Preservation of free musical education for adults is a chance for new Vishnevsky, Lisitsian and Khiley

ST. PETERSBURG. The music school of Rimsky-Korsakov may be left without a budget department for adults.

Good education has long passed into the category of “luxury goods”. It is right to regret to recall its availability in the Soviet years. Current universities can offer applicants only vague prospects for one of the budget places, of which there are negligible. Then the heavy-weighted braggies come into the fight - paid places involving the financial viability of potential students or their prudent parents. The chances of modern Lomonosovs to reach an enlightened future without a weighty wallet are becoming more ephemeral every year. That is why those who have succeeded in learning foreign languages in the free Sorbonne, Czech or German universities.

The music school of Rimsky-Korsakov for almost a hundred years - during the years of repression, during the blockade and peacetime - remained an invincible bastion. Adult separation allowed those who decided, realizing their true vocation, to connect life with the scene. Or fill it with harmony and happiness of creativity, without changing the main specialty. If the current situation threatened to close the budget department for adults in past years, the opera scene would have missed the magic voices of Pavel Lisitsian and Galina Vishnevskaya. Neurophysiologist Natalia Bekhtereva would not have known about her singing talent and would not have spent many unforgettable hours attending vocals. And talented techies and programmers would not receive an additional impulse to improve in their field.

Those who consider mature people’s desire to receive a musical education to be whims and excesses would do well to understand that studying musical notation for any purpose opens up enormous opportunities for intellectual growth. This misunderstanding applies equally to officials who put on the agenda the question of closing the legendary branch, and other insufficiently informed persons. The pickets of students and teachers, the efforts of caring people should help solve a sore point, even in our troubled times.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru