Between the Lands: Alexander Ivashkin Remembered – Conference Report

This conference was convened to celebrate the legacy of Professor Alexander Ivashkin, and its two days seemed woefully brief, given his huge range of interests and activities. We left with the feeling that even a week would have barely scratched the surface. Fortunately, the papers and recitals at least touched on every important aspect of his career, giving a good overview of his research and performing interests. The event was hosted by Goldsmiths, where Ivashkin served for many years as Chair of Performance and Postgraduate Studies as well as Director of the Centre for Russian Music. It was organised, with typical energy and boundless enthusiasm, by his widow, fellow cellist Natalia Pavlutskaya, who was ably assisted by Elena Artamonova, one of Ivashkin’s many former students at the event. An honourable mention, too, to Imogen Burman-Mitchell, Events Manager at Goldsmiths, for organising the logistics of five varied recitals over the two days, all of which ran without incident, and even began and ended on schedule – no mean feat.

Elena Artamonova opened proceedings with a broad survey of Ivashkin’s career, an excellent framework to which later presentations could add detail. She was the only speaker to address Ivashkin’s career in Moscow in the 1970s and 80s, and her discussion of his doctoral work on Charles Ives was particularly interesting. I’ve long fostered an ambition to tackle Ivashkin’s monograph Charles Ives and the Music of the 20th Century (1991), and this put me one step closer to dusting off the Russian dictionary and getting to it. Artamonova pointed out that the book is about far more than just Ives’ music, and the broad, contextual nature of Ivashkin’s research in general was a recurring theme of the papers that followed. Another angle of Ivashkin’s personality was explored by Olga Tabachnikova in her ‘Alexander Ivashkin and the Theme of Russian Irrationalism’. Anybody who knew Ivashkin personally will know that esoteric knowledge systems—Theosophy and Chinese astrology, for example—where sources endless fascination to him, so it was fitting to hear about this aspect of his personality, especially within the context of his writings on Russian culture.

Despite his undeniable authority on Ives, Penderecki, and many other 20th-century composers, Ivashkin is likely to remain most closely associated with the music of Alfred Schnittke. Fittingly, then, several papers discussed Ivashkin’s work on Schnittke, his publications, of course, but also his performances and recordings. Svetlana Savenko (the only visitor from Russia to reach us, visa complications preventing several others), talked about how Ivashkin had studied the funereal aspects of Schnittke’s music of the 1970s, Victoria Adamenko (in absentia, I read her paper) looked at Schnittke’s Pasternak settings, Paolo Eustachi Ivaskhin’s performances of the Second Cello Concerto, and I gave a survey of the Schnittke-related events that Ivashkin had organised in the UK in the years since the composer’s death.

The conference also aimed to reflect the sheer breadth of Ivashkin’s academic interests, and so included several presentations of new research in areas close to his heart, if not directly related to his work. Vladimir Marchenkov presented a theory of music as ‘Ludic Transformation of Time’, and Razia Sultanova presented a paper based on her recent research into the cultural activities of Muslim migrants in Moscow. Two papers were presented on Soviet-era music: Daniel Elphick gave an incisive analysis of the Socialist Realist strictures guiding Soviet chamber music, and Amrei Flechsig discussed the representation of laughter in Soviet operas.

Many of Ivashkin’s teaching and research activities were related directly to performance studies, and this too was reflected in the conference programme, with several friends and former pupils giving performance-related presentations. Nicholas Walker discussed Balakirev’s piano playing, Magdalini Nikolaidou the interpretation of Rachmaninov’s Études-Tableaux, and Valerie Welbanks the extended techniques employed by Roger Redgate in his Black Icons, a cello concerto written for Ivashkin. The spirit of Ivashkin was particularly close in these presentations—Ivashkin very often illustrated his talks with playing, on the piano or the cello, moving fluidly between speaking and playing, and in several instances here we were treated to similarly enlightening combinations. Also, in the cello/performance category was a stimulating discussion from Rebecca Turner about the cello music that Ivashkin commissioned and performed in his decade in New Zealand in the 1990s. This was particularly valuable for its coverage of this period of Ivashkin’s career, but also for how it demonstrated his continual curiosity, coming to a new land and immediately engaging with the musical culture there. Turner described how Ivashkin had worked closely with a range of New Zealand composers as well as engaging with the traditional music of Polynesian islanders.

