Impossible Language

Salvatore Sciarrino WOOD AND SPEECH (2004)
Philippe Manoury KEYBOARD (# 4) (1987)
Vinko Globokar TOUCHER (1973) (Russian premiere)
Michel van der Aa SOLO (1997) (Russian premiere)
Edison Denisov BLACK CLOUDS (1984)
Iannis Xenakis PSAPFA (1975)

One could hardly call music a language. That applies not only to western music, whose conventions and hierarchies, signs and symbols are temporary. Today, they are constantly replaced with increasing speed as each author reinvents the “language.” But the music of India or Japan, with their deep traditions, their unshakable objectivity, is equally unlike a language, because it cannot create meanings that have never existed before.

Still, language never gives peace to music, which constantly seeks to master the laws and manifestations of language.

In his piece, Salvatore Sciarrino creates a phonetic contour of living speech. Philippe Manoury organizes diverse “catalog elements” in a combinatorial manner. The “assembled” music of Michel van der Aa has a similar method, but the result is not quasi-spontaneous, as it is with Manoury, but rather takes on the form of a kind of acoustic “industrial.”

The piece by Vinko Globokar is one of the most important in the history of percussive music. It consists of six fragments from Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo, which are pronounced in French and at the same time “played” on instruments that sound similar to French phonemes (and even, as far as possible, to morphemes). In the middle of the composition, the voice disappears, leaving only objects to “speak,” and, at the end of the piece, to reunite in a mix with the instruments.

Edison Denisov's Black Clouds is probably the most conservative composition in this series of concerts. This is an immaculate, crystal-clear narrative, and, in the words of one of the author’s contemporaries, “true romantic music.”

Iannis Xenakis's Psapfa is paradoxical, as is usual for him. Graphically, it consists of clusters of discrete points of different in intensity on graph paper. But, as researchers of Xenakis have written, the piece metrically inherits the poetry of Psapfa, and therefore the points are transformed into syntax. But music is not a language, right?

The performances of Dmitry Shchyolkin are highly performative. They are not just concerts, but are action and ritual. In addition to the use of extremely rare percussion instruments, the music is played on “sound objects” - ordinary objects used as musical instruments, as well as on various electronic devices.
In terms of the scope of the music selected for performance, the cycle of concerts is a guide to composers of the 20th and 21st centuries seen through the prism of what was written for percussion instruments.

Dmitry Shchyolkin is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory with honors (Mark Pekarsky class), a participant at contemporary music seminars in Trstenitsa (Czech Republic), the IMPULS academy in Graz (Austria), the Darmstadt summer courses (workshops of Christian Dirstein and Miguel Bernat), a workshop on interpreting Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus # 9, and master classes of Jean Geoffroy, Emmanuel Sejourne, Peter Prommel and Arnold Marinissen in Eindhoven (Netherlands). He performs as a soloist and an ensemble musician. His solo repertoire covers the range from the Renaissance (lute and clavier compositions performed on keyboard percussion) to the newest academic avant-garde of the early 21st century.

Dmitry Shchyolkin is the first performer in Russia of solo works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Helmut Lachenmann, Georges Aperghis (with Yury Favorin), Michael Finnissy, Franco Donatoni, Francois-Bernard Mache, Per Norgard, and Kevin Volans. As a soloist and chamber musician he has performed numerous Russian and world premieres. He is a member of the Mark Pekarsky Ensemble, and from 2006 to 2012 was a member of the Studio of New Music ensemble. He has collaborated with various ensembles of contemporary music, including Tra I Tempi (Bonn), Alter Ego (Rome), chamber orchestras, and ensembles of early music. As a performer on the piano, harpsichord and organ-positive, he has performed with the ensemble of ancient music of the Moscow Conservatory and the Mark Pekarsky ensemble. He is a co-organizers of the improvisational group "ERROR 404" (together with Alexey Sysoev and Yury Favorin). He has collaborated with the Center for Electroacoustic Music of the Moscow Conservatory, and has performed in various interdisciplinary and theatrical projects.

He has performed in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, participating in numerous international festivals, among them: Territory, Moscow Forum, Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Darmstadt), La Biennale di Venezia (Venice), December Nights of Svyatoslav Richter, MANCA (Nice), and Schleswig-Holstein (Hamburg).

Tickets: 500 р., subscription to three concerts: 1,200 rubles