"Paris" / Author's cycle by Grigory Krotenko

July 15
8:00 PM
PARIS

In his author's cycle "Portraits. Friends. Cities," Grigory Krotenko invites you to an event listed on the poster simply and succinctly as "Paris." But behind this title lies neither a lecture about landmarks nor a standard musical evening. It is an attempt to hear the city, which for the narrator himself has long resonated in several languages: the language of memories, family chronicles, and, of course, music. Here is how Grigory Krotenko describes his first encounter with the French capital:

"Paris, 1999. We came with the conservatory orchestra to perform at UNESCO headquarters. We played Beethoven's 9th with Mehta. He kept repeating the bass recitative from the finale, saying: 'more expressive! even more expressive!' Why Zubin Mehta is a great conductor, I didn't understand back then. But I respected him: they said he used to play double bass.

Paris charmed me with its order. The sunshine on the streets near the Arc de Triomphe, the straightness of the Champs-Élysées avenue turning into the rectangle of the Tuileries. The then-new and audacious glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre. I walked along the granite edge of the fountain around it. It was November. +5°C, sunny. And I thought: 'I'm going to fall now.' And I fell.

I gave my wet money and passport to Pashka. And we promptly got lost in the crowd at the flea market near Pont Neuf. The day was just beginning, and we were living somewhere on the avenue beyond the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad. Surely I couldn't walk all the way back to the hotel to change clothes? I still had my wet but surviving point-and-shoot camera. On my head was Pashka's hat, a CSKA scarf. I wrung out my sweater and hung it over my shoulders to dry.

I fell in love with Paris. But I got to know it much later. Back then, I walked to the Eiffel Tower, warmed myself over the stinky grates of metro ventilation shafts, and navigated using maps at bus stops. Occasionally I stopped passersby and asked them to snap my picture with the point-and-shoot.

Paris is like a cabbage, it keeps shedding layers, and it's hard to see it naked. You need to know which corner to turn and from which angle to look. But I learned that much later. When I lived in my great-grandfather's little apartment on Rue Vaugirard. The keys were given to me by Aunt Ira, the hunchback. Despite her hump, she was married three times and danced in Lifar's studio. Paris is the homeland of my White Guard relatives. But about that — and not only that — I will tell at the concert."

These "layers" of Parisian life are to be unfolded in sound. Together with the unique harpist Luiza Mintzaeva, in whose playing Krotenko hears "the poetic precision of musical time," they will create a portrait of the city.


Program of the evening:
— Erik Satie / Gnossienne No. 1 and Gymnopédie No. 1
— Claude Debussy / Two Arabesques
— Claude Debussy / Reverie
— Jules Massenet / Meditation
— Jean-Michel Damase / Siciliana with Variations
— Gabriel Fauré / Berceuse
— Claude Debussy / Clair de lune
— Henri Regnier / Légende
— Camille Pepin / Nighthawks