Vive le Conservatoire! Да здравствует консерватория

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

It is a joy to be working in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. The quality of the students is extraordinary, and the quality of opportunities they are offered is equally high. I am coaching them on repertory in English, German and French, and also making interpretive comments where appropriate. Their voices are impressive and they are amazingly advanced for undergraduates. A number of the students have transfered into the Conservatory a few years into their college education. They began studying voice as a sidebar to their studies and discovered their gifts. This also allowed some of them to develop a little farther vocally before entering the Conservatory.

Once admitted, voice students have an astonishing three hour lessons a week with their applied teacher, plus an hour with another vocal specialist in their Vocal Chamber Music program. This much one-on-one time is naturally very expensive and is out of the reach of most music schools. In addition, an excellent pianist is supplied for them for every lesson. These pianists hurl themselves fearlessly and cheerfully at everything thrown at them from Medtner to Bernstein.

Last week the Conservatory hosted an international music education conference centered around the implications for music schools in Europe and Russia of the "Bologna Process Principles." The Bologna Principles have to do with the goal of international "convergence" (they prefer that word to "standardization") of curriculum among institutions of higher education, which would make it easier for students to move more freely between countries while continuing their education.

This creates an interesting challenge for Russian conservatories, which are justifiably proud of their accomplishments in the technical preparation of musicians. Should they reduce their commitment to applied study in order to make room for other elements called for in the unified curriculum? Stay tuned!

While this conference was taking place, the Conservatory continued its festival of performances based on the theme of the Tsars. A concert presentation of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Tsar's Bride crowned the series. This was a particularly apt choice, since Rimsky-Korsakov taught composition and orchestration at the Conservatory and it now bears his name.  The Tsar's Bride was apparently intended by its composer to be a manifesto in favor of bel canto style over Wagner's operatic reforms. Nonetheless, Wagner is like the pink elephant in the room; you can hear his influence popping up every few minutes. The opera was completed in 1898, and its story reads like a combination of Elixir of Love with the recently completed "Cavalleria Rusicana"--two works that really shouldn't be combined. I expected a light comedy along the lines of The Bartered Bride about the Tsar marrying a perky peasant girl. Imagine my surprise when at the end of the opera, everyone was dead!

Despite the unexpected darkness of the scenario, the music is filled with beauty and emotion. It was my first time seeing one of my idols of Russian song, Sergei Leiferkus, who at 64 still has considerable vocal power and stature on stage. Here is a recording of him singing a Rachmaninoff song I have been learning, "I was with her." He was surrounded with other wonderfully talented alumni and students of the Conservatory. Most outstanding was the young mezzo, Olesya Petrova whose voice combined haunting beauty with great power, taking me back to the night I was present for Dolora Zajick's major house debt at the San Francisco Opera. Petrova, who is only 28 and a recent graduate of the Conservatory, took second prize in the famous Tchaikovsky competiton in Moscow. Similarly impressive were Ekaterina Goncharova, Vasiliy Pochapskiy, Yuriy Vlasov, and Egor Nikolaev in the other principal roles. All in all it was a fine finale to the series and a fitting tribute to a great Conservatory.