The St. Petersburg Conservatory

My first days at the St. Petersburg Conservatory have been amazing! On Monday, I “team taught” four of Victoria Evtodieva’s students: a lyric tenor, a soubrette soprano, a full lyric mezzo (categorized by the Russian system as a dramatic soprano) and a bass. All had superb voices! They first sang a Russian piece, so I was exposed for the first time to beautiful works by Gretchaninoff, Dargomyshsky and Solofyof-Sedoy.

Then we worked on songs in English, French and German, works by Barber, Bernstein, Bizet, and Schubert, which was where my expertise was, I hope, helpful.

In the meantime, the staff of the conservatory was rushing around on my behalf, trying to arrange the required registration of my passport. One must be registered with the local authorities within three days of arriving. They are still working on a conservatory ID card for me.

I had tea later with Dmitry Chasovitin, the pro-rector of the Conservatory, who will be accompanying me in recital. He is involved in two major events at the moment, an impressive festival of performances at the Conservatory and an international conference of Conservatory administrators. We agreed that we would reconvene after the events are over next week.

Incidentally, the best deal in town is the Conservatory canteen, where I can get complete meals for just a few dollars. Fortunately pointing works there as well, no Russian needed, except for the amount due. I thought I was ordering fish in a cream sauce and ended up with liver and mayonnaise, but it’s all good.

On Tuesday a lovely young musicology student gave me a tour of SPB, expanding my circle a bit from Victoria’s tour. We crossed the Neva over to the War and Maritime museum and also strolled in the garden of Peter the Great’s winter palace, home of the Ermitage museum, which we didn’t enter. The student, whose name is Kira, has chosen a project on the musical compositions of Pauline Viardot. We had lunch in the famous literary cafe known to have been Pushkin's last cafe before getting himself killed in a duel. Dostoevsky also frequented this place. We were practically alone in the restaurant, so actually got excellent food and fine service. There is a grand piano and I understand there are musical performances at dinner time.

That evening, after a little practicing, I sat in on a rehearsal of Victoria and her husband’s baroque music group, and then attended a concert of Russian opera excerpts, performed by the conservatory orchestra and chorus with alumni guest soloists. They began with a few excerpts from Boris Godunov, and then followed with excepts from little known operas by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Rubenstein, Sergei Slonimsky, and Andrei Petrov; all of the excerpts were from operas based on the lives of various Russian Tsars. The soloists were excellent and the orchestra and chorus were outstanding. The conductor was the Rector of the Conservatory.

Afterwards, Victoria got permission to bring me to a reception for the performers with the leaders of the Conservatory and other VIPs. There was much snapping of pictures—who knows, I may be in the paper tomorrow. Let’s hope they spell my name right: Карл Ратнер.

Today, wednesday, I had the day off and tried with limited success to run some errands. In the evening I attended Victoria and her husband Vladimir's concert with their baroque music group. The program consisted of songs and instrumental works by Dowland, Byrd, and their English Late Renaissance/Early Baroque contemporaries.

Victoria sang delightfully, and Vladimir held everything together with his jocular but commanding personality/ His violin playing was filled with character and point, not to mention exquisite tone. Altogether a wonderful concert.

St. Petersburg Conservatory website translated by Google

Conservatory English site, much less extensive

The Conservatory Festival including info about the Tsar's concert

This link should include a news report about the Tsar's concert and a small video clip, followed by a commercial...just let the news report go by if you don't speak russian:
http://news.mail.ru/video/4475682/

Numerous video clips of Vladimir's group

Musica Antiqua Russica and Victoria perform Buxtehude

literary cafe