TEODOR CURRENTZIS
about his teacher Ilya Musin
Ilya Alexandrovich Musin was the man with heart of gold! This is a man who truly loved music. Maybe my words will seem ordinary to you, but he very much and reverently loved music! This is rarely the case.
To love music does not mean to love oneself in music, it is existence in it. It is like a magical and lost homeland for all people where they speak a different language, and there is a completely different gravity - not that which exists in our daily life. Ilya Musin found himself there all the time. He had a very strong and deep experience in striving to establish the laws of the world of music in our life.
He did not just show us how to conduct, he taught us to believe in what we are doing. I mean ... some phrase from the symphonies of Brahms or Tchaikovsky, which he showed, was perceived to be filled and detached from the reality in which we live. His inspiration, his vision of this music convinced us to believe.
It is like preaching some unknown religion - he wanted to show you miracles so that you believe in them!
I had a teacher in Greece and he told me that there is one incredible legendary conductor Ilya Musin.
And for me it sounded like a fairy tale that somewhere in Leningrad there is an outstanding person who has the most progressive conducting school.
I also knew Odysseus Dimitriadi. Once I asked him:
- Please tell me who is the best teacher for a young conductor now in the world?
But Odysseus Dimitriadi was very old and he answered me:
- My teacher.
- Your teacher?
- Yes, - he said, - he is still alive. This is Ilya Musin.
And then I decided to head to Ilya Musin.
My first meeting with him was in the classroom of Rabinovich on the third floor in the old building of the conservatory.
I conducted Beethoven's "Coriolanus", and I remember that when I arrived in Petersburg, I went to a hostel on Zenitchikov St. It was mid-September, there were no individual showers, only shared ones.
«God, - I said,- I’ll go to general showers, I can’t help but wash every day.» I go in and see that it’s dry there. No one is washing? They explained to me that there is no hot water. I decided I’ll wash myself with a cold water. In Greece, you can wash with cold water, but I did not know what cold water means in St. Petersburg and experienced such... an awful shock!
The next day I had a temperature of 39, and I had to go to the first meeting with Ilya Alexandrovich. He came to the conservatory and he asks me:
- What will you conduct?
- «Coriolanus», but I feel a little bad, temperature 39.
- Oh, nice! «Coriolanus» calls for a fever!
I already had experience conducting before, but I didn’t have a strong dream of becoming a conductor, holding a batton and leading other people. Not that I did not want to - it was some kind of life experience for me. At that time I wrote a lot of music and with all my heart I wanted to compose more. Since forever, I am attracted to the matter of creating something from nothing... And after two years of training, I realized that I could not leave.
I found myself in this!
I worked with Ilya Musin twice a week, once a week there was an orchestra, and on other days we went to concerts together and talked a lot. His life was - music, conservatory, students. He was the first to create the most advanced conducting system of the era. He taught how to enliven the art of conducting! He personally taught me to believe in my imagination and develop it.
He said that you need to feel like the one you are talking about! Show not in words, but by example. He taught us how to use our body language to show our thoughts!
His method has a very clear system of coordination of movements that helps to express a certain thought. Roughly, it’s like some kind of manifesto of movement that can decipher the plan of inspiration of the soul and heart. Movements that can subconsciously organize the author’s thinking by transmitting it to musicians. To help gather the spirit of hundreds of into a single whole. Without a word, only by movement!
Ilya Musin was persistent until he saw the result. I am still learning from Maestro...
When he stood at the stand, and wanted to show something, he looked like a hero from a post-romanticist book. His manner of conducting, on the one hand, was spectacular and gallant, on the other, had very strong internal tension.
He did not like musicians who go out on stage with some kind of dry rationality, without showing a certain character. The lack of character in the music was irreplaceable for him.
Everything should come from the heart of the performer!
Ilya Musin for me is living evidence of a golden moment in the art of conducting, which was achieved by Gustav Mahler. Musin was an assistant to Fritz Stiedry, who, at one time, was Mahler's assistant, that is, Ilya Musin is like the heir ("grandson") of G. Mahler through F. Stiedry...
He told me about such people that
I could not believe that I had met a man
who personally knew them!
Ilya Musin lived in extreme situations. When knew that there was a force majeure, Ilya Musin was always invited. He said that he had moments when he conducted without rehearsals, without a score...
He was given only the notes of the first violin or no score at all. In such situations, he was guided by his memory, and before going out he told the violinist: «Just play for me how it ends... OK. I’ve got it.» He had a phenomenal memory!
And I want to say else... He was an incredibly progressive person. The most progressive school of conducting was created by Ilya Musin.
And I want to say, he was an incredibly progressive person. The most progressive school of conducting was created by Ilya Musin. His students are all different, some are more like him, some are less. He developed every personality! At first, he insisted on the accuracy of certain movements, then he developed the ability to feel the sound with his body, which is organized in everyone's own way.
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He was a very intelligent man, very witty, with an amazing sense of humor. Ironic! Awesome!!
I remember the anecdotes he told me, and I still laugh.
I’ll tell you one story that I witnessed, incredible story.
Ilya Musin, several other students and I were supposed to go to a concert in the Great Hall of the Philharmonic. And we went by tram... Maestro sat, and we stood beside and talked. It was difficult to communicate - then the trams were not the same as now, and we spent the whole time rocking. At one of the stops, someone enters the tram and says:
- Ilya Alexandrovich, hello! May I ask you, in Tchaikovsky’s Italian capriccio, how to make this musical transition..?
Maestro explained how this person should conduct, he says «thank you» and leaves.
I ask:
- Ilya Alexandrovich, who is this?
- I do not know. A man came and asked, I have to tell him. If you are asked where Voznesenskaya street is, will you not say where it is?
Here it is. About the Italian capriccio, his duty was to explain.
He told us very profound things both as students at that time, and told some important things for the future. I now remember and begin to understand what was then impossible to realize. Ilya Musin understood that the conductor needed to study all his life. If you say that you know everything about music and conducting, you have little time left to live as a conductor. He until the end of his life searched, searched and searched...
It was a very deep idea... To develop one’s own imagination, your fantasy, to see what others have not yet see. To aim for distant goals…
by N.Sh.
corrector of the English text Neil McCallum