourning is in the air, and memories of that tragedy are vividly alive. The main place in the town is the cemetery where the children were buried. It is called “The City of Angels”. Every day and night you can see at least two or three people there around some tomb. They don’t close the cemetery at night. Some mothers live at the cemetery for years.
We have chosen Beslan because it has been “The City of Angels” for seven years now. I really want to show to these grieving mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters of dead children that there is still beauty, power, and kindness in life. Most of them don’t believe in it any longer. The very thought that MAN could do it to your child doesn’t let them believe in anything positive in this life. I am totally convinced that music has this power. Music can heal, can help people to forget tortures, can show them a cosmic beauty and give help in coping with and getting over their grief. I am convinced that communicating with art can be pain relieving. And grief could be very creative as well. I want to show these people that we are with them, that every person who has lost somebody in his/her life can feel what they are feeling, and I want to share my understanding with them. Every composer has exaggerated senses, and I am sure that every piece of music contains love or death. This is all that music is about.
With these thoughts I have chosen Beslan and with these thoughts we arrived there. A delegation of 5 teachers from the school met us with a huge bunch of flowers. All of us were really nervous, and tension was in the air when we rode from the airport to the school. We arrived at the concert hall of the school for a rehearsal with the intention to check the acoustics and the condition of the piano they had. It was a real shock for us because the piano was completely out of tune despite the fact that they tuned it the day before. There were no professional tuners in that area any more. Nobody knew how to do it properly, they had one 80-year-old man who knew how to do it, but at this time he was almost deaf. They didn’t have anybody else and they could`t let him retire because then he would have nothing to live on. After several hours of discussions we could rehearse together with the saxophone.
We planned to give a piano master-class for children and play a solo recital on the first day (25 October, 2011).
They gave us a program for the master-class that included pieces of Bach, Czerni, Ziring, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Grieg. There were 6 students who played for me. The main thought that bothered me that first time was how to bring light, happiness, and love to the music rather than show them that they don’t know how to do anything. My biggest fear was not that I could hurt them, but rather that I would not be able to put some spark in them, and I think that this is one of the most difficult things in teaching. To be honest, it was not an easy experience at all. The hall could accommodate about 120 people, and it was filled to capacity. Teachers came from all over Ossetia to listen to this event. What is the difference between a private lesson and a master-class? We have to find the contact with the audience, to make it interested and surprised, to show different ways for achieving the result, to encourage their searching, to keep their eyes and heart open. General level of the students was not high at all. Lots of teachers?? do know the basic rules of piano playing, but they don’t have a busy cultural life in that area, nobody comes to play recitals, they are not motivated, and they can`t expand their knowledge. What I tried to do apart from the technical and stylistic advice was to draw a picture for every single piece. To explain to these children (they were all not older than 16 years old) that music is not only about right fingering, notes, rhythm, and tempos. Each piece has the meaning, the sense, and it is possible to verbalize the mood and the feeling of it, it is possible to create a story and imagine a picture even in some technical stuff like Czerny’s and Ziming’s Etudes. If you know what you are playing about you will immediately find yourself in another wonderful world of sounds and spirits. It was not easy for me because these kids were nervous and afraid to make a mistake, and for them it was a completely new way of looking at the musical piece.
I had a break for twenty minutes followed by a solo recital that included Frederick Chopin’s Sonata op.35 in B flat minor (with the Funeral Marche), Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Variations on the Theme of Corelli, Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes op.13/posthumous and Prokofiev’s Sonata op.28 in A minor. We had written Introductory Word saying that we wanted to commemorate children and people who were killed in that terrible tragedy, that we knew for sure that they were with us and that they could listen to the music and that we could talk and share the pain for the loss of them through this music. It was an astonishing feeling to play in such an environment. I was so moved by people around me, that throughout the whole concert I thought only about the loss, about the dead children with whom I tried to communicate through my music, about the long way of grieving which these parents had to suffer. The most important part of it was the Funeral March, where I started to hear people weeping. It gave me the shivers inside and a big responsibility for the audience, the composer, and addressed children. The concert went really well, and some of themothers came to me with tears in their eyes saying: “Thank you, darling, for what you are doing”. They were all in black with their tragedy imprinted on their faces. I smiled and could not say anything. But my thinking was: “It is possible to move on, it is possible to build something else, around that deep hole inside them, it is possible to get a life”. But I could not verbalise it, I had said everything with my performance.
