Conductor Yuri Ivanovich Simonov An Unattainable I

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Conductor Yuri Ivanovich Simonov: An Unattainable Ideal
(An Essay-Meditation on Music and Power)

It all comes down to the pencil. In the hands of one child, it becomes the tool of a master painter; in those of another, it turns into a conductor’s baton, sketching musical imagery across the void. The classic Soviet Sacco and Vanzetti pencil led many a youth to art schools and the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, but only a precious few to the Bolshoi Theatre.

An artist locks himself away in his studio to create a canvas, bringing it into the light only when finished for the public to behold. A composer, having painted a portrait in notes, must seek out musicians and a conductor to breathe life into the work, giving it a fleeting, singular existence upon the stage. Museums serve as the guardians of painted masterpieces; music, however, fills our vibrational space. Taking up residence in the human heart, it is preserved only within the musicians and conductors who perform these masters' works. Yet one must never forget that "the museum mind does not always mesh with the creative mind—for the former is conservative, while the latter is revolutionary." A "masterpiece on canvas" can be lost forever; "masterpiece music" never can.

Both a painting and a piece of music are birthed by man. But where a painting remains an object of art, music is a dialect of the Divine—a language for communion with the Creator! Without sound, the human soul suffers a literal starvation; anyone can test this truth by sitting in solitary confinement.

It all comes down to the pencil. One person will use it to scribble obscenities and paint profane pictures. Mankind can survive that. But bad music degrades and destroys us from within—for it is a vibration with which we exist in harmonic resonance, and through which we create "in our image and likeness" in the world around us.

Much has been written about Grand Dukes and commanders: truth and falsehood are inextricably entwined in the single knot of the historical process, within which they act alongside their faithful retinues. Far fewer books have been written about conductors, and for obvious reasons: musicality is not a mere conditioning of muscles, but a divine genetic gift. I shall not write a book myself, for I am no conductor—merely a witness to events, a "musical advocate."

More than thirty years have passed since the chapter in which I was once blessed to play a part. I speak of the Great Russian Conductor, Yuri Ivanovich Simonov. His portrait has not yet been rendered on canvas by my artist friends—neither by the late, prematurely departed Seryozha Prisekin, nor by the living academicians of painting Dmitry Belyukin, Nikolai Anokhin, or Ivan Dmitriev.

I do not believe in coincidences. In the late eighties, I met Simonov. Yuri Ivanovich became my musical Sensei during a specific chapter of my non-musical life—my journalistic work in 1989. It was my destiny, as well as the destiny of many musicians, painters, and journalists who were swept into this single grain of sand along our life's path. It was our assignment, our mission, and the very solution upon which our future hung...

One evening—in September, if memory serves—a phone call came through to the editorial office of the Youth (Yunost) radio station from my "cadet brother," Igor Merny. For seven years we had grown up together at the Moscow Military Music School of the USSR Ministry of Defense. He told me he was working as an oboist in the Little State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR, founded in 1985 by the Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre, Yuri Ivanovich Simonov.

Anxious and agitated, Igor—speaking on behalf of his fellow musicians—begged me for help: "Save the orchestra from journalistic slander and from a total misunderstanding of what is actually happening behind the scenes between the players and the conductor." Since 1986, I had been hosting the radio show Code of Laws (Svod Zakonov) on the Youth Channel, so investigating conflicts and offering legal counsel fell squarely within my domain. More than half of the orchestra's members were brilliant young conservatory graduates.

Armed with an editorial assignment, I met repeatedly with all the "victims and aggrieved parties" of this second act of the Ballet de la Merlaison. What purpose does it serve today to recount the emotional outbursts of artists who were completely detached by the world of music from political reality and workplace discipline? An orchestra or a theatre is a microcosm of the state, complete with all its virtues and vices. A "Beethoven-sized ensemble" of 65 musicians succumbed to the "vibrations of revolutionary self-destruction."

The conflict was further inflamed when Alexander Minkin, a theatre critic for Ogoniok magazine, thrust himself into the fray. With his publication, he spun the flywheel of sensationalism to a frenzy. At that time, journalistic crossfire was gathering momentum in an all-out chase for "juicy scandals." Everyone demanded "change at any cost."

The literary critic Tatyana Tolstaya, in her article Pushkin and Minkin (Novaya Gazeta, 2003), captured this character perfectly: "Kind-hearted folk with big ears and clean hands periodically feed Minkin wiretaps, whereupon he bursts into flame and prints them accompanied by furious commentary." Or as the writer Andrey Malgin recalled in his 2007 Notes of a Misanthrope: "In his day, as I recall, Minkin used to publish entire pages of wiretaps in MK. It looked absurd: raw transcripts without a single word of commentary, yet proudly bearing the byline: Alexander Minkin. When he brought us KGB leaks at Stolitsa, we were too disgusted to print them."

In an orchestra that toured abroad frequently, there were undoubtedly those very "big ears" that Minkin exploited. Back then, I was blissfully unaware of all this filth and felt genuine bewilderment as to why such rubbish was being printed. From a legal standpoint, the core of the conflict was crystal clear: a faction of the orchestra, egged on by "Persimfans-style" agitators (Persimfans — the legendary 1922 Soviet orchestra without a conductor, a symbol of musical anarchy. ), had staged a wildcat strike and refused to work, sabotaging an international tour. Overcome by emotion, they chose to remain standing on the platform as the train departed for Budapest!

