Quietude and Joy As Envisioned by Russian Painters Anton Batagov

• Anton Batagov (b. 1965):
• 1Before the Dawn07:03
• 2Landscape I09:23
• 3Italy. Daytime05:52
• 4Landscape II11:44
• 5Italy. Sunset11:10
• 6Portrait07:18
• 7Oil on Canvas10:25
• Total Runtime01:02:55

Info for Quietude and Joy As Envisioned by Russian Painters

This piano suite was commissioned by The Manege exhibition center, Saint Petersburg, for the project Quietude and Joy. Music being played in exhibition halls is not a novelty. If you google for exhibition background music you will find collections of music ‘suitable’ for all sorts of exhibitions. This is similar to soundtrack libraries offering material for all sorts of movies. But in this case the idea was to create original music that will become an integral part of that particular exhibition while being a composition that could be performed live and released as an album.

With Quietude and Joy we embark on a journey through Russian paintings of 18th –19th – early 20th centuries with a kind of ideal life depicted on them. A life filled with beauty and harmony. It’s a state we’d love to memorize and prolong. The exhibition curator Semyon Mikhailovsky put it this way: “It’s an idyllic narrative of an art that had not enter the epoch of total transformation. Of course, history has been full of tragedies but we accentuate the tranquil, benevolent world where Italy is a place to find inspiration, the Russian nature is full of charm, and family circle is home to quiet homely joys.”

The curator here does the same thing a modern musician does when making music motivated not by a challenge of ‘conquering space and time’ but by an endeavour to hear harmony and quietude in the middle of today’s world’s aggressive hustle and psychosis. This exhibition invites people used to thinking of modern art as being represented by Banksy, and classical, by Malevich, to see old paintings in a new light. I believe this is a very meta-post-trans-modernist gesture. In short, I said yes, and composed a 60-minute suite.

Italy as a dream, as an image, as a point of reference – and its projection onto Russian art. Italy has always been a magical magnet attracting artists, writers and musicians. In music, Russian classical composers inspired by divine bel canto melodies planted them in Russian soil, and they sprouted not as imitation but as a sonic reality previously unheard of, bearing similarity to many things and, at the same time, absolutely unique in its magic and doleful joy. In the suite I have composed, the ‘theme of Italy’ appears several times – like the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It emerges from barely audible echoes, takes different shapes, gives way to other themes – and dissolves into the darkness of the new times.

Anton Batagov, piano

Anton Batagov
The Russian composer, pianist and electronic musician, Anton Batagov, graduated from the Gnessin School and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He was prize-winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition (1986) and other competitions.

Anton Batagov introduced the music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass to Russian audiences. His discographical debut was a recording of Olivier Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jesus for Melodiya. From 1989 to 1996 he was one of the leaders and organizers of the Alternativa, the annual international new music festival in Moscow.

Heralded as “one of the most significant and unusual figures of Russian contemporary music” (Newsweek, Russian edition, 1997) and "a Russian Terry Riley" (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, 2008), Anton Batagov is one of the most influential Russian composers and performers of our time. The post-Cagean philosophy of Batagov's projects eliminates any boundaries between "performance" and "composition" by viewing all existing musical practices - from ancient rituals to rock and pop culture and advanced computer technologies - as potential elements of performance and composition. The well-known American musicologist Richard Kostelanetz characterized Batagov's 1993 piano recording of J.S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue (BWV 1080) as "the most stunning interpretation of Bach since Glenn Gould."

The post-minimalist language of Batagov’s compositions is rooted in the harmonic and rhythmic patterns of Russian church bells, Old Believer chants, and folk songs seamlessly mixed with the spirit of Western minimalism, the dynamic pulse of the early Soviet avant-garde, and the unfading scent of rock music. His works feature a unique sense of large-scale architecture and textured emotionalism.

Anton Batagov's discography includes over 30 CD releases. He is the author of several movie soundtracks, and the number one composer of original music for Russian television. Since 1997, he has composed over 3,000 tunes for the major Russian TV channels.

In 1997 Anton Batagov stopped performing live, and since then, he has been focusing on studio recordings. Most of his works written since the late 1990's are deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy and practice. He has written a number of major works based on a keystone Buddhist texts chanted by Tibetan lamas as well as several large-scale instrumental compositions inspired by Buddhist teachings.

In 2009 Anton Batagov received the prestigious national Steppenwolf Award in the Best Music category.

In 2009, after 12 years of self-imposed exile from concert activities, Batagov returned to live performances, and immediately confirmed his status as a legendary performer.

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