Video tour "Solo for a hall with an orchestra"

A new multimedia video course dedicated to the fate and history of the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic named after D. D. Shostakovich has become available to viewers of the digital video service Wink

Access to viewing the video tour is open to everyone free of charge and without registration.

“This hall has always lived by its own rules.
There, behind the upper semicircular windows, time
passes, fashions and styles, rulers and epochs change, sometimes wars and revolutions occur.
Here, below, soloists and an orchestra are playing, the audience freezes in anticipation of the music…

But if you look closely at the pendants of crystal chandeliers, you can see
how everything you have experienced is reflected in them.
You just need to take a closer look.
Listen. "

From December 6, all connoisseurs of world music and the history of St. Petersburg and Russia have access to a new multimedia video tour "Solo for a hall with an orchestra", which tells about the fate of the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonic named after D. D. Shostakovich, a legendary cultural space where the main musical routes intersect country. Thanks to the partnership of Rostelecom, Russia’s largest integrated provider of digital services and solutions, the video tour can be viewed on the digital video service Wink (https://wink.rt.ru/) at any time, free of charge and without registration.

The Hall of the Nobility Assembly is not just an architectural monument for St. Petersburgers: it is a cult place, an independent character in an endless musical play about the great city.

Having become the hero of a multimedia video course, the Hall of the Nobility Assembly through the decades, through the centuries pronounces its monologues either in the voice of a violin by David Oistrakh, or in the polyphony of a symphony orchestra led by the baton of Yevgeny Mravinsky, or recalls the pages of a stormy biography in the voice of an unknown newspaper boy: “Tomorrow, tomorrow! We will finally hear him! " "His" - Liszt… Strauss… Tchaikovsky… Wagner… Whatever name - the whole universe in the world of music!

In a close-up shot - the curves of molded volutes, the shine of crystal: small details merging into majestic interiors. And the voice-over asks to listen, to look closely to see the reflections of what has been experienced within these walls, to plunge into the atmosphere reigning here, to be carried away by the narration and to dissolve in the sounds of music. The narration in real time flows into the documentary, into the fantasy-historical: artistic directorial techniques make it possible to feel the interconnection of times and feel how the once-thundered ovations are clearly imprinted in our minds.

From frame to frame, the hall appears before the audience either in all its ceremonial imperial splendor, or in a confidential, one might say “home” setting: crystal pendants of brilliant chandeliers are wiped by the plain, so mundane and silent, usually imperceptible - its “guardian angels”. Years have passed, eras have changed, but their faces seem vaguely familiar to us.

A hundred years ago, on the basis of the tradition of performing academic music, in the building of the former Noble Assembly, on the personal order of the first People’s Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky, the first philharmonic society in Soviet Russia was created. Now, in this beautiful hall, the stars of the world performing arts were frantically applauded by the revolutionary audience and Nepmen, former nobles and newly-minted proletarians. Surprisingly, listeners of the new era were in no less demand for classical music: they eagerly absorbed the impressions, fascinated by the art that had suddenly fallen upon them.

And on August 9, 1942, Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony was performed in the hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Perhaps it was on this day and in this very place that a symbolic spiritual turning point took place: Shostakovich’s music sounded like a prophetic statement of victory over fascism. And this was done by half-dead musicians who could at any moment faint in hunger, their clothes hung on them, their gray faces were bloodless. But it was they who uprooted the smug confidence of the invaders, showing that the Leningraders were not just alive - they were inspired and would win!

Having survived the post-war devastation, the rapid flowering during the thaw years, the torpor of stagnation and re-opening to the world together with the new Russia, the St. that is created in music, not even necessarily in classical music. This is one of those places where our children become real Petersburgers. Here emotions are in full swing, and the subtlest nuances of the life of the human spirit, embodied in musical phrases, make it possible to hear how MODERNITY sounds. But at the same time it sometimes seems that time has no power over the mystery of the birth of Music within these walls.

These most important moments, which form our idea of ourselves and the world in which we live, can be irretrievably lost in the stream of everyday life: burying ourselves in gadgets, we are only annoyed, stumbling over the stones on which amazing people walked… But it is worth taking our eyes off your smartphone and consciously look around how the boundaries are instantly expanding: and one can already easily imagine how the inimitable Ferenc Liszt rushed up these steps before the concert to the entrance of the Noble Assembly. The roar of applause in the hall after his first concert was compared by contemporaries to the roar of cannons on the day of the founding of St. Petersburg. And who could look out of these windows at the snow-covered Nevsky Prospekt? Pyotr Tchaikovsky? Claude Debussy? Young Willie Ferrero?

Avoiding the intricacies inherent in art history works, the video tour invites the viewer to plunge into a fascinating story about how at different times the soul of the city was warmed and saved by music. And how she saves each of us. Maybe later, passing by the Philharmonic just on the way home, someone will remember that this is a place of power, and become dignified, filled with a sense of belonging to the fate of St. Petersburg. Someone suddenly discovers that the child has already grown up, and it’s time to buy a subscription to the Philharmonic, and someone will sit down to compose their first piano piece.

Petersburg is a city where history is always near. Hurrying on business, we ourselves do not notice how we follow the palaces where the fate of the empire was decided, we pass the courtyards where the steps of the heroes of Gogol or Dostoevsky are still heard, we walk through the streets and bridges from the drawings of Dobuzhinsky or Benois…

The Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic is a special place. And anyone who steps on this stage knows that he comes out "after." After Wagner and Berlioz, Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, after Klemperer and Karayan. After Mravinsky, Richter, Rostropovich. After the great, whose names cannot be listed in a row. This is also responsible for mature masters, what to say about novice musicians! They can only remember that every great once was also a debutant on this stage, and hope that his history will be preserved in the crystal pendants of the philharmonic chandeliers.

The project was implemented with the support of the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.

Directed by: Evgeny Popov
Script: Olga Radvilovich
participated in the project:
Barbara Galanova - game scenes director
Honored Artist of Russia Mikhail Morozov - lead
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