This blatant violation of the Soviet Labour Code by the artists did not deter the instigator Minkin, nor did it stop another obsessed sensation-hunter: Alexander Politkovsky, a special correspondent for the television program Vzglyad (Glance). Politkovsky took to the airwaves during what we would today call prime time. Regrettably, Vzglyad took the side of the rebellious musicians against Conductor Simonov.

The conductor was expected to take the fall for breaching the Gosconcert state contract. Certain forces outside the orchestra desperately wanted that outcome. Yet the concerts took place anyway: students from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music stepped in to join the remaining members of the orchestra! Under the Maestro's baton, the ensemble transformed into an international youth orchestra. The Hungarian music press published glowing reviews of the tour.

This did not satisfy our local villains—they lusted for blood at any cost, striving to pit the musicians against their maestro. On the very day Politkovsky’s biased TV segment aired, my own investigative report on the radio was pulled from broadcast. No arguments were entertained. The Editor-in-Chief, Boris Nepomnyashchy, banned the program so that "we wouldn't clash with our TV brethren at Youth Media," which was headed by our former editor-in-chief, Eduard Sagalaev —then Vice-Chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio.

The editorial policy of Soviet State Radio and Television was rapidly shifting toward commercialization and a sensationalist hunt for outrage, tearing down monuments and the nation itself in the process. Communist lies were merely substituted with liberal-democratic ones. Nevzorov's 600 Seconds flourished, firing automatic bursts of letters and words in every direction. Ideological bureaucrats clutching Party cards began destroying the ideals of law and justice with "pure Bolshevik zeal"—only this time, for the sake of dismantling "everything Soviet" at any cost. A riot or a revolution marches to a different beat—it is the province of the young.

D;j; vu! Something had to be done to salvage the livelihood, honor, and dignity of the musicians and their conductor—especially since the troublemakers were a clear minority. The matter never even reached a civil labor court; it remained marooned in the murky corridors of ideological power.

Having failed to achieve justice for the orchestra through radio, I approached the forestry engineer turned Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU), Stepan Alekseyevich Shalayev, with a proposal: to create a trade union symphony orchestra under the auspices of the AUCCTU. A frequent guest on my radio shows, Stepan Alekseyevich agreed to consider the project.

Yuri Ivanovich and I eagerly set to work drafting it, tackling even the delicate nuances of self-financing and securing international performance engagements. Every remaining musician joined in the effort. We secured a rehearsal space for the orchestra. The paperwork to formally establish the AUCCTU Symphony Orchestra was dispatched to the USSR Ministry of Culture for that final, elusive administrative sign-off.

The renewed AUCCTU ensemble performed to resounding acclaim at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall of the Moscow Philharmonia!

And then... all hell broke loose. Envious, cockroach-like detractors crawled out from every crevice. The Ministry of Culture began hunting for "trade union funds." A world of snapped violin strings, shattered double basses, and cracked kettledrums began to rattle with the sickening cacophony of malice and lies.

In April of 1990, our people’s protector Shalayev became a "personal pensioner of all-Union significance." The orchestra was not to be. The taiga and peatlands, stripped of their foresters by the onset of "democratization," began to burn with increasing frequency, casting a grey pall over not only Moscow but the entirety of Siberia...

"Instead of warmth, the green of glass,

Instead of fire, smoke.

A day is snatched from the calendar grid.

The red sun burns down to ash,

The day burns down with it.

A shadow falls upon the blazing city.

Change is what our hearts demand,

Change is what our eyes demand,

In our laughter and in our tears,

And in the pulsing of our veins —

Change!

We are waiting for change."

— Viktor Tsoi

Change arrived all too soon, borne on bloody tears and hundreds of thousands of homeless orphans of a "civil war with a new, two-headed visage." The Union fractured into disparate illegitimate states without even bothering to "legalize the divorce." On March 17, 1991, the people had voted in a referendum to preserve the great power. But the usurpers of supreme authority were in a rush. The "referendum," the "GKChP" [State Committee on the State of Emergency], and the "three-man" conspiracy in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha were, at their core, a meticulously engineered special operation to reformat the Eurasian space known as the USSR.

Amidst these historical circumstances, we made yet another attempt to preserve the ensemble by offering the post of principal conductor to Vasily Serafimovich Sinaisky, a gold medalist at the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin. We negotiated for nearly a year, but in the end, the position went to Vladimir Alexandrovich Ponkin—who for some reason omitted his subsequent creative milestones with the State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR from his official biography. (Ah, the wonders of Wikipedia!) In 1995, following its renaming as the "State Symphony Orchestra under the Direction of Vladimir Ponkin," the sandy tracks of violins and cellos, alongside bassoons and trombones, were washed away by the Moskva River. It is wide and deep!

The decade of the nineties dealt a colossal blow to our academic musical culture. The nation’s finest musicians and conductors found themselves unwanted at home. Many were forced to emigrate, lured by lucrative offers from Western impresarios. It was only by a stroke of good fortune that the Bolshoi Theatre did not degenerate into a brothel, avoiding becoming a daily stage for the crimson jackets of Vladimir Central and Murka. The "vulgar shanson of Pugacheva’s brand" blossomed in full, obnoxious color. "Profane graffiti was scrawled across every fence in the USSR and broadcast over central television." The country and its music sank into a criminal coma.

