In 1984, international tensions were high. In the previous year, US President Ronald Reagan had announced his Strategic Defence Initiative, dubbed ‘Star Wars’; the Soviets shot down a Korean passenger flight with 269 people onboard; and NATO’s Able Archer wargame pushed the world closer to nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Soviet war in Afghanistan was raging, and discourse about how the Cold War could turn hot was percolating in the media. Hints of perestroika and glasnost of the Gorbachev years (1985–91) were nowhere to be seen. The general consensus in the West was that the Soviet Union was as rigid and unrelenting as ever.
However, in August 1984 in Helsinki, an unexpected cultural event took place. Initially, it may have looked like a propaganda victory for the Soviet Union, which gathered its foremost soloists and ensembles to play Soviet music for one week (25 August to 1 September 1984) to Finnish and international concert audiences. And yet, this week of Soviet music was far from a typical Soviet artistic event. The programme was in itself extraordinary: Instead of the staid music typically promoted by Soviet officials, much of the week’s programme was contemporary, highlighting composers whose styles were far removed from the conservative idioms usually promoted by the Soviet authorities, including Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov, and Alfred Schnittke. Rarely, if ever, had there been such a broad spectrum of contemporary Soviet music presented in the West. The programme was almost completely devoid of the perennial trio of Soviet composers: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian.
In the West, Denisov and Schnittke – and later Gubaidulina – were often framed as dissidents. Their works were seen to challenge the conservative socialist realist style. Even though they were occasionally in trouble with the authorities, they were members of the Composers’ Union and managed to get their music published, although it was rarely performed on major stages before the perestroika years.Footnote 1 The week of Soviet music in Helsinki seems like a curious case in this respect, offering fairly big stages outside the Soviet borders. Furthermore, for the first time, Gubaidulina was allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union to promote her music. In Helsinki, she was able to meet colleagues from Western countries on a broader scale than before.
The week of Soviet music underlines some important features about a transformative period in Soviet musical life, but also the curious role of Finland as an intermediary between Western and Soviet music circles. Culturally, Finland was part of the West, with composers following Western currents and working in Western context. Yet, the end of the second world war left Finland partly in the Soviet sphere of influence. While part of the West, officially Finland had amiable relations with the Soviet Union, making Finland the most frequently visited country in the West by Soviet musicians and ensembles. Because of this, Finland was occasionally used as a safe testing ground for new approaches.Footnote 2
At the same time, Finland and the Soviet Union had developed in very different directions. The Stalin era had isolated the Soviet musical world from the West. A slow rapprochement had begun after Stalin died in 1953, as a handful of Soviet composers started to investigate Western trends, and the Thaw enabled some connections with the West.Footnote 3 Even though little seemed to change in the upper echelons of the Soviet Composers’ Union, unofficial musical circles were born.Footnote 4 With the Thaw, musical life in the Soviet Union started to change. Censorship still existed but was less comprehensive. Many composers were able to experiment with new styles they accessed through scores or recordings, or by visiting countries like Poland.Footnote 5 Externally, little seemed to change, which is why many in the West – including Finland – were slow to realise what was taking place beneath the seemingly homogenous surface of Soviet musical life.Footnote 6 Throughout the 1970s, a handful of Soviet musicians who were allowed to perform in the West provided exposure to music by experimental Soviet composers. However, the real avalanche of nonconformist Soviet art in the West took place only in the late 1980s.Footnote 7 The week of Soviet music in 1984 in Helsinki was a microcosm for this complex backstory, highlighting the transitional nature of Soviet musical life in the early 1980s. The preparations for the festival reflect changes in Soviet musical life, including the gradual approval of formerly unofficial works and composers into the roster of exported Soviet cultural products. There are clear signs that Soviet music was being rebranded, with styles previously considered unofficial by Soviet authorities becoming increasingly acceptable.
