Conservatory after midnight

Long Arms Records releases three CD’s of Anton Batagov

By Julia Bederova, Vechernaya Moskva magazine, june 1998

 

Anton Batagov doesn’t like to call himself either a pianist or a composer. Nevertheless, he is the best performer of contemporary academic music and a very successful composer. He attracts people as far removed from modern music as they are from the moon.

Five years ago, this winner of the Tchaikovsky competition came to the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory in the depth of the night, and while all else slept, he recorded the music of Rabinovich, Peletsis, and Zagny. The recording is like a magic lantern. One picture – Peletsis’ elegantly styled tale “New Year Music” in the spirit of Breugel and Andersen. The other – Alexander Rabinovitch’s beautiful romantic cadences from a minimalist perspective. The delight of endless endings. A moving picture, the conservatory at midnight breathing excitedly and enchantedly…

The second disc is a duet by Anton Batagov and Alexei Lyubimov playing the music of Vladimir Martinov. Martinov’s Opus Posth . – a long, mournful piece with a magnetic minimalistic structure and a coda that turns everything upside down. A young boy sings a song without a hint of a joke. What kind of joke is there, when the ground is taken away from under one’s feet and there is serious work with the stereotypes of consciousness!

The last disc is the flagship of the series – “Music for December”. Having heard this piece, Ivan Dykhovichny couldn’t imagine his film or its title without this work. The sensitive and strict “Music for December” was the first soundtrack of new Russian cinema.