An unemployed People’s Artist of the USSR in Moscow easily claimed his crown in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, London, Paris, Budapest, and Brussels. There were productions of Khovanshchina, The Queen of Spades, Aida, Don Carlos, The Force of Destiny, Salome, and The Ring of the Nibelung, not to mention numerous symphonic concerts. From 1994 to 2002, he served as Music Director of the National Orchestra of Belgium (ONB) in Brussels. In 1998, upon an invitation from the musicians of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra to become their chief conductor, Yuri Ivanovich naturally accepted and took the helm of this remarkable collective—which he continues to lead to this day!

In 2010, in Moscow, amid the horrific peat fires and to the strains of "the harp and shattered love," the orchestra’s principal oboist, Igor Merny, passed away at the age of forty-eight. I mourn him. Later, in 2012, the talented director Pavel Lungin would release his deeply emotional drama The Conductor. To the music of Metropolitan Hilarion (Grigory Valeryevich Alfeyev)—The St. Matthew Passion—the film laid bare, with profound tragedy, the dilemmas of human spirituality and art, the artist's mission, and the inner torments he must conquer within himself.

Nearly every creative collective experiences something akin to this. Perhaps you will agree with me that the true mission of a musician sitting in an orchestra is not to "find their own voice," but to achieve a cathedral-like unity of sound? The right to an "individual voice" belongs solely to the creator-composer, the conductor, and the soloist. It would seem there is "no sadder tale than this," but that is not so—to be continued. One must always strive for the good, and it will unfailingly arrive!

On March 4, 2021, the Moscow Philharmonic hosted the jubilee celebration of the Great Maestro, Yuri Ivanovich Simonov! At eighty years old, he remained as active as ever, sparkling with wit, inviting his own students to conduct while he sat in the hall listening with a fatherly pride. Congratulations from the President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Minister of Culture, Olga Lyubimova, telephone calls from world-renowned artists and musicians, and an abundance of messages from classical music lovers poured into our souls like a horn of plenty, filling us with the atmosphere of eternal being.

After thirty years of diverging paths, I watched the concert live-streamed from Canada. "Red Suvorovite," my cadet brother from the junior years of the Moscow Military Music School and military bandmaster Andrei Petrov, delivered a bouquet of flowers and greetings to Yuri Ivanovich on my behalf. Over all the years that have flown by in a single day, our acquaintance and unspoken friendship can never be forgotten.

I realize now that what united us and made us kin was not merely the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil with which young Yura and I once conducted an imaginary orchestra across a generational divide, but a shared love and innate talent for sensing beauty in music. We do not need to articulate whether something is "good or bad." I draw my energy and my life from harmonious beauty. The image of Conductor Simonov remains indelibly present within me whenever classical music sounds at concerts, on the radio, or on television in the many countries where I have had to live and work. He is my supreme musical marker and the absolute standard of orchestral sound, articulation, and gesture—the very measure of conducting magic.

Music is a theme that will never be finished for me, for I have loved it since childhood. The warm sounds of the Russian accordion on the porch bench at Grandmother Ulyana Vasilyevna Khlynina’s place in Maly Alabukhi, and the "Hungarian Cranes" flying away into the distance from my mother's violin—my mother, Ilona Pavlovna von Betesh-Esterhazy, a teacher of Russian language and literature—travel with me everywhere. This love was nourished by the sonic aura of our Mother Earth, schooled and nurtured at the Moscow Military Music School by our teachers, expanded by the high classics of "the brass and symphonic Gardarika of Rus"—it is woven into my very physical being and will live there until my last breath.

For a long time now, I have pondered the purpose and meaning of life. The professions we choose often grow obsolete amid the rush of modern scientific and technological progress. In our present lives, we cycle through multiple programmatic destinies that, a century or two ago, would have consumed the entirety of a single human existence. We grow up quickly, marrying, raising children, building a home, and reaching the pinnacle of our careers in one field or another. Our goals and tasks shift, and for some, even our ideals change.

By our second score of years, almost everyone experiences a sort of shortness of breath—a fatigue from life itself—yet some discover a second wind and the realization that there are no limits save the ones we construct ourselves. Eventually, some of us understand that an excess of material prosperity offers no true joy if it comes at the expense of spiritual life. Fewer and fewer people remain who possess genuine knowledge and the capacity to pass it on. We age. Our beloved teachers depart into infinity. Inevitably, we arrive at the thought that we must build an "ark of knowledge" for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, thereby discovering a new meaning for our continued existence for the sake of the future generation.

We live amidst the audible sounds and magnetic oscillations of the Universe and our Planet. They sweep across the Earth, are absorbed by it, and are then returned back purified. Man is a paramagnet—a vessel that takes in energy and radiates it outward. He receives and returns. This precisely is why "in the beginning was the Word," and why music serves as our spiritual and energetic nourishment. We are, in essence, "musical batteries." The quality of our charge dictates our longevity and our state of health.