While Soviet musicians had visited Finland for decades preceding 1984 (with individual Soviet music pedagogues working in Finland since 1965) the focus rarely had been on contemporary Soviet music. Indeed, until 1984, hardly any concerts in Finland had ever spotlighted contemporary Soviet music. The world premiere of Schnittke’s Second Violin Concerto in Finland in 1966Footnote 8 remained an isolated case. Also, while the Kuhmo chamber music festival had featured the music of Arvo Pärt in 1979, the organisers failed to get him to come to Finland in person.Footnote 9 Up to that point, Soviet music played by Finnish or Soviet orchestras or musicians in Finland consisted mostly of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other staples. Even more commonly, Soviet musicians would play European and Russian classics. Nevertheless, some Finnish composers, especially of the younger generation, had started to build networks in the Soviet Union, which proved important in the preparations leading to the festival.
Another typical feature of musical exchanges between Finland and the Soviet Union had been that Finnish authorities mostly remained in the background, leaving it to concert offices and professional organisations to negotiate with Soviet organisations. Negotiations on the Soviet side were usually handled by the Soviet concert organisation Goskontsert. However, the 1984 week of Soviet music in Helsinki was different. The event received major attention from the Soviet authorities and the Composers’ Union. This, in part, made the negotiation process much more complex than usual, but it also indicates that the event was far from routine. Something very important was brewing.
The week’s framework
The week of Soviet music ultimately was scheduled as part of the annual Helsinki Festival, an international event that had been held since 1968. The festival was a multi-artistic event, one of the largest in the Nordic countries, with a high-profile classical musical programme at its core. One of the aims of the festival was to increase awareness of Finland abroad. Finnish concert houses and theatres invited foreign guests to their premieres, but also featured foreign high-profile ensembles and artists: the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and artists such as Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Barenboim, and Luciano Pavarotti. Festival organisers also had made good use of the Soviet Union’s proximity, having featured, for example, Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, Natalia Gutman, and Oleg Kagan in the past.
Opera singer and lawyer Veijo Varpio became executive director of the festival in 1980. During his tenure, the festival began to choose a theme country that received special attention in the programme. The first theme countries were Hungary, Finland, and Germany (both East and West). However, the process leading up to the Soviet week ended up being different because of prior actions by both governments. Also, while the festival completed all the planning and contracting in connection with the previous theme countries, in this case, long negotiations were held with Soviet authorities before the programme could be confirmed. A strong hint regarding the level of Soviet involvement was evident in the festival’s programme book. A four-page article on Soviet music intended to introduce concertgoers to the week’s programme was written by Mikhail Krasnov, editor-in-chief of the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s music department, and translated into Finnish, Swedish, and English.Footnote 10 The article itself was in a typically Soviet register, alternating bland pronouncements and canonising value judgements. Nonconformist composers like Gubaidulina or Denisov were hardly even mentioned; rather, the focus was on Tikhon Khrennikov and other more conservative composers.
The Soviet delegation to the festival comprised 340 people, including the Latvian Chamber Orchestra; Moscow Chamber Choir; Symphony Orchestra of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, led by Gennady Rozhdestvensky; the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s Chamber Choir; and the Moscow Chamber Opera. Among the soloists were Kagan and Vadim Repin. Even though the number of Soviet ensembles was on a scale never seen before, the new Soviet music was the true novelty of the visit.
