MENTION RUSSIA, and culture hounds might conjure egg tempera icons of saints, Tchaikovskys deeply felt music or the hard-edge abstractions of painter Kasimir Malevich.
Others might think of the KGB, Communism and glasnost.
Russias range of expression and its history of strife will take center stage in Hampton Roads during Virginia Celebrates Russia, a loosely knit festival starting this weekend that involves five local arts organizations. Programs include symphony and choral concerts, art exhibitions, films and an opera.
The whole festival was my idea, said Peter Mark, artistic director of the Virginia Opera, which will present its first Russian opera next month Tchaikovskys Eugene Onegin.
I wanted to give our audience the context for Russian culture, Mark said last week. I knew that Tchaikovsky was so well known in this area for his '1812 Overture and for his 'Nutcracker ballet. But the special quality of the Russian soul seemed to be something our audiences havent experienced in opera.
If locals could sense the Russian spirit through a variety of arts forms, Mark reasoned, all the groups programs would benefit. Eugene Onegin opens Feb. 8 at Harrison Opera House in Norfolk. The festival also coincides with the 200th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, which began with a friendship struck between President Thomas Jefferson and Tsar Alexander I.
This weekends events include concerts by the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art and at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. The Chrysler also is offering a free film series this month, on Wednesday evenings starting next week , that includes Onegin (1999).
The Virginia Symphony has the most programs 14 concerts featuring Russian music starting Friday and continuing through Feb. 3. A program titled Ravishing Rachmaninoff will be performed Friday at the Ferguson Center for the Arts, Saturday at Chrysler Hall and Sunday at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts. Other concerts feature works by Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, including the original version, with chorus, of 1812 Overture.
We dont need an excuse to play Russian music. We love it, said JoAnn Falletta, music director for the Virginia Symphony. Frankly, for the orchestral repertoire, Russian music is some of the most dramatic, emotionally charged music that we have. Falletta had planned to emphasize Romantic music this season. When Mark approached her with his idea, Falletta recognized that Russian music fit well with her theme.
Rachmaninoff is the quintessential Romantic composer, she said, and his works form the centerpiece of her programs. He created lush harmonies and beautiful melodies, but theres his personal story, too. He fled in 1917, at the start of the Russian Revolution, and never returned.
He spent the latter part of his life in the United States longing to go back to Russia, she said, and never could. He is truly a tragic figure, and we hear that in his music.
The Virginia Chorale plans to present Rachmaninoffs Vespers in late February at churches in Norfolk and Williamsburg. More than 40 singers will perform the 80-minute piece that was written for the Russian Orthodox Church, said Betsy Fitzgerald, executive director of the professional choral group.
There are portions where I get goose bumps, Fitzgerald said. Its one of those pieces that completely transports you to a different place and time.
Russia on canvas
The Soviet-era paintings from the 1930s now on view at the Chrysler Museum feature the sparkling eyes and robust attitude of happy workers.
Rule No. 1 in the official Soviet artist guidebook: Labor will be the central hero in any work of art.
Other policies insisted that all art be optimistic and anticipate the future communist utopia. All figures had to be types, never individuals. Six propaganda paintings of that sort are on loan to the Norfolk museum by the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The works were originally collected by the late Joseph Davies, who was American ambassador to Russia from 1936 to 1938.
Heres labor, said Bill Hennessey, director of the Chrysler Museum and organizer of the show, pointing to Harvesting in Central Asia. The 1931 painting depicts workers in a wheat field using a combine but also loading a wagon with bagged grain to be pulled by camels. The painting, he said, proclaims the Soviet embrace of technology leading us into the future. If it werent for the glorious vision of the Soviet state, these people would still be doing all of it by hand and by camels.
Another work shows young women racing toward a newspaper being held up by a girl who beams like a bride. Hennessey said the name of the paper is The Daily Farm Worker.
Balancing all this phony glee is an early 1980s painting by the now-defunct artist duo Komar and Melamid, still among the best known Russian artists living in America. Their Visit to the Museum of the Revolution shows a human fetus, crowned like a monarch and under glass, like a scientific specimen.
More satire by a Russian contemporary artist can be seen starting today at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach. Mikhail Magaril is showing work that lambastes the horrors and lies inflicted on the Russian people. Magaril, 57, moved to New York in 1990 with his family.
In his work, the giant faces of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin hover over the landscape. A painting called Pile Up shows workers shoveling and dogs roaming in a field of snow by the woods. Lenins perturbed face, colored red, fills the sky. The scene refers to a time when all of the concentration camps in Russia were closed down, Magaril said by phone from New York. The dogs found themselves unemployed, but they had the instinct to return to the camps and continue their work.
The setting is a former camp, the artist said. Lenin is looking at everything thats happening, and hes unhappy that the camp has closed down.
Another piece, Baby Cubes, is a stack of play blocks with toxic imagery evoking the Communist era a star, Lenins mausoleum, a poisonous mushroom, Stalins profile.
Stalin was officially declared the father of the nation, and all the people were his children, the artist said, explaining the piece. Therefore, what does a father demand of his children?
Complete obedience.
This weekend
Mikhail Magaril: Russian Roulette
Soviet Era Paintings From the Chazen Museum of Art
Upcoming
Virginia Symphony Orchestra - '1812 Overture'
Virginia Chorale - Rachmaninoff's 'Vespers'
Virginia Symphony Orchestra - 'Serenade for Strings'
Virginia Symphony Orchestra - 'Tchaikovsky!'
Virginia Symphony Orchestra - Rachmaninoff's 'Paganini Rhapsody'
Virginia Symphony Orchestra - Rachmaninoff's 'Paganini Rhapsody'
Virginia Opera - Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin'
Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com
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