As it happened, I learned of this not from textbooks, but from my clients who later became my teachers in the realm of electromagnetics: the inventor Valentin Stepanovich Patrasenko and the entrepreneur Yuri Pavlovich Tkachenko—the creators of the Magnitotron devices under the auspices of the "Russian Crown" joint-stock company. I had the privilege of observing firsthand and helping patent the results of experiments and inventions in USSR scientific laboratories, witnessing how magnets exert their influence upon all living things. The hypothesis even arose that one could invent a specialized "magnitotron" for wind instrument musicians, which would undoubtedly influence tone quality and facilitate the unhindered flow of vibrations through the instrument.

To discuss this idea in 1993, Valentin Stepanovich and I met at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District Orchestra, commanded at the time by Major Andrei Kolotushkin—another alumnus of our Moscow Military Music School. We, the Suvorovites and cadets of all generations, remain "scattered, yet unbroken." As the saying goes, an idea once born belongs to everyone, transcending authorship and patent restrictions. Today, many brass musicians in orchestras around the world utilize a conceptually similar gadget on their trumpets and horns: the LefreQue sound bridge designed by Hans Kuijt.

Whenever I listen to classical music on the radio of my car during long drives or stuck in city traffic across Canada or the United States, I cannot help but notice that the vast majority of "foreign radio content" is actually our Russian symphonic and opera music. This is always a source of joy; yet whenever I glance at the "world conductor rankings," I am offended by the unmerited marginalization of our names. For instance, BBC Music Magazine lists among the world's top twenty conductors—ranking seventeenth—only Yevgeny Mravinsky, who, according to the magazine, somehow "inherited the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in 1938 from the Austrian conductor Fritz Stiedry and was largely responsible for preserving the Austro-German tradition through the dark years of Stalinist terror." (!)

Or let us turn to the British Gramophone and its list of fifty preeminent conductors. Alongside the late Mravinsky, it features somewhere near the end Valery Gergiev, described as "arguably the busiest conductor in the world, having held a string of official leadership posts including with the London Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre, Kirov Opera, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as being a prolific recording artist and guest conductor."

Voila! By what metric is a conductor's "prolificacy" measured? Two hundred concerts "swung through" in a year? When does this mimens—as orchestra musicians derisively call them—have time to study the scores if he hasn't even time to shave?

One is tempted to cry out that the "European West"—which birthed classical music and ballet—will simply wither away without the masterpieces of Russian classical music and Swan Lake by that titan of twentieth-century choreography, Yury Nikolayevich Grigorovich!

If there is anything I can concede to them, it is the high organization, meticulous planning, and rigorous legal sophistication of the "show business" sphere, into which symphonic and theatrical musical life in Europe and North America must undoubtedly be folded. Billions of dollars have been poured into it. Yet I would never claim that it is the most refined, the highest in quality, or the most spiritually elevated. For instance, the opera house in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, in its dimensions and "pomposity," falls short of any "Stalin-era House of Culture," while the performance mastery of the orchestra and singers left my ears aching. Perhaps I am simply a spoiled listener?

Nevertheless, every creative collective has its own "patronage ecosystem" (benefactors)—not merely in the sense of fundraising for an orchestra or theatre, but in cultivating public opinion like a fan club around their favorites. This exerts a profoundly healthy influence on the atmosphere of cultural life. At the same time, every middle school in Canada boasts a concert band and string ensembles where children have the opportunity to develop their musical gifts, while the music industry offers an immense, affordable market for professional instruments, providing them either for free use or on interest-free credit. In Soviet music schools, academies, and conservatories, we could only dream of such "Yamahas" and "Fenders"...

In 1997–98, I studied at the Trebas Institute (under music records producer David P. Leonard) following the curriculum designed by attorney William Krasilovsky for "Music Business Administration." The ninety-two-year-old counsel for Warner Brothers Music was a legendary figure—the music industry lawyer par excellence, co-author of the perennially republished industry bible This Business of Music, and legal counsel to 138 composers and musicians, among them Duke Ellington and the musical estate of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

This new educational chapter in my life inspired me to try my hand in the music industry, bridging my legal knowledge with the world of American symphonic orchestras and opera houses. This ultimately brought me job offers from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, where the principal conductor at the time was the acclaimed interpreter of 19th-century French music, Charles Edouard Dutoit. Antsy to immerse myself in the masterpieces of Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger, and Albert Roussel, I chose Montreal with its charming Old French architecture over Vancouver, which spoke English with a distinct Chinese accent.

To my astonishment, I discovered that musicians in Canada go on strike, too! An average annual salary of fifty-five to sixty thousand dollars felt insultingly meager even to mediocre orchestral players. The union was strong. They struck for an entire year. I was in shock—how vividly that recalled the events of eleven years prior in Moscow! Following twenty-five years at the helm of the orchestra, Dutoit stepped down in 2002...

What is happening to the world of classical music today? No, I am no Yuri Gagarin, and I shall not uncover anything new in this cosmic "universe of silence" for musicians and conductors. Some perceive an Armageddon, while I see an Apocalypse—the lifting of the veil from our eyes by the "digital world." Production technologies and energy sources are shifting at breakneck speed. The pencil of the composer and arranger has been replaced by the computer. The methods of recording and the transmission speeds of all information—musical data included—have been utterly transformed.

