Music a Nd Emigration
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print_090715_SikMAG3_ENGLISCH_k1:Layout 1 Kopie 17.07.09 12:18 Seite 1 03/09 SIKORSKI MUSIC PUBLISHERS • WWW.SIKORSKI.DE • [email protected] magazine Music a nd Emigration ”Two times two is four in every country” - Emigrant, Cosmopolitan or Victim of Persecution? Twelve Questions on the Subject of “Emigration” 1. What were the most important reasons why you left your 01homeland? 2. What effect did emigration have on your02 work in general? 3. Are there direct references to the subject of emigration03 in your music? 4. Did the music help you come to terms with04 your personal fate? 03 Music and Emigration - Feature 5. What connections to your former 04 homeland have you been Franghiz Ali-Zadeh able to maintain, 06 Lera Auerbach emotionally05 and outwardly? 08 Xiaoyong Chen 6. Is music at all capable of 10 translating political, societal Elena Firsova and personal problems 12 Sofia Gubaidulina into the 06language of music? 13 Giya Kancheli 15 Milko Kelemen 7. What means are best suited to do this? 16 Krzysztof Meyer 07 17 Slava Ulanovski 18 8. Do you feel like a kind Lin Yang of ambassador for the country 20 Benjamin Yusupov of08 your birth? 9. Of the composers who have CONTENTS IMPRESSUM Quartalsmagazin der SIKORSKI MUSIKVERLAGE remained in your homeland, with erscheint mind. 4x im Jahr - kostenfrei which ones do you maintain contact? 09 VERLAG Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski Briefanschrift: 20139 Hamburg, Paketanschrift: Johnsallee 23, 20148 Hamburg, Tel: 040 / 41 41 00-0, 10. How was your emigration evalu- Telefax: 040 / 44 94 68, ated by these composers at the time www.sikorski.de, [email protected] of your emigration? Fotonachweis: Cover: peepo, Yuri Arcurs, David Franklin, Jay Spoone / istock / Sofia Gubaidulina: Archiv Sikorski / Benjamin Yusupov: Archiv Sikorski / Lera Auerbach: 10 Christian Steiner / Ali Sade: Archiv Sikorski / Gija Kantscheli: Priska Ketterer / Xiaoyong Chen: Archiv Sikorski / Jelena Firssowa: J. Morgener / Milko Kelemen: Nenad Turklj / Krzysztof Meyer: Medienzentrum Düsseldorf / Christine Langensiepen / Slava 11. In which of your works, in your Ulanowski: Archiv Sikorski / Lin Yang: Xin Xien / Benjamin Yusupov: Archiv Sikorski opinion, have you most vehemently Hinweis: Wo möglich haben wir die Inhaber aller Urheberrechte der Illustrationen expressed a longing for your ausfindig gemacht. Sollte dies im Einzelfall nicht ausreichend gelungen oder es zu original homeland? Fehlern gekommen sein, bitten wir die Urheber, sich bei uns zu melden, damit wir 11 berechtigten Forderungen umgehend nachkommen können. REDAKTION Helmut Peters 12. What influences since your ARTWORK emigration most strongly influenced zajaczek.com your further12 development? editorial FEATURE Dear readers, The concept of “homeland” Music and has been frequently discussed during recent times at many levels, including the political Emigration one. By no means should “Two times two is four in every country”- anything ideological be understood by this, but Emigrant, Cosmopolitan rather, at best, the perception or Victim of Persecution? of the environment and one’s own roots. Many people Emigration has many faces. Not only as regards have left their homeland, either by their own free will or the persons who have ever dared this step, but by force. This step has especially in view of the reasons which drove especially left deep traces in them to leave their homelands for the long term. the works of those composers who have emigrated. here have always been migration between 1930 and 1950; he returned to movements throughout human history, the Soviet Union and unified musical cultu- T res of both the East and the West within In our catalogues you will find either for reasons of existential threats or out of hope for better living con- himself. composers from Russia, ditions in another country. In the twentieth Alongside emigrants of earlier times, such countries bordering the century the political relations shifted so as Serge Prokofiev, Arnold Schönberg and Orient such as Azerbaijan and radically that individuals, some living and Igor Stravinsky, there are a large number of Georgia, as well as China and suffering under dictatorships, were forced living composers represented in our cata- logues who decided to leave their home- many other countries. to escape the pressure. It was none other than Arnold Schönberg who, questioned lands for the widest variety of reasons. Many of them have exciting about his emigration, made the following Some of them do not necessarily regard and moving stories to tell statements: themselves as emigrants, and even catego- about their emigration. We rically reject the term because they regard themselves as cosmopolitans, but also have asked them about their “Nothing comes out of a person that is not already inside him. because they are convinced that they feelings and experiences, and And two times two is four – in have left their country physically but not their responses have enabled every country.