The programme was bold and perhaps the broadest introduction to new Soviet music ever held abroad. Composers who travelled to Helsinki included Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Andrei Eshpai, Alexander Kholminov, Mikhail Tariverdiyev, and Khrennikov, but not Denisov. Of these, Tariverdiyev’s inclusion was apparently the result of insistence by the Soviet Ministry of Culture as a counterweight to the more experimental composers in the programme.Footnote 11 For the previous 30 years, Tariverdiyev had composed mostly film scores, as well as the theme song for the popular TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring. Major orchestral works performed included Gubaidulina’s First Violin Concerto, Offertorium, Denisov’s Peinture, Schnittke’s Requiem, Boris Tchaikovsky’s Theme and Eight Variations, Eshpai’s Concerto for Oboe, and Rodion Shchedrin’s Third Piano Concerto. The week also featured operas by Kholminov and Tariverdiyev, performed by the Moscow Chamber Opera. Also performed was Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata, Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, Andrei Petrov’s Violin Concerto, Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, and Schnittke’s First Symphony. Furthermore, the Latvian Chamber Orchestra played works by Yevhen Stankovych, Tigran Mansuryan, Tamara Shaverzashvili, Romualds Kalsons, Fikret Amirov, Peteris Vasks, and Raimo Kangro. The Moscow Chamber Choir performed music by Veljo Tormis, Otar Taktakishvili, and Georgi Sviridov. Solo concerts included works by Schnittke, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. An opening concert of particular interest, which will be discussed in detail later, was also held, comprising Tikhon Khrennikov’s Third Piano Concerto and First Violin Concerto, together with Shchedrin’s Autograph and Prokofiev’s Russian Overture.Footnote 12
Whether considered from the Finnish or Soviet perspective, the programme was clearly the result of bold choices. From the Soviet perspective, one surprising feature is the notable amount of serial and experimental music, which Soviet authorities had long discouraged. Gubaidulina and Denisov were part of ‘Khrennikov’s seven’, who had been denounced during the Composers’ Union’s congress in 1979.Footnote 13 A month before the condemnation, works by Gubaidulina (and those by Silvestrov, Schnittke, and Denisov) were performed at a concert of new Soviet music organised by Pierre Boulez in Paris. The condemnation complicated matters for nonconformist composers, although it also increased their appeal outside the Soviet Union.Footnote 14
The idea to arrange a week of Soviet music in Finland – and a week of Finnish music in the USSR – had emerged in the mid-1970s. This followed an increase in cultural exchanges between the two countries. The Finnish government had also become more active in cultural exchange. Kalevi Kivistö, who led the Finnish Ministry of EducationFootnote 15 at the time, met with Vladimir Popov, the Soviet vice minister for culture, who introduced the idea of reciprocal weeks focusing on musical culture. This week of music was to have a high profile, take place in capital cities, and enjoy broad publicity.Footnote 16 Alongside music, Finland and the Soviet Union organised reciprocal events in several other fields of art between 1975 and 1983. These included theatre festivals, national art exhibitions, and literature weeks. While this background was not relevant to the Helsinki Festival, which eventually arranged the week, for authorities, it really mattered. The governmental agreement provided the event with necessary formal clout and forced the Soviet authorities to take suggestions seriously.
Thus, it took almost six years before arrangements for the week of Soviet music was completed. There were several reasons for this long preparation. The main reason was that the Finnish government lacked the means to arrange the week in practice. The Finnish government did not have resources to arrange several events in a single year and were forced to choose one at a time; a number of major exhibitions and other cultural weeks were already in the pipeline. There was also the problem of finding a suitable partner in Finland. The Finland–Soviet Union Society, a curious NGO, had arranged weeks of cultural exchange with various Soviet republics in the past.Footnote 17 However, it lacked the necessary credibility and networks in professional music circles. If the society had arranged the week, much of the Finnish concert-going audience likely would have opted out. Hesitation on the Finnish side led to postponing the week to have more time to prepare and plan.Footnote 18 Then Varpio from the Helsinki Festival approached the Finnish Ministry of Education in 1982 with an idea to showcase Soviet music, and the ministry seized the opportunity.Footnote 19 Soviet authorities were happy to agree, since the Helsinki Festival was a major international event with networks, resources, and professional competencies.
