The presentation of the premiers of the new works at the Lugano Festival Effects and dangers of the exploiting

of the new talents in our highly commercial world

The music of the twentieth century has been running away from itself. Instead of the world of the articulated tones, it has fled into the world of the unarticulated murmurs. Instead of becoming notes, scores have become nothing more but graphic pages. Instead of the world of harmonious form, the music has fled into the aleatoric anarchy. Instead of the concert halls, it has fled into the galleries and other ambients. Instead of the playing and singing, it has found the resort in the scene actions. While running away from itself, the music of the twentieth century has alienated itself from its fundamental purpose: it has alienated itself from the audience, and as a result, the audience has fled from the music. Aspiring to the intellectual self satisfaction, the music has sealed itself off into the academic intellectual circles. In the last twenty-thirty years music has started coming back to itself. Many people compare the present day state of the musical creation to the state of the transition from the Middle Ages to to the Renaissance. They say that nowadays like the Crusades Wars and the fall of the Byzantium triggered the era of Renaissance the representatives of the Soviet composers school all over the world are bringing back the music to its tonal consonants roots. They forget that the Byzantium masters, cast away from Constantinople and scattered over the Western Europe, conveyed the spark of the genius of the ancient Greece and Middle East wise men. Nowadays the representatives of the ruined Soviet school, sparse all over the world, do not share the spark of the genius but the dogma, the moulds and the dry academism of an old failed ideology. I will present the example of the life of the Moscow composer Victor Ekimovski, whom I believe no one at this gathering has ever heard of before, and who I consider to be the greatest name in the contemporary Russian music. From his early works, still as a student in Moscow, he distinguished himself by his originality and combativeness against the moulds of the Social Realism. He wrote his final graduation work with the elements of the graphic music, which was the reason why it was never accepted to be assessed. Owing it only to the professor Aram Khachaturians authority he finished his studies with the work in the style of copy music. Completely dedicated to his mission to resist all the pressures of the Soviet regime, he created works which never resembled each other. Each one was completely unique, in its own style, so it can be said that he is the composer with a hundred faces. Believe me, I have met thousands of composers on every continent, but I have never seen such an enormous talent and such a strong energy. I helped him, as much as I could, during the Breznjev regime, to place his works in the West, because he was utterly ignored in his own homeland. He got his PhD in musicology and he made his earnings by reediting the editions of the Collected Works of Shostakovic for ten dollars a month Today, in Free Russia, he spends ninety per cent of his time trying to raise funds to help the same composers who had been suppressing and ignoring him all his life. With the fall of the Communist regime, the life of these composers changed dramatically. Instead of the social flats, rewards, editions, concerts, they became forgotten and miserable, like Ekimovsky had been all his life. He just cannot observe this situation and do nothing, so he puts all of his efforts and his time to save them from poverty. And still he does not have the opportunities to place his work which, believe me is something of the highest originality I have ever heard in my whole life.
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A colleague of his, and his counterpart, Nikolaj Korndorf, was more fortunate. As a young man he got a job at Moscow Conservatory. However, his music was not understood or accepted either. In the time when Social realism was at its peak in Moscow, and the rest of the world was enchanted with trendy minimalism, he wrote maximalistic works, as I call them, for huge orchestral ensembles, which lasted from an hour and a half to two or three hours. He moved to Vancouver with his family, where no one recognized the genius, and pretty soon he died as a young man. Only nowadays does the world start to recognize and realize his genius and start to play his works. Unlike these uncompromising talented defenders, mediocrities succeed, as they always have, in every surroundings and systems. I highly respect many talented, hard working and majestic representatives of the Soviet composers school. But, their less talented colleagues, who were scattered all over the world after the fall of the iron curtain, keep contributing to the contamination of the music which was, due to the iron curtain, limited only to the so called East Block. There are almost no Conservatories which they did not infiltrated into, pushing out with their minimal wages the talented colleagues from the West. They convey the message of their slogans and their moulds from soc-realistic schools to the students all over the world, they are the jury, and they award the doctorates I will mention an anecdote which would be funny if it werent tragic. A pillar of the Soviet socrealistic school, who now teaches in Israel, simply changed the title of her work, which has been written on a Soviet conservatory. The work was entitled The Song of Stormy Petrel, inspired by the famous revolutionary song by Maxim Gorki. After the disaster in Thailand in 2004, she simply changed the title of this work into Tsunami and without realizing it, an distinguished Israeli orchestra performed it And the audience applauded, also unaware of the truth There are no criteria any more! As once I was told by the one of the greatest present day conductors in the world, It seems to me that I could conduct even the phonebook and they would still applaud. In the end I would like to introduce the music of a man whom I found and introduced to the world in 1985, almost 25 years ago. Perhaps you recall that it was the year which was proclaimed to be the International Year of the Music by UNESCO (regarding the 300 years since the birth of the Bach, Haendel and Scarlatti). The radio station Novi Sad, where I worked as an editor-in-chief, got the opportunity to organize the central concert European Broadcasting Union. Budapest Radio Orchestra and a young, unknown conductor Jukka Pekka Saraste were invited to our city. The winner of the competition we organized, was a young composer from the city of Zagreb that no one had ever heard of. We performed his work and broadcast it on air to over 250 radio station all around the world, from Beijing to New York. That young composer is no longer unknown. His works are performed all over the world, but still I think that he did not get the attention he deserves. Very bravely, in the era of dissonance domination he returned to consonance. In the time when the music was taken for granted, he embraced the music of joy and laughter. Very originally, in the work you are about to hear, he uses the orchestra of the folk instruments from his home land, tamburitza. The title of the work is The dance for Penderecki

(musical example) I have just said that today the name of this composer is well known. But not because of his music. He even got his doctors degree in Law School. A month ago the whole world heard about him because he had been elected the new president of the Republic of Croatia. His name is Ivo Josipovic. It is easier to become president of republic, than the famous composer

Talents recognize each other. Mediocrities as well. It is not bad to be a mediocrity. It is, we can say, perfectly normal. Mediocre.

But, the world rests upon two per cent of people who carry the Gods spark. Let us give then a chance to preserve it. Let us give then a chance to preserve it!

2010 by Dushan Mihalek