Naturally, live performances made up a significant part of the conference, and, as with the talks, the music covered a broad range of Ivashkin’s musical interests and was mainly presented by former colleagues and students. The highlight was Dmitri Alexeev performing the Scriabin op. 11 Preludes—world-class piano playing of the Russian school. On the subject of world famous Russian musicians, the Alexeev performance was followed by the unveiling of a permanent memorial to Ivashkin at Goldsmiths, a portrait of him with Mstislav Rostropovich on the occasion of Rostropovich being awarded an honorary doctorate at the college. The other recitals were given by former students and colleagues, focussing primarily on Russian repertoire—Viktoria Zora, Elena Artamonova and Rebecca Turner gave an excellent performance of the Schnittke String Trio, in a recital that also included Prokofiev and Rachmaninov from Mikhail Bozylev, recipient of the recently instigated Alexander Ivashkin Scholarship at Goldsmiths. A piano recital by Andrew Zolinsky brought the post-Soviet connection right up to date, with recent works by Mansurian, Knaifel and Silvestrov. I was particularly drawn to the Knaifel Postludia, although most people I spoke to, including the pianist himself, felt the Silvestrov Third Sonata was the highlight of the programme. The Ligeti Quartet (of which Val Welbanks is cellist) also ventured into adventurous territory with the John Cage Quartet in Four Parts and Gubaidulina’s most recent work for string quartet, Reflections on the Theme B-A-C-H.

A fitting tribute, then, to the musical and scholarly activities of Alexander Ivashkin. The programme often seemed to move in diverse and unrelated directions, but this only served to demonstrate the sheer breadth of Ivashkin’s musical interests. And the event closed with a performance that brought us right back to the man himself—a solo cello recital of music close to his heart. The cellist was Sebastian Hurtaud, a winner of the Adam Cello Competition in New Zealand, which Ivashkin and Pavlutskaya founded. A Bach Cello Suite (No. 5) opened, followed by Britten’s First Suite, which appears on Ivashkin’s very last commercial recording. And to end, Klingende Buchstaben, a piece written for Ivashkin by Alfred Schnittke and based on the letters of his name: A fitting coda to a memorable and moving celebration. Clearly, Ivashkin’s legacy lives on.

Professor Alexander Ivashkin 1948-2014

The cellist and musicologist Alexander Ivashkin died last night at the tragically early age of 65. Sasha was one of the most important champions of Russian music in the West, and promoted the music he loved with phenomenal energy and enthusiasm: performing it, writing about it, and encouraging others to do the same. He was an inspiring teacher as well, and many of his pupils, myself included, owe him a great deal, not only for the knowledge he imparted, but also his infectious enthusiasm, and, equally importantly, the opportunities he found or created for others to make music and to make a living out of it.

I first met Sasha in 2000. He had just moved to the UK to take up a chair at Goldsmiths. He was exactly the man the college was looking for: Russian music and performance studies were (and still are) two of the department’s greatest strengths, and he was able to take over the running of both. My plan was to do a PhD on the music of Schnittke, and I too had come to the right place; not only was Schnittke Sasha’s favourite subject, but he was also unquestionably the world authority on the composer’s music.