Negotiating the festival programme
Apparently, the first tentative talks between the festival and Soviet authorities were held in connection with the Helsinki Festival in 1982, with negotiations continuing into autumn of that year. In January 1983, Varpio requested that Goskontsert confirm that the Leningrad Philharmonic and Yevgeny Mravinsky would travel to Helsinki.Footnote 20 In his message, Varpio referred to the matter as though it already had been agreed to in principle. The Leningrad Philharmonic, under Mravinsky, had performed in Finland several times, beginning in 1946, when Helsinki was the venue for its first foreign tour. Thus, it was well known and loved by Finnish audiences. The Philharmonic had recently visited Finland in 1975 and 1977. In summer 1984, Mravinsky (aged 81) agreed to a European concert with the Leningrad Symphony, but instead of Finland, the destination was West Germany. This destination was more profitable and was viewed as a bigger priority by the Soviet authorities and Mravinsky alike. It turned out to be his final tour abroad. The Leningrad Philharmonic performed in Finland as part of its Scandinavian tour in March 1985, but without Mravinsky.Footnote 21 Based on the documentation, getting Mravinsky for the Helsinki Festival in 1984 had been a priority for Varpio, although he remembered it differently afterwards.
The Mravinsky-led Leningrad Philharmonic was not known for performing contemporary Soviet music. If it had spearheaded the week, the programme might have been very different. It also hints that the Helsinki Festival’s original priority was not to focus on contemporary composers. However, in his memoirs, Varpio said he got the idea for the week of Soviet music from Berlin, where Gubaidulina’s Offertorium was played.Footnote 22 The work had received its premiere in Vienna in 1981 (conducted by Leif Segerstam, a Finn, with Gidon Kremer on violin), so Varpio is likely referring to the Junge Deutsche Philharmonic’s performance at Gustav Mahler week in 1982, for which the composer had presented an abridged version.Footnote 23 The idea of showcasing Gubaidulina might have been brewing in Varpio’s mind, but it did not surface in the negotiations before 1983.
Based on the Goskontsert documents, the negotiations leading up to the week of Soviet music were somewhat erratic. Although Varpio was far from inexperienced as a negotiator, Goskontsert worked very differently compared to Western concert offices. In spring 1983, Goskontsert made an internal decision to send the Novosibirsk Regional Philharmonic (led by Arnold Katz) to Helsinki for 15 days.Footnote 24 The Kiev Chamber Orchestra was also to be sent to Finland for the same duration.Footnote 25 These decisions have some odd features. First, no evidence was found that indicated Varpio ever sought out either ensemble, but an indirect hint about the latter exists: Varpio did make an inquiry about Yuri Bashmet, who, at the time, led the Kiev Chamber Orchestra. However, the decision to send the orchestra to Finland was made before Varpio had considered Bashmet. Notably, neither ensemble performed at the festival ultimately. Furthermore, Goskontsert rarely made final decisions about tours so far in advance and never before the actual negotiations. Official records with dates and signatures exist, so the logical conclusion is that these negotiations were atypical, likely due to pressure from other parts of the Soviet bureaucracy and the Finnish negotiators’ inexperience.
When negotiations continued in August 1983, Varpio’s requests included some Soviet artists who did perform at the 1984 festival, including conductors Rozhdestvensky and Katz, violinist Kagan, and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.Footnote 26 Varpio rejected the Novosibirsk Philharmonic, which the Soviets proposed, stating that it would not draw an audience, as it was virtually unknown in Finland. This is not completely true. The Novosibirsk Philharmonic, led by Katz, had visited Helsinki in January 1981, and the reception had been very positive.Footnote 27 Varpio continued to insist on the Leningrad Philharmonic, so this was probably the real reason for his refusal to invite the Novosibirsk Philharmonic.Footnote 28 Katz’s likely connection to Finland was Jorma Panula, the foremost Finnish conductor, who had visited Novosibirsk in 1973.Footnote 29 In connection with the 1984 festival, Katz made his second visit to Finland, but without his orchestra.
