Article by Felix Kanatbayev

NIT

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Swallow — flute, prince — clarinet

Article about concert "Inner light" by Felix Kanatbayev

In the gallery "GROUND Solyanka" within the festival Svet Fest there was a concert "Inner Light" with music by contemporary composers. The concert was realized by means of the instrumental theater NIT, the author's project of the composer Alexandra Kobrina. Alexandra partly continues the line found by Mauricio Kagel. However, unlike the German composer, the author subordinates everything that happens on the stage to dramatic laws. NIT embodies the concept of "speechless opera", where the textual narrative is completely replaced by music. Can an instrumental musician become an actor, are the same opportunities available to him as an actor in a drama theater - these and other questions form the main vector of the collective's creative search.

Ph.:Polina Kapitsa

Most of the works presented at Svet Fest consider light as a physical process through photographs, installations and video materials. For Alexandra, light is interesting as a metaphorical and poetic phenomenon. The program of the concert "Inner Light" united in itself a very heterogeneous music in its genesis, but connected by a common artistic idea.

The evening was opened by Sunrise, a late opus by Arthur Lurie, rarely heard in Russia, performed by the amazing flutist Maria Koryakina. The impressionistic flute solo complemented the spectral trio Ins Licht by Georg Friedrich Haas (Feodosia Mironova, Alexandra Kobrina, Andrey Zabavnikov) well. Thus, the first half of the concerto formed a kind of microcycle, depicting the movement from the appearance of light to immersion and stay in it.

Maria Koriakina (flute)

Ignat Krasikov (clarinet) and Maria Urybina (flute)

The heart of the evening was Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince", staged by Alexandra Kobrina, freed here from the textual narrative (partially present, however, in the form of subtitles). The fairy tale is the embodiment of high simplicity: it is a story about true love and gratuitous self-sacrifice for the benefit of those who suffer. The main characters - the forever chained statue of the Happy Prince and the Swallow, alone in her freedom - are depicted using the timbres of the clarinet (Ignat Krasikov) and flute (Maria Urybina).
The slightly cramped space of "GROUND Solyanka" and the corresponding lapidarity of the production created a very special, chamber-sensitive atmosphere in which this fairy tale is only allowed to sound.

Maria Urybina (flute)

Each performer showed sincere participation in relation to his hero and everything that was happening, which was felt both at the level of the whole and in detail. The plot is solved by musical means. Thus, the part of the Swallow is permeated with impressionistic motifs in the spirit of Debussy, which at the same time introduces a "Janissary" flavor (after all, the Swallow originally made her way to Egypt) and sends back to the time of Oscar Wilde, with whom the composer visited the same circles in Paris. In turn, in the part of the Prince there is a kind of leitmotif of "suffering", which repeatedly sounds as the plot develops and is one of the most striking fragments of the production.

Other characters also looked very impressive: from carelessly communicating townspeople (Maria Koryakina, Alexei Krokhin), to a seamstress exhausted from hard work (Alexander Kobrin) and her sick child (Maria Koryakina). A special musical solution was also found for the final scene. Here, surrounded by complete darkness, the heart of the Prince (clarinet mouthpiece) and the corpse of the Swallow (flute) remain on the pedestal. It is these sacred objects that are of the highest value in Wilde, and it is they that "embody light" in Alexandra's production - as if from them, like an epitaph carved in stone, a strictly elevated duet in the style of a medieval organum sounds from them.

Maria Koriakina (flute) and Alexey Krokhin (horn)

The icy darkness gradually replaces the life-giving light here

If from a technical point of view, not everything was successful in the production (which is not shameful, but rather normal for a young team!), then the general impression and a long pleasant aftertaste did not leave the audience indifferent. Luci II (Veronika Karchemkina, Aleksey Krokhin), a late piece by Franco Donatoni, reminiscent of the constructivist perpetuum mobile of the early 20th century, is a striking contrast to the intimate nerve of the tale.

The stage premiere of "Fimbulwinter" by Alexandra Kobrina (Maria Koryakina, Ignat Krasikov, Ksenia Melnik, Alexei Krokhin) closed the program. The piece has become a kind of "summary" of the music of the entire evening - the icy darkness is gradually replacing the life-giving light here.

"NIT" seems to be a very interesting and promising project. This is the only group in Moscow that specializes in instrumental theater.

Felix Kanatbaev, musicologist

Photo: Polina Kapitsa