Диалог культур: наследие Александра Ивашкина (по страницам архивных материалов и публикаций) [Dialogue of Cultures: The Legacy of Alexander Ivashkin (Based on Archival Materials and Publications)]

Abstract

Professor Alexander Vasilievich Ivashkin (1948–2014) was one of the internationally eminent musicians and researchers at the turn of the most recent century. His dedication, willpower and wisdom in pioneering the music of his contemporaries as a performer and academic were the driving force behind his numerous successful international accomplishments. This chapter focuses on Ivashkin’s profound knowledge of twentieth-century music and contemporary analysis in a crossover of cultural-philosophical contexts, together with his rare ability to combine everything in retrospect and draw his own conclusions.
Ivashkin’s interest in contemporary music as an academic and performer naturally coexisted and grew from the early days of his career. It rapidly matured especially from 1978, when he became the artistic director of the Bolshoi Soloists, the ensemble that he formed from some of the best soloists of the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre conducted by Alexander Lazarev. A wide variety of new music by Soviet composers was commissioned and performed along with experimental works by Western composers. It was a unique accomplishment. Ivashkin’s little-known interview for the BBC documentary ‘Think Today, Speak Tomorrow’ recorded at the Almeida Festival in 1989 in London, exposed stylistic distinctiveness and developments in Russian (Soviet) music as seen by Russians and by the West.
The legacy of Alexander Ivashkin naturally incorporates and unites aesthetic debate and technical analysis, theory and practice, musicology and performance, traditional and unconventional, and the crossover of arts and cultures. Themes of symbol and inner meaning, Russian philosophical and religious thought, sacred and supernatural, were very close to the personal and academic interests of Ivashkin. His understanding of inner meaning and symbolism brought new concepts to Russian music, when the irrational becomes a new stimulus for rational ideas. These themes, along with very detailed
and comprehensive musical analysis (which easily and naturally moved on to discussion of similar processes in fine arts, prose, poetry and philosophy) were distinctive features throughout all periods of Ivashkin’s academic writings, starting with the first publications of the early 1970s. The analysis and discussion of these subjects rely on archival and little-explored publications by and about Ivashkin in Moscow and London.

Профессор Александр Васильевич Ивашкин (1948–2014) был одним из выдающихся европейских, российских музыкантов и исследователей рубежа ХХ–ХХI веков. Созидательность и инициатива, широкий спектр интересов, свобода в продвижении музыки современников и авангарда в качестве виолончелиста, дирижера и писателя были движущей силой многочисленных международных исследовательских и научных проектов Ивашкина, конференций и конкурсов, концертов и фестивалей. В статье анализируются обширнейшие знания Ивашкина о музыке ХХ века и современной аналитической мысли в кроссовере культурно-философских контекстов, а также его редкая способность ретроспективного видения процессов. Его понимание внутреннего смысла и символизма привнесли новые концепции в русскую музыку, когда иррациональное становится стимулом новых рациональных идей. Обсуждение этих тем основано на малоизученных публикациях Ивашкина, а также материалах о нем в Москве и Лондоне.