Entrepreneurs are hunting for entirely new forms and streams of revenue from musical activity. Due to the orchestrated global "coronavirus-19" pandemic, international touring schedules have been brought to a dead stop. The industrial economy of the twentieth century is being forcibly shoved into a post-industrial society, sweeping aside many achievements of the past. A terrified humanity has been placed under "house arrest." The exploitation of fear has become a new commodity. A global redistribution of the earth’s resources is underway, and musical energy—along with everything orbiting it—is being partitioned as well.

Who will capture the prime spoils? Artists, theatres, and impresarios are "finding themselves online." Meanwhile, computer programmers are training "artificial intelligence" to compose operas and symphonies. It is entirely plausible that we will soon see holographic "Persimfans-machines" performing flawlessly structured music, devoid of cracked notes or human breath. We will hear no rustling of sheet music on stands, nor will we need to commute to the theatre for long rehearsals of Khachaturian’s breathless passages or Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Musicians will no longer be needed.

We are stepping into an era of the transmutation of the human soul. "European civilization" has spent the last five centuries marching toward this exact destination—dismantling empires, monarchies, communism, and fascism—only to morph into totalitarian liberalism. There is no choice left. Before the face of the "open society," you must become a "liberal," or you will not be allowed onto the tramway of tomorrow's history.

The grand objective on the table is the total capture of human consciousness, reducing man to a "post-human" confined to "Sector of Enhanced Control A." What music will we be permitted to listen to and play? Which civilizations will retain their "classical identity"? Will we be allowed to breathe freely and gaze at the stars, or must we keep our eyes cast down behind a muzzle?

Are you frightened?

This is not our script. Let me reassure you. I am certain that there will always be brave souls with "natural intelligence" who will march over and flip the master switch on such "artificial intelligence." The "digital world" will never alter the true creators of sonic energy—musicians and conductors—because it can never alter man’s primal need to feed upon the sublime symphony of sound. Musical energy is the Ambrosia gifted to us by the Almighty Creator, even if certain "kamikaze-creators have already saddled the torpedo aimed at the frigate of ossified dogma."

Russia frequently lapses into hibernation, or becomes pregnant with history. Either she tears everything down to the foundations in a revolution, or she attempts to build a shining future out of the wreckage of human lives. It has always been hard for us to live and easy to die. But has it always been thus in our story? One wants to believe so. Following the destruction of the USSR, a "new-visage Russia" is painfully struggling to break free from the vicious cycle of "wandering blindly around three pine trees." One hundred and forty-four years ago, Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin addressed us—the lost and wandering souls searching for the mittens tucked right into our own belts.

If "money is the blood of the economy," then music is the energy of the human spirit. Its value is no less than that of oil or gas. When music degrades, society decays and the nation's Soul is lost. In the Revelation of John the Divine, "the seven angels sound their seven trumpets and the seals are broken, unleashing natural calamities." Yet a young bugger boy sounds the charge, lifting soldiers—wedded to the earth and hardened by death—back into battle through a hail of fire! Such is the power of music.

We have massive homework ahead of us: to bring the Fatherland back into harmonious attunement and to claim our rightful place as a self-sufficient Russian civilization amid the accelerating current of global tectonic shifts and the vibrations of the Universe. We have everything we need for this. We simply lack order! Persimfans...
In place of Genghis Khan—Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili—came a "collective Persimfans" in the halls of supreme political power, operating without a principal conductor. In the modern, two-headed Russian Federation, this structure has proven its fragility and poor governance, lacking a clear "Image of Victory" grounded in an ideology that captures all participants of social and public life. Without coercion.

Failing to grasp the design of our ancestors—the musical composition birthed by the people themselves—has led to a state where "the orchestra cannot come to terms with itself." One must understand that the primary instrument of a Prince or a Conductor is not his "personal time and knowledge," but the "time and competence" of his retinue or orchestra. A Great Prince and a Great Conductor create certainty in the broadest sense for those they lead. Without coercion.

To attempt to build a parliamentary republic in Russia without a "chief conductor" in the totalitarian Western mold is a colossal folly. To govern a symphony of diverse peoples united forever by "Great Rus" is a heavy burden. "Ah, heavy art thou, O Crown of Monomakh!" sings Boris Godunov in Modest Mussorgsky’s opera. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin—"Our Everything"—in 1826 entrusted to posterity the sacred insights of our ancestors regarding supreme power. Without coercion.

Incidentally, it was Richard Wagner who first turned his back to the audience and faced the orchestra, transforming from a kapellmeister beating out time with a stick before the "palace of power" into a Great Conductor and a Great Composer of global stature. Everything else written about him by "music critics" and "political figures" is a mere empty shell. Into our present—for the sake of the future—we shall carry no such debris.

"In the 21st century, good conductors are scarce, because precious few can afford to devote themselves solely to conducting." The main concern has become "slashing budgets and peddling the musical legacy of our ancestors." To reclaim copyright ownership and royalties…

Entrance onto the stage. Tailored in a black tailcoat, a white shirt with a bow tie, the maestro draws from behind a black silk cummerbund—elegantly wrapped around his waist—a "magical conductor’s sword." He raises it, and the orchestra gives birth to the angelic sounds of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Verdi, Shostakovich, Shchedrin, Lazarev, Mozart, Strauss, Wagner, Bart;k, Mahler, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, and Balakirev.