The Soviets rejected many of the artists Varpio hoped to invite, including pianists Richter and Andrei Gavrilov, conductor Maris Jansons, and the Borodin Quartet. Negotiations continued in Moscow in September 1983.Footnote 30 A year before the week was supposed to take place, many things remained unclear – so much so that the entire tentative programme presented to the board of the Helsinki Festival in spring 1983 would change. At that point, the Leningrad Philharmonic was still being presented as the main musical attraction of the week. The other key performers were the Glinka Choir; Moscow Virtuosi, led by Spivakov; bass Yevgeni Nesterenko; Estonia’s Academic Male Choir; the Moscow Conservatory’s Chamber Orchestra, led by Mikhail Teryan; and pianist Alexander Toradze.Footnote 31 None of them ultimately attended, and none of the names featured in August 1984 were mentioned in Varpio’s tentative programme. Notably, most of the names mentioned in the draft had performed in Finland before or were well known in Finland. Also notable is the fact that visitors from other countries mentioned in the draft did arrive as planned (the week of Soviet music was part of a larger festival). Thus, it was only the week of Soviet music that appeared volatile. Furthermore, the tentative programme was promising to be much more conservative than it ultimately turned out to be.
The Soviets were notorious for last-minute changes in both repertory and soloist choices. In the case of the week of Soviet music, very few changes were made after the negotiations were concluded in late 1983. The only major change seems to have been replacing Schnittke’s Faust cantataFootnote 32 with his Requiem.Footnote 33 Schnittke had been sceptical about Faust’s chances of being performed from the beginning, although it was premiered in Vienna in 1983. Yet, Varpio insisted on it, as well as having pop star Alla Pugacheva sing the main role.Footnote 34 In the end, Schnittke was right. In his memoirs, Varpio said the choir had planned to perform Faust, but yielded to pressure from authorities and declined.Footnote 35 The official Soviet explanation was that the soloist (who was not going to be Pugacheva) had fallen ill.Footnote 36 Faust was eventually performed at the festival, but a year later, in 1985.Footnote 37 Another last-minute change was that the clarinet soloist of the Symphony Orchestra of the Ministry of Culture was denied the right to travel. This placed two major concerts at risk. After the initial outrage and a threat to cancel the concerts altogether, the conductor Rozhdestvensky yielded and trained another clarinettist for the task.Footnote 38
Considering the Soviet week’s vast scale, there were surprisingly few cancellations. The ultimate programme was created sometime between autumn 1983 and early 1984. It was published in the Finland–Soviet Union Society’s magazine in early 1984 even though the society was not involved in this project. However, it customarily promoted Soviet-related events. All the information it published was realised as such: Gubaidulina; Schnittke, although still with Faust; and Denisov were all in the programme, as were Rozhdestvensky and Katz. Also, the concert led by Pavel Kogan with Repin as soloist was in the programme as well, although this was mentioned as the concluding concert still lacking Khrennikov playing his piano concerto.Footnote 39 Thus, the programme was mostly ready by the beginning of 1984. At the Soviet end, the week of Soviet music was promoted in the media in spring 1984. Naturally, Khrennikov was mentioned first among composers, but Denisov, Schnittke, and Taktakishvili also were mentioned in the news item. However, Gubaidulina was omitted.Footnote 40
Varpio seems to have negotiated mostly with regards to individuals and ensembles with Goskontsert, but not about repertory. Furthermore, some of the Goskontsert’s forms have ‘Melanko’ as the foreign concert organiser.Footnote 41 This referred to Valdemar Melanko, who worked for the Finnish Ministry of Education as head of its Soviet Institute, a curious department originally established in 1947. From the late 1960s, the institute worked to promote educational and scholarly ties between the two countries.Footnote 42 The Finnish government had delegated the task of overseeing the organising of the music week to the institute, even though the Helsinki Festival was expected to make the practical arrangements. It is likely that Melanko continued negotiations on behalf of Varpio. Unlike Varpio, Melanko spoke fluent Russian and was accustomed to dealing with Soviet officials, though not with Goskontsert. However, the agreements made with him in October 1983 regarding the Moscow Chamber Choir and the Moscow Chamber Opera both were realised in 1984.Footnote 43 Varpio himself continued negotiations in November 1983 and came up with contracts for Gutman and Kagan.Footnote 44 The latter came, but Gutman had to cancel her appearance at the last minute for personal reasons.Footnote 45 She was supposed to have been a soloist for the Latvian Chamber Orchestra, but only Kagan ultimately performed.
While the archives provide few hints about Varpio’s role in negotiating the concert programme, in his memoirs, he claims to have taken an active role, such as insisting that the Soviets agree to Gubaidulina’s violin concerto and Schnittke’s Faust cantata for the festival.Footnote 46 Varpio considers to have obtained what he wanted in the negotiations with the Soviets. Yet, his original ideas seem to have changed notably within the year leading up to the week of Soviet music. Instead of popular favourites, the focus turned to the repertory, and eventually, most of the performers were chosen accordingly. Rather than Varpio, young Finnish composers seem to have been particularly active in influencing the programme choices for the festival.
Composers’ links
Kalevi Aho, an internationally renowned Finnish composer, was in his early thirties at the time and on the verge of an international breakthrough. He was also active in the Society of Finnish Composers. Compared with its Soviet counterpart, the Finnish society was a small organisation with minor resources. However, it was an active participant in the International Society for Contemporary Music, and like most Finnish composers, it had nurtured connections with the West rather than the East. Even so, formal connections with the Soviet Composers’ Union had existed since 1961. This mostly comprised an exchange of annual delegations, which resulted in little actual cooperation other than occasional exchanges of notes and recordings. This began to change in the latter part of the 1970s, as a younger generation of Finnish composers was on the rise. Some, such as Aho, became interested in the new music being composed in the Soviet Union.
Aho had begun expressing interest in the Soviet Union’s nonconformist music scene in the late 1970s. Aho’s works had also received performances in the Soviet Union. For example, his oboe concerto was performed in spring 1981.Footnote 47 At the time, in Aho’s estimation, Finns, together with the rest of Europe, had become interested in young Soviet composers. He believed that while contemporary classical music was experiencing a crisis elsewhere in Europe, the same was not true for the Soviet Union, where it was increasingly drawing attention. Furthermore, even though new Soviet music rarely reached Finnish concert stages, the Finnish Broadcasting Union played new works frequently, with Leningrad’s proximity helping a great deal.Footnote 48 Aho had also gathered as many recordings as possible during his trips to the Soviet Union. Based on what he heard, he claims to have selected many of the works highlighted in the festival programme, including Gubaidulina’s Violin Concerto and Schnittke’s First Symphony and Faust cantata.Footnote 49
Aho was part of a delegation of Finnish composers who visited Leningrad and Moscow in 1983. He was joined by two other Finnish composers, Vladimir Agopov and Leonid Bashmakov, who also acted as interpreters. Aho was curious to learn about the local contemporary music scene. Of the two other composers, Agopov played an important role in the upcoming festival. He had received his diploma from the Moscow Conservatory, and after marrying a Finn, moved to Finland in 1978. Generally, his contribution to connecting Finnish and Soviet composers ultimately proved to be very significant. According to Aho, Agopov mentioned Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Denisov as the most interesting nonconformist composers.Footnote 50
During this trip, Aho interviewed Schnittke while Agopov interviewed Gubaidulina. Agopov also arranged a meeting between Aho and Gubaidulina, who often shunned official meetings. Aho also mentioned that Schnittke insisted on the interview being conducted in his car out of fear that Aho’s hotel room would be bugged. An interpreter was not needed, as both spoke German.Footnote 51 Afterwards, Aho wrote a lengthy article on Schnittke, describing his creative path and development. Aho noted how Schnittke renewed his style often, and Aho compared him positively to Krzysztof Penderecki and Pärt.Footnote 52 While in Helsinki, Seppo Heikinheimo – the most influential Finnish music critic of the day, who spoke Russian fluently – also interviewed Schnittke. Heikinheimo highlighted how Schnittke had been known in Finnish musical circles since 1965. He also emphasised that Schnittke had stabilised his position in the Soviet Union in recent years, having received a seat in the secretariat of the Composers’ Union.Footnote 53 Heikinheimo proved to be very well informed about internal developments in Soviet musical life.