“ internally. us to make interesting con- We have asked these composers a series of nections to their music. Besides Germany during the period of questions pertaining to the subject of emi- National Socialism, other countries were gration. You can read theirs answers on the especially strongly affected by the emigra- following pages and become acquainted Read about the individual tion of intellectuals, artists and scientists. with the given biographical context. At the fates, life stories and back- After the 1917 October Revolution, nume- end of each contribution, we have introduced grounds of the creation of rous composers fled from Russia and that those compositions which the composers country’s music history was split into two themselves most closely associate with the their works, many of which currents – one taking part within the Soviet subject of emigration. have meanwhile been Union and the other outside of it. Stalin put frequently performed. a heavy damper on the euphoria of Russian We have slightly shortened the composers’ art in the 1920s. At the same time, Russian answers for the printed edition of Sikorski music established itself abroad, represented Magazine. The complete text can be found by names such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff on our website under www.sikorski.de. Dagmar Sikorski and Stravinsky. Serge Prokofiev revealed You can also register for our Newsletter Dr. Axel Sikorski himself to be a key figure in the period there. SIKORSKI magazine|3 FRANGHIZ ALI-ZADEH Franghiz Ali-Zadeh was born in 1947 in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, and studied piano and composition at the Conservatory there. Already during her first year of study, she consciously bridged the East with the West by playing Paul Hindemith’s piano work “Ludus tonalis” at a piano examination. Ali-Zadeh enjoyed early success in the West as an interpreter of contemporary piano works. She laid the cornerstone for her international career in 1976 at the Pesaro Music Festival with her “Piano Sonata in Memory of Alban Berg.” After occupying herself intensively with the works of the Second Viennese School and serial techniques, she turned to the sounds of her homeland, following the example of the Mugam art cultivated in Islamic cultures for centuries. Ali-Zadeh achieved her international breakthrough in 1979 with the composition “Habil-sajahy” for violoncello and prepared piano. She was Secretary of the Azerbaijani Composers’ Guild from 1979, with brief interruptions. Although she was a respected artist and teacher in her own country, she decided to leave Azerbaijan in 1992, moving to Mersin, Turkey. Ali-Zadeh was strongly committed to the founding of the Conservatory in Mersin, where she later taught piano and composition. However, the exile situation and the fee- ling of being cut off in a variety of ways from cultural events burdened Ali-Zadeh more and more, which is why she returned to Baku, which was still plagued by crisis, in 1998. But it was precisely in this that she recognised a new calling, namely buil- ding up a new Azerbaijani musical scene, for which her presidency of the association “Women in Music” created a number of possibilities. Already a year later, she decided once again to leave Azerbaijan and moved to Berlin, where she received a year’s stipend form the German Academic Exchange Service. It was from here that her collaboration with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma began, who was to perform Ali-Zadeh’s works on several tours during the course of his “Silk Road Project.” Since then, the composer has lived primarily in Germany. 4|SIKORSKI magazine FRANGHIZ ALI-ZADEH replies: 01. There were several reasons for emigrant. I have never broken off my 07. In my family there was a Mugam my emigration from Azerbaijan in June onnections with Baku, because all my cult; my father played the tar passably well. 1992. First of all, I had received an official relatives have stayed there. I have often At the music school we got to know and commission to compose a ballet from the returned to my home city and even conti- play a great deal of classical music, from Turkish Ministry of Culture. On opera and nued to teach my music theory students at Bach to Shostakovich. During my student ballet theatre was to be opened there in the Conservatory there. years in the 1960s and early 1970s, which the city of Mersin, the fourth theatre of this coincided with the political thaw under kind after those in Istanbul, Ankara and Khrushchev, more and more information Izmir. The then Minister of Culture, Fikri 04. Of course composing has had an seeped into the Soviet Union (through Saǧlar, from Mersin, wanted to open the enormous influence on my life. And it was radio broadcasts, recordings, the Warsaw theatre with a new work especially compo- always the main reason for all of my decisi- Autumn Festival). One could observe a sed for this occasion. The choice fell upon ons having to do with work, moving, the regular dodecaphonic boom of Arnold me, and I went to Mersin – a beautiful city course of the day, my family life.