They fill our space beneath the dome of a gilded theatre or upon an open-air stage, resonating within us with grace and excitement, inspiring both thought and action. A Temple of Music. The listener is spellbound, hypnotized by the sorcery of a school that has absorbed both Western Europe's "strict manual precision of kapellmeisters' gestures and tempos" and the "all-cosmic breadth of the Russian conductor's soul." To this, Yuri Simonov has dedicated his entire creative life. Applause. The first bouquets, by tradition, go to the concertmaster, the principal soprano, the prima ballerina.

In my personal ranking of the world's preeminent living conductors, number one is held by the winner of the First Prize at the 4th International Competition for Orchestra Conductors of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (1968), People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1976) and the USSR (1981), conductor-pedagogue of orchestral classes in Leningrad music schools and the Moscow Conservatory, Chief Conductor of the Kislovodsk Philharmonic, conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, Chief Conductor of the USSR Bolshoi Theatre from 1969 to 1984, Chief Conductor of the Little State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR (1985–1989), Principal Guest Conductor of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Music Director of the National Orchestra of Belgium, Chief Conductor of the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow State Philharmonic, Professor, Maestro YURI IVANOVICH SIMONOV. There is no prestigious stage or world-renowned orchestra he has not conducted!

From the "apostolic masters"—Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin, Nikolai Andreyevich Malko, Alexander Vasilyevich Gauk, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, Yevgeny Alexandrovich Mravinsky, Nikolai Semyonovich Rabinovich, and Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin—the Russian conducting tradition was handed down. Perhaps I have omitted other names. Yuri Ivanovich Simonov dedicated his life to establishing and refining the most advanced and effective Russian Conducting School.

The eternal question—"What is to be done?"—resounds in our era with a new, pressing urgency. The ancient sages, the Lamedvavniks of biblical lore, left us an answer for times of impending deluge: "BUILD A NOAH'S ARK."

This is not a summons to literal shipbuilding, but to a sacred duty of spiritual and cultural preservation—safeguarding the essence of a people for the future rebirth of generations. The historical hourglass narrows to a slender neck, and few shall pass through it. Our primary creative act today is to construct this ark for our families, to protect our ancestral lineage.

We inhabit an era of the deepest "crisis of knowledge." Both the modern "West" and Russia have left true guardians and masters—those capable of imparting wisdom—without stewardship. Even in primary and secondary schools, the guardians of profound learning are gone. In their place stand crude scribbles instead of graceful calligraphy, disjointed chatter instead of eloquence, the celebration of mediocrity over talent, and the worship of false idols. The thread linking us to our ancestors and our history has snapped. Ethics have been lost.

Consequently, genuine leaders—those equipped to guide a nation like a unified symphony—grow increasingly rare. Pouring into the city squares of world capitals against millions of armed hounds of the oprichnina is futile; instead of cold chemical showers from water cannons and ultrasonic emitters, they may simply begin firing upon the people. Is the "ruling power" ready to give such a criminal order? Experience proves they already do.

Russia, in particular, has surrendered its "conceptual sovereignty." We remain suspended between a past alienated from the Russian spirit and an as-yet-undetermined future. The geopolitical compass thrust upon us offers only a false dichotomy: pledge allegiance to the "West" or submit to the "East." But this diminishes our destiny. Recall the knight in Viktor Vasnetsov’s painting: he stands not at a fork between two roads, but at the crossroads of four. True power is seized neither in city squares nor on the platform of a departing train...

"O field, o field, who hath strewn thee

With the bones of the fallen dead?

Whose fleet steed trampled thy soil

In the final hour of bloody fight?

Who fell upon thee in glory?

Whose prayers did Heaven hear?"

— M.I. Glinka, opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (libretto based on A.S. Pushkin’s poem, Act II: No. 8, Ruslan's Aria performed by Yevgeny Nesterenko, conducted by Yuri Simonov, USSR Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, 1978)

The answer lies not in collective, futile action, but in a quiet, resolute individual duty. We must preserve knowledge within the family to hand it down to the generation that will one day resurrect Russia. We must forge "neural-musical connections" with other such "arks"—families and communities dedicated to protecting their national souls.

An ark is constructed not from wooden planks, but from words, memory, faith, language, music, and craft. Its beams are sacred texts and ancestral songs; its nails are the duty of mothers and fathers; its pitch is the prayers of children. Only this vessel will not founder when the waters of chaos rise.

And yet, my intuition senses reason for hope. Across the expanse of this "new Russia," more and more souls are awakening to the "trumpets of angels," called to a grand task: to gather the scattered fragments and assemble the "Ark of Russian Civilization." Great conductors are the guardians of music. And music itself is that unattainable ideal—the Divine language through which we converse with the Creator...

The Ark is intended not merely for survival. It is built for the dawn. Beyond the flood awaits the Mount of the Covenant, a new Ararat, where a rainbow shall once more seal the promise of Heaven. It is not enough to endure—we must endure for the sake of transfiguration.

In the end, it all comes down to a principle as simple and profound as the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil—a symbol of creativity born of conviction, not convenience.

Learn from the best. Not a measure's rest!

It would be the height of hubris to compare oneself to Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Yet observe: they did not draft political manifestos. Their genius lay in exploring the human soul in all its depth and contradiction. Yet the insights embedded in their works could serve as the foundation for any vision worthy of the name. As for me—I am no politician, merely a witness to an era. I have seen pines bend beneath the storm and rise again toward the sun; I know that the Ark can and must be built. My role is merely to point toward it, so that each may, in his own way, begin to build.