Over the following seven years (I take full responsibility for my slow progress), Sasha guided me patiently through my research. He felt very strongly that cultural barriers between East and West led to misunderstandings about Russian culture, and led to great Russian works being sidelined elsewhere. So to study Schnittke with him was to study the cultural context in which the composer worked (and few composers have incorporated their cultural context into their music as comprehensively or as successfully as Schnittke). Within a few months of our first meeting, he had organised a trip for me to Moscow and St Petersburg, armed with a list of phone numbers and addresses of key figures in the Russian musical establishment. I’m very lucky now to have many professional contacts and close friends in Russia, all thanks ultimately to Sasha. He was equally passionate about promoting younger musicians and scholars from Russia, and using his contacts in the West to provide them with opportunities. One of my close Russian friends, who is now an established academic is St Petersburg, told me this morning that he and many of his colleagues owe everything to Ivashkin.

Sasha had clear ideas about what was worthwhile and what was not worthwhile, musically speaking. If he was enthusiastic about, say, the work of a young composer, he would immediately find ways to promote it. If their music was for cello, he would perform it. If it wasn’t for cello, he’d persuade them to arrange it. Similarly, promising young scholars would find themselves invited to present their work at high profile seminars, would be introduced to his many contacts in the world of academic publishing, and would be presented with all sorts of imaginative ideas about possible funding ideas for their research projects.

But if something was not worthwhile, he’d make sure you knew. On one occasion I went to a masterclass he was giving for undergraduates at RCM on the Schnittke Piano Trio. He took to the stage and began his introductory address. Then he spotted me, trying to look inconspicuous at the back of the hall, stopped mid-sentence and shouted out “Gavin, what are you doing here? You’re wasting your time.” Er, right, hello Sasha. Nice to see you too. I wasn’t wasting my time, of course, and learnt a great deal about the work that afternoon, even if he assumed I knew it all already.

Sasha was very generous in his professional dealings, but liked to keep his private life private. The name “Sasha” was his one concession to familiarity, and nobody who knew him personally referred to him any other way. But his desire, and ability, to keep his long illness private attests to a certain personal distance between himself and his colleagues.

There was always warmth, though, in any personal contact with him. When I learnt of his illness, around September last year, I sent a card, and he responded with what were clearly heartfelt thanks. He wasn’t much of a facebooker, but anything he did post was usually about things that mattered. I remember putting up a picture of our daughter Elsa the day she was born, and a comment immediately appearing beneath “Congratulations. Big Russian hugs to you all.”

Some of Sasha’s thinking was very Russian, so much so that it could be hard, from a Western perspective, to find a common point of reference. He was a big believer in numerology, in numbers and dates being auspicious or having particular significance. He and I have a book in press, Schnittke Studies, to which he contributed an article entitled “The Schnittke Code”. The reference to Dan Brown is entirely deliberate. I spoke to him one autumn a few years back when he’d just come back from a holiday where he’d read The Da Vinci Code. I don’t think he really rated it, but he said that its popularity demonstrated that Westerners were just as interested in numerology, codes, and esoteric/religious significances as were Russians, just less able to admit the fact.

Similarly, Sasha’s “Schnittke Code” examines Klingende Buchstaben, a work Schnittke wrote for him, in terms of the hidden numbers and messages within the notes. Some of it seems quite fanciful, especially the claim that Schnittke predicts the age at which he would die in codes that are embedded in the music. But it didn’t seem fanciful to Sasha, and nor would it, I suspect, to Schnittke himself.

Much of Sasha’s writing on Schnittke concerns the consequences of the composer’s ill-health, a topic that neither Schnittke nor any of his advocates could ignore in the last 10 or 15 years of his life. Both Schnittke and Sasha read much into the parallels between the composer’s last years and those of Adrian Leverkühn, the (anti?)hero of Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. From that perspective, Schnittke’s decline and early death could be seen as the playing out of some kind of fate. Whether we accept that or not, Schnittke’s death at the age of just 63 was clearly a very great tragedy for the music world. And now Sasha too has left us at a similarly young age, living just two years longer. Perhaps his is the death predicted in Klingende Buchstaben. I’m sure both men would have warmed to that idea, not that it makes the loss any easier to bear.

RIP Sasha. This is how I’ll remember you best: