Having recently returned from a wonderful week in Saint Petersburg with Agnes Kory and students of the BBCM, together with members of their families, we would like to share some of our impressions of this beautiful city and the experiences we enjoyed there.

An hour and a half of each day was spent with Agnes listening to and learning about Russian music, from Glinka, the "father of Russian music" through to Shostakovich. Agnes brought all manner of insights to the work of these composers with her wide knowledge of their lives and personalities and of their methods of composing and these sessions were extremely interesting and enjoyable. To walk through the city primed with these musical experiences and the information she had given us lent a much greater significance to everything we saw than would otherwise have been the case and in return the city helped us further understand the composers and their music.

Our hotel (which had a thousand rooms!) was situated beside the stately River Neva which flowed past bearing ice and snow. In front was the St. Alexander Nevsky monastery of the Holy Trinity and the Tikhrinskoye cemetery in which were the graves of Tschaikovsky, Glinka, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Cui as well as Rubenstein, Arensky and others too. These were together in this peaceful place and we walked in the sun and the cold, crisp air, listening to the birds and feeling the nearness to these men who had written such lovely music. It was good to walk the same streets and look at the same views as they had done. The same applied to Dostoyevsky and Pushkin, whose houses we visited. The statues of these writers and musicians, some with snow hats on this week, were well placed. Rimsky-Korsakov was to be found between the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatiore and the Mariinsky Theatre. I am sure that we will never forget the three children doing their ballet dancing in front of it to the accompaniment of their own singing.

We were fortunate in being able to visit two music schools. The first was a private one where about thirty children of different ages were taught Renaissance music. Most of the instruments were made in the school itself by Sergey Sheck who had his workshops there and which we were shown. We were invited to the concert they gave at Peterhof, the Great Palace of Peter the Great. It was held in the magnificent Throne Room. The first half was performed in Elizabethan dress and the second in medieval costume and the teachers joined in. They sang many pieces and also played the baroque violin, recorders, organ and harpsichord as well as other Renaissance wind instruments. Two days later, we had a tour round the palace, ably guided by Peter Dyson (an English composer who now lives in Russia) and his wife Katja. After this there was a combined workshop in their school, conducted by Agnes Kory. She gave the Russians a taste of her work with the BBCM and we made some music together including pieces by Kodaly, Bartok, Britten and Tallis. Agnes also introduced some of Sary's ideas into the workshop. There was a good feeling of communal interest and increased mutual understanding between the two countries and the workshop was pronounced a great success.

The other music school that we were privileged to visit was the Rostropovich state music school, the best of forty-nine such music schools in St. Petersburg. Here we observed a piano lesson in progress and heard other students play the piano, cello and violin, on one occasion joining in with them. There was a short BBCM workshop here, and as had happened at the Renaissance school they gave us tea and cakes and made us feel very welcome.

We had a memorable visit to the Mariinsky Theatre (formerly known as the Kirov) to see the ballet "La Bayadere" which was beautifully danced and extremely colourful. Agnes had procured us marvellous seats from which we had a splendid view. Another concert we attended was held in the Glinka Capella Concert Hall, which has one of the best acoustics in the world (and very pretty lighting), where we heard Aaron Copland's concerto for clarinet and strings as well as Arthur Honegger's Sinfonia for strings and trumpet.

We went inside some lovely churches: on Palm Sunday, when many people were carrying armfuls of pussy willow into them and also on Good Friday. This enabled us not only to hear Russian chant but also to witness the religious fervour of the Russian people.

The walk in the sunshine down to the Gulf of Finland at Peterhof (still frozen and covered with snow), the visit to the traditional Russian circus, the kindness of a Russian lady who went out of her way to take us to the Pushkin monument, the people who chatted to us on the buses, the excellent English of our guide Maria and our Russian friends Tatyana and Irina (who looked after us so carefully); these memories and many more will be treasured in our hearts. Thank you to all those in the group who did so much to make the week the success that it was and thank you, Agnes for arranging everything and making it all come alive for us in a very special way!

Diana Mathews (age 15)
and Cordelia Mathews GTCL, LTCL, LRAM

A letter from St Petersburg

12 April 2001

Dear Agnes,

I would like to give my impressions of your lesson (workshop) and I am only sorry that I cannot render them face-to-face. I did not only like it but it was a special pleasure for me. Following the movements of your hands and beholding the atmosphere of freedom and easiness that marks the lessons of outstanding professionals of the old school in whose footsteps you possibly follow, I was remembering the wonderful sol-fa teachers I had: Vera Koroliova and Tatiana Babanina, the representatives of the old Leningrad school.

The system which you have presented is known here, though unfortunately, we use just certain elements of it. When I was a student of the Rimsky Korsakov Music School in 1978-82 and we got acquainted with several sol-fa teaching systems, the Kodaly system among them, the advantages of this system were always stressed, which were quick orientation in any key, wonderful co-ordination between intonation and rhythm movement. But yesterday at your workshop I felt how natural and organic this system was and, certainly, useful too. Of course, you were not able to show much of it and showed just the most elementary things. But the natural and free manner of your students' performing, no matter were they singing or playing, persuaded me and my colleagues that the essence of this system was Music, the inner nature of music and that this system was viable and universal, which was proved by the Russian and Hungarian melodies too.

Your deep interest and understanding of Russian music makes me want to add some points to what you said. As you mentioned the harmony (which is formed with the polyphonic supporting voices) is typical for the Russian folk song. (Pardon me for so inexact account of your idea). But this has to do only with the lyrical folk song. As for the genre of the calendar song or the very peculiar genre of the ritual lamentation (which is a very special type of half-singing and half chanting), the non-diatonical nature of Russian folk song explicitly shows up: the frequently occuring 1/4 and 1/8 tones and the specific heterophony create a quite peculiar complicated Russian unison. I would like to add some words about chants. The very genre of chant and the tradition of its performance in Russia did not live long. Its intonational sources were in Italian madrigals and later in Polish psalms. Russian chant is a mixture, roughly speaking, of church choral, solemn hymn and secular song. The common topics were as follows: the occasion of a victory, some state event, love- and joke-song. The first two were sung mostly during the reign of Peter the Great and the last two in the times of Anna Ioanovna and Elisabeth. In the times of Catherine II chants were already rare. It is interesting that the authors of chants are not known. By the early 19th century the genre of chant did not exist in Russia. M.I.Glinka was an exception: having understood the hymnic nature of this genre he composed his brilliant "Slavsia" in Ivan Susanin. I believe that a contemporary composer, who perceives the nature of the Russian chant, will be able to create the state anthem of today's Russia (which has been much argued about lately).

This is the end of my probably too long letter and I beg your pardon for a tiresome reading.

With much respect and best regards

Marina Sosnina

P.S: I hope to see you again at "Schola Cantorum"

Marina Sosnina is a teacher at the Schola Cantorum renaissance music school in St Petersburg.
www.schola-cantorum.spb.ru