Recorded while watching the Jubilee Concert in honor of the eightieth birthday of Yuri Ivanovich Simonov, featuring his conducting disciples — Igor Manasherov, Dimitris Botinis, Alexey Rubin, Nikolai Tzinman, and Andrei Kolyasnikov.

Buyan Island, the Realm of the Glorious Saltan, March 4, 2021, Pacific Time.

Witness to an Era, Vladimir Vasilyevich Khlynin

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A short version for the English-language reader
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Conductor Yuri Ivanovich Simonov: An Unattainable Ideal
An Essay-Meditation on Music and Power

By Vladimir Vasilyevich Khlynin — Witness to an Era

I. The Pencil
It all comes down to the pencil. In one child's hand it becomes the tool of a master painter; in another's, it turns into a conductor's baton, sketching musical images across the void. The classic Soviet Sacco and Vanzetti pencil led many a youth to the art schools and the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, but only a precious few to the Bolshoi Theatre.

An artist locks himself in his studio to create a canvas, showing it only when it is finished. A composer, having painted a portrait in notes, must seek out musicians and a conductor to breathe life into it — to give it a fleeting, singular existence upon the stage. Museums are guardians of painted masterpieces; music, however, fills our vibrational space. It takes residence in the human heart and is preserved only within those who perform it.

Yet we must remember: "the museum mind does not always mesh with the creative mind — for the former is conservative, while the latter is revolutionary." A painting on canvas can be lost forever; great music never can.

Both are birthed by man. But a painting remains an object; music is a dialect of the Divine — a language for communion with the Creator. Without sound, the soul starves. Anyone can test this by sitting in solitary confinement.

One person will use the pencil to scribble obscenities. Mankind can survive that. But bad music degrades us from within — for it is a vibration with which we exist in harmonic resonance, and through which we create "in our image and likeness."

II. The Betrayal: Moscow, 1989
Much has been written about grand dukes and generals. Far fewer books have been written about conductors, and for good reason: musicality is not a conditioning of muscles, but a divine gift. I shall not write a book myself. I am no conductor — merely a witness, a "musical advocate."

More than thirty years have passed since the chapter in which I was blessed to play a part. I speak of the great Russian conductor, Yuri Ivanovich Simonov.

In the late 1980s, Simonov became my musical Sensei during my work as a journalist at Yunost Radio. In September 1989, a call came to our editorial office from my "cadet brother," Igor Merny. We had grown up together for seven years at the Moscow Military Music School. He was now an oboist in the Small State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR, founded in 1985 by Simonov, then Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi.

Igor called on behalf of his colleagues: "Save the orchestra from journalistic slander and from a total misunderstanding of what is happening between the players and the conductor." Since 1986 I had hosted the legal program Svod Zakonov (Code of Laws), so investigating such conflicts was my work. More than half the orchestra were brilliant young conservatory graduates.

I met with all sides of this second act of the Ballet de la Merlaison. What is the point today of recounting the emotional outbursts of artists detached from political reality? An orchestra is a microcosm of the state, with all its virtues and vices. A 65-musician ensemble succumbed to the vibrations of self-destruction.

The conflict was inflamed when Alexander Minkin, a theatre critic for Ogoniok magazine, entered the fray, spinning the flywheel of sensationalism. At that time, journalism was chasing "juicy scandals" at any cost.

The situation escalated when Alexander Politkovsky, special correspondent for the TV program Vzglyad (Glance), took to prime time and sided with the rebellious musicians against Simonov.

Legally, the core was clear: a faction of the orchestra, egged on by advocates for an orchestra without a conductor — a new Persimfans* — had staged a wildcat strike, sabotaging an international tour and refusing to board the train to Budapest. This was a blatant violation of the Soviet Labour Code.

[*Persimfans — the legendary First Symphony Ensemble without a Conductor, founded in Moscow in 1922, a symbol of musical anarchy]

Yet the concerts took place: students from the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest joined the remaining members. Under the Maestro's baton, the ensemble became an international youth orchestra. The Hungarian press published glowing reviews.

On the day Politkovsky's biased segment aired, my own investigative radio report was pulled. Editor-in-Chief Boris Nepomnyashchy banned it so "we wouldn't clash with our TV brethren." Soviet broadcasting was shifting toward commercial sensationalism, tearing down monuments in the process.

Something had to be done. I approached Stepan Alekseyevich Shalayev, Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU), with a proposal: to create a trade union symphony orchestra. A frequent guest on my shows, he agreed.

Yuri Ivanovich and I drafted the project, tackling self-financing and international engagements. We secured a rehearsal space. The paperwork for the AUCCTU Symphony Orchestra went to the Ministry of Culture for sign-off. The renewed ensemble performed to acclaim at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

And then all hell broke loose. The Ministry began hunting for "trade union funds." In April 1990, Shalayev became a "personal pensioner of all-Union significance." The orchestra was not to be.

Change is what our hearts demand,
Change is what our eyes demand,
In our laughter and in our tears,
And in the pulsing of our veins —
Change! We are waiting for change.
— Viktor Tsoi

Change arrived, borne on bloody tears. On March 17, 1991, the people voted in a referendum to preserve the Union. But the usurpers were in a rush. The referendum, the GKChP, and the Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreement were a meticulously engineered special operation to reformat the Eurasian space.