26/10/2011
It was an anniversary (9 years) of the Nord-Ost terrorist attack in Moscow on this day, and all the schoolchildren, and other people met in the sports hall of the school where the Beslan’s tragedy took place. One teacher from the music school was there seven years ago, she had lost her daughter, her son had become an invalid, and after that she had adopted a baby – what a great strength and personality she has! Her name is Dina and she told us exactly what had happened during these terrible days. When you are watching it on TV, you are watching a fantasy movie, and it is quite far away from you. But when you are in that destroyed building, inside that sports hall, which is covered with bottles of water, flowers, candles, portraits of more than 300 victims, where it is written everywhere: “Give me some water”, “Sorry that we could not rescue you” and “Forgive us” – believe me, it is a shocking experience…
Then was the turn for Vitaly Vatulya to give a master-class and for both of us to play a duo recital.
In Beslan we first experienced a problem which will haunt us everywhere later on, . There are not many saxophonists in the world. No one plays or teaches saxophone in Beslan, no one teaches it in Vladikavkaz, the capital of the Republic. There is only one teacher for the entire Republic, who is actually not a saxophonist but a common woodwind player, and she lives 100 km away from Beslan. Four students came to get a lesson with Vitaly, and two of them played clarinet, which is a completely different instrument despite the fact that the technique is quite close to that of saxophone. The biggest problem is that saxophone is an expensive instrument, and no one could afford it. Schools cannot afford it either. The second problem is that they don’t have any teaching method. But these children are driven to learn how to do it, and they want to study this instrument. The master-class went absolutely great as Vitaly has lots of teaching experience and knows lots of tricks how to produce sound, make it beautiful, how to breathe, how to control the sound or breath??, how to practise, to listen to yourself, etc, etc. All of the students were practically beginners even those who started the instrument a couple of years ago or so. Nobody explained to them any basic technique, any posture requirements, or how to create a sound. So, Vitaly tried to give them as much as he could to fix what they had been doing wrong before and to show them some breathing exercises, pronouncing some letters for the right position of the tongue so that they would continue in future by themselves. Of course, one lesson is not enough to solve this kind of problems, but what we tried to do was to make this instrument more popular, to show how beautiful the sound could be, what a great potential it has.
We hope that the duo recital, which included Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata in A Major op.13 (arrangement for the saxophone), F. Borne’s “Fantasie Brilliante on the themes of ‘Carmen’”, S. Rachmaninoff ‘s Vocalize and J.Matitia’s “Devil’s Rag” helped us with promoting this instrument.
Chamber music has its own specificity. You must not only know and play your part very well but you also have to know, listen, and feel the part of your partner, plus you have to feel both parts together. It needs an acoustic hearing and controlling to avoid exaggeration of your part and at the same time to show its main subjects . You must have a strong hierarchy of the musical material and at the same time create a single shape, go the same direction with your partner, “talk” to him/her through your music and always listen to him/her. The balance is always quite a tricky thing. It depends on features of this particular piano and on the acoustics in that particular hall. But the greatest secret of playing together is to hear (not only to listen to) your partner. Then you will never exaggerate your volume, and you will feel exactly how much is needed.
It was more than a full-house concert, people came from all over the place to listen to us, and children were extremely happy after the concert. They hugged us, took pictures, asked to sign the programs, and we could see that they were really impressed with what they heard. We started with a very long and serious romantic piece (Franck Violin Sonata), which lasts for 30 minutes. In the second part we played concert miniatures with the Devil`s Rag by Jean Matitia at the end. It is a very bright and catchy music, which makes everyone smile..
It is very important to prepare the program properly. It should not be too long and it should not contain the same styles. I think it is quite appropriate to begin with the most serious one and to finish with the lightest.
The school`s administration organized a great banquette for us with the traditional music, food, dances and traditional feast procedure. It was unbelievably warm and touching.
28/10/2011
We played another concert at the Central Musical School in Vladikavkaz, which is the capital of Northern Ossetia. I played some solo pieces, and we also played together. The audience was amazing, just as it was in Beslan: excited children with pens in hands asking for the autographs, taking pictures and asking to come again. After the concert one teacher came up to me to talk and told me how much she missed the cultural life which they had in the Soviet times. Now nobody comes to play, they forgot what it felt to listen to the performers…