Alexei Syumak: “Beautifully drawn musical scores and sound beautiful!»

Composers are rapidly getting younger. And use unusual tools, strokes and harmonies. I was personally convinced of this by the review of young talents at the Winter International Art Festival in Sochi. “I’m looking for a new Schnittke,”as the festival’s founding father, violist and conductor Yuri Bashmet has often said.

Bashmet is a great friend of the composer Alexander Tchaikovsky, head of the composition Department at the Moscow Conservatory. Yuri Abramovich has a thirst to search for and play new things in his blood: for half a century, music for him was written by modern composers all over the world, from Schnittke onwards, and many, now classical, works are strongly associated only with the basmet viola. There were just not many works for solo viola. Continue reading →