Director Ivan Popovsky turned Bach’s music into a chamber performance

MOSCOW. At the Elena Kamburova Theater, director Ivan Popovski presented his new work to the audience - the performance “Earth”, born of musical associations inspired by the ingenious music of Bach. The repertoire of the Theater already has a whole collection of unique works by the director, based on the music of great composers - Vivaldi, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky.

In the premiere, Ivan Popovski swung at the scale of the musical subtexts of Bach’s works. With each of his productions, the director sets himself more and more complex tasks, worthily embodying them on the stage. This time, Popowski’s task was to make brilliant music, plastic of actors, lighting effects harmoniously combined, but at the same time music remained the main theme.

Oleg Sinkin, who is the musical director of the theater, also had a desire to visually embody Bach’s music. He has long been selected 13 works of the great composer, which became the basis of the premiere performance. Oleg Sinkin himself said that the only liberty that they allowed when working with music was the transformation of instrumental music into vocal parts and the opposite transformation.

It was even more difficult for an intangible sound to find its objective embodiment. Ivan Popowski chose sand for this purpose, symbolizing the earth and time, the birth of a person and his departure from life. The stage space in the theater is small, but the lighting effects sometimes turn it into an endless desert space through which tormented travelers wander, and sand hills - cities - grow and collapse in front of them.

In the play “Earth” seven musicians and five vocalists are employed. Oratorios and masses written by Bach, thanks to the work of the directors, sounded in stone format.

Ludmila Trautmane