III. The Exile and the Return
The 1990s dealt a colossal blow to our academic musical culture. Our finest musicians found themselves unwanted at home. Many emigrated.

An unemployed People's Artist of the USSR easily claimed his crown in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, London, Paris, Budapest and Brussels. There were productions of Khovanshchina, The Queen of Spades, Aida, Don Carlos, La forza del destino, Salome and The Ring. From 1994 to 2002, Simonov served as Music Director of the National Orchestra of Belgium in Brussels. In 1998, invited by the musicians of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, he naturally accepted and took its helm — where he remains to this day.

In 2010, amid horrific peat fires in Moscow, the orchestra's principal oboist, Igor Merny, passed away at forty-eight. I mourn him.

On March 4, 2021, the Moscow Philharmonic hosted the jubilee of the Maestro — eighty years old, as active as ever, sparkling with wit, inviting his own students to conduct while he listened with fatherly pride. After thirty years of diverging paths, I watched the concert live-streamed from Canada.

I realize now what united us was not merely the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil with which young Yura and I once conducted an imaginary orchestra across a generational divide, but a shared love and innate talent for sensing beauty. The image of Conductor Simonov remains indelibly present within me whenever classical music sounds. He is my supreme musical marker — the absolute standard of orchestral sound, articulation and gesture.

IV. The Ark
For a long time I have pondered the purpose of life. The professions we choose often become obsolete. We grow up quickly, marry, raise children, reach a pinnacle. By our second score of years, almost everyone feels a shortness of breath — a fatigue from life itself — yet some discover a second wind and understand that there are no limits save those we construct ourselves.

Eventually, some of us understand that material prosperity offers no joy at the expense of spiritual life. Fewer and fewer people remain who possess genuine knowledge and the capacity to pass it on. We must build an "ark of knowledge" for our grandchildren, thereby finding a new meaning for our continued existence.

We live amidst the sounds and magnetic oscillations of the Universe. Man is a paramagnet — a vessel that takes in energy and radiates it outward. This is why "in the beginning was the Word," and why music is our spiritual nourishment. We are "musical batteries." The quality of our charge dictates our longevity.

I learned this not from textbooks, but from my clients and teachers in electromagnetics: inventor Valentin Patrasenko and entrepreneur Yuri Tkachenko — creators of the Magnitotron devices. I observed firsthand how magnets influence all living things. We even hypothesized a special Magnitotron for wind players that would influence tone and facilitate the flow of vibrations. Today, many brass players use a similar device: the LefreQue sound bridge by Hans Kuijt.

Whenever I listen to classical radio on long drives across Canada, I notice that the vast majority of "foreign content" is actually our Russian symphonic and opera music. Yet when I glance at world conductor rankings, I am offended by the marginalization of our names. BBC Music Magazine lists among its top twenty only Yevgeny Mravinsky. Gramophone's fifty includes only Mravinsky and, near the end, Valery Gergiev, described as "arguably the busiest conductor in the world."

By what metric is "prolificacy" measured? Two hundred concerts "swung through" in a year? When does this mimens — as orchestra musicians derisively call such conductors — have time to study scores if he has not even time to shave?

A great Prince and a great Conductor create certainty for those they lead. Without coercion. To attempt to build a republic in Russia without a chief conductor is a folly. "Ah, heavy art thou, O Crown of Monomakh!" sings Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky's opera.

In the 21st century, good conductors are scarce, because precious few can afford to devote themselves solely to conducting. The main concern has become "slashing budgets and peddling the musical legacy."

The eternal question — "What is to be done?" — resounds with new urgency. The ancient sages, the Lamedvavniks of biblical lore, left us an answer for times of impending deluge: BUILD A NOAH'S ARK.

This is not a summons to literal shipbuilding, but to a sacred duty of cultural preservation — safeguarding the essence of a people for future rebirth. The hourglass narrows, and few shall pass through it.

An ark is constructed not from planks, but from words, memory, faith, language, music, and craft. Its beams are sacred texts and ancestral songs; its nails are the duty of mothers and fathers; its pitch is the prayers of children. Only this vessel will not founder when the waters of chaos rise.

And yet, I sense reason for hope. Across this new Russia, more and more souls are awakening to the trumpets of angels, called to gather the fragments and assemble the Ark of Russian Civilization. Great conductors are the guardians of music. And music itself is that unattainable ideal — the Divine language through which we converse with the Creator.

The Ark is intended not merely for survival. It is built for the dawn. Beyond the flood awaits the Mount of the Covenant, a new Ararat, where a rainbow shall once more seal the promise of Heaven.

It all comes down to a principle as simple as the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil — a symbol of creativity born of conviction, not convenience.

Learn from the best. Not a measure's rest!

Recorded while watching the Jubilee Concert in honor of the eightieth birthday of Yuri Ivanovich Simonov, featuring his conducting disciples — Igor Manasherov, Dimitris Botinis, Alexey Rubin, Nikolai Tzinman, and Andrei Kolyasnikov.

Buyan Island, the Realm of the Glorious Saltan, March 4, 2021, Pacific Time.

Witness to an Era, Vladimir Vasilyevich Khlynin