Holding an interview with Igor Vorotnikov is not easy: in reply to every question he sits down at the piano and stars playing. A violinist (three time winner of national competition), then a conductor by training, he began writing compositions at an early age. So the year after he graduated from the conservatory was not marked by stunning concerts, but by the release of his first solo album “13 compositions for piano” on the “Melodiya” label.
In the musical world, Igor Vorotnikov is better known as the composer of experimental and innovative music – he took part in joint projects with the “New Composers” and Brian Eno; in the 1980s he took part in organizing the first international rock festivals “Next Stop Sovjet”, “Next Stop Rock-n-roll”. In 1996 he gave an impressive performance of organ improvisations at the Copenhagen music festival (“Christian town” at the Helig Cors Kirshe church).
Despite all of this, it seems to me that short piano pieces are Vorotnikov’s favorite form. And his new work, the album “Drugoi Peterburg”, which has just come out, is a cycle of 11 transparent, watercolor piano pieces.
Do you not write large-scale compositions because of “technical” reasons, or do you consciously avoid them?
You could call it minimalism, I suppose, I’m not sure. But I set myself the task of achieving the maximum artistic effect in the minimum amount of time possible. As major forms go, at the moment I am most interested in the ballet that I am working on the moment. It will have very special scenography, with color music effects and film projections on to special screens showing the dancers who were filmed beforehand, which will make it possible for the dancers to move from the stage into virtual space and back again, as it were.
You say that one of the main criteria for you during recording is “searching for the sound”: choosing the right touch, the dynamics, the timbre… Why don’t you trust your works with professional pianists then?
May the pianists forgive me! (Laughs). But the difficulty is that I don’t like the academic approach to performance, I prefer a certain spontaneity and improvisational technique. To give the listener a full sense that the music is just being created now, at this very moment. Although of course, it would be good to find “my own” pianist who plays well: I have a number of pieces which require a very sound, virtuoso piano technique, which I simply cannot manage myself – I don’t consider myself to be a great pianist. But on the other hand, my own interpretation is still the closest to the composer’s idea!
Igor has written music for several films; he has worked very closely with animation master Boris Kazakov, who uses the technique of drawing on 35-mm film. His unique absurdist manner is quite close to the aesthetics of “parallel cinema” of the 1980s.
My last work with him was “Stone Garden”; Dima Parfyonov helped me to record the music (keyboard player for the groups “A.U.”, “Narodnoe opolchenie”, “Prepinaki”, “Belomorkanal”, “Alisa”). While we’re on the topic of film, I’m currently involved in a major project: Lennauchfilm is going to make a cycle of films about “Eugene Onegin”. It will be released on DVD, and initially it will be shown all over the country: “Onegin” will be read by famous actors, and the novel will be commented on by our famous Pushkin specialists.
How do you classify the genre you work in? The first think that comes to my mind, for example, is neo-classical.
Yes, there are neo-classical elements… It’s meditative music for relaxing… I would say that it’s internal music, “parallel” music. Against the very aggressive musical background which surrounds us daily and hourly on radio and television, in cars and bars, it’s simply different music.