Agopov’s interview with Gubaidulina was published in a Finnish leftist cultural magazine, in which Gubaidulina spoke at length about her influences and career. She listed the few foreign performances of her works to date and was thankful for receiving tapes of these, as she had not been allowed to participate personally. Based on the interview, Gubaidulina was far from being sure whether she would be allowed to perform at the Helsinki Festival.Footnote 54 Back in Finland, Aho was a member of the festival’s artistic committee. He convinced the two other members of the programme committee, Varpio and musicologist Ilkka Oramo, that they should focus on Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Denisov, and other non-conformists.Footnote 55 Aho realised that the problem likely would be convincing authorities to allow them to travel to Finland, even if their works would be performed. The critic Heikinheimo credits Aho and Agopov as the ones who managed to get Schnittke and Gubaidulina to the festival.Footnote 56
The week of Soviet music was apparently important for the Soviet authorities as delegations of Finnish musical life were increasingly invited to Moscow. Aho made another visit to Moscow in spring 1984, this time, on the invitation of VAAP, the Soviet copyright organisation, as part of a larger delegation from the Finnish classical music scene.Footnote 57 The Soviet side was giving thorough consideration for the choice of programme in Finland.
Aho believes that the main ensembles chosen for the week of Soviet music dovetailed with programmatic requests made by the festival’s artistic committee. Thus, the Symphony Orchestra of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, headed by Rozhdestvensky, was an obvious choice (instead of Leningrad Philharmonic), having performed several works by Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Denisov. The Latvian Chamber Orchestra had played Schnittke, but also Estonian composer Kangro’s Concerto for Two Pianos, which Aho wanted performed at the festival. Of other composers, Mansuryan was suggested by Gutman and Kagan, while the festival requested Vasks and Kalsons.Footnote 58
Khrennikov and politics
The festival’s artistic committee likely considered that Soviet authorities would be critical of the works they sought, especially in the light of the problems that other festivals and concert organisers in the West had faced.Footnote 59 It was one thing to get works performed, but it was an even bigger challenge to get these composers to Helsinki. Opposition to this was expected. For this purpose, Varpio claims to have developed a plan to invite Khrennikov to the festival as well.Footnote 60 Indeed, Khrennikov was featured prominently in the programme, with his violin and piano concertos scheduled to be performed during the festival’s opening concert. He was also the first composer to be presented in the canonical booklet on the week of Soviet music. The programme also contained a violin concerto by Andrey Petrov, longtime head of the Leningrad Composers’ Union. These compromises were believed to send a signal to the Soviet leadership that the heads of the Composers’ Union were respected artists abroad (to help secure their position at home). Furthermore, Khrennikov’s presence at the festival pointed out to Soviet authorities that other composers at the festival would be under surveillance.
In the West, Khrennikov did not have a good reputation. He was linked to the suppression of experimental tendencies and nonconformist composers and was tarnished further by Solomon Volkov’s Testimony, published in 1979, which presented Shostakovich as a victim of the Soviet system, embodied in Khrennikov. This was reflected in the Q&A session arranged with journalists after Khrennikov arrived in Helsinki. When Khrennikov visited Finland in 1973, reporters mostly had been sympathetic. However, in 1984, reporters, led by Heikinheimo, questioned Khrennikov about Stalinist repressions, the defection of violinist Viktoria Mullova through Finland a year earlier, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and violinist Kremer’s emigration, and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy’s troubles with Soviet authorities. Khrennikov answered all questions patiently and remained seemingly convivial throughout the session.Footnote 61 He apparently was well prepared and in a good mood.
Schnittke had privately told Aho in 1983 that Khrennikov was not as bad as Westerners thought. In Schnittke’s opinion, he was in a tough position, simultaneously interpreting the party’s wishes and attempting to shield composers from the worst. Schnittke thought, in Aho’s words, that the head of the union could easily have been much worse.Footnote 62 Even so, many people in the West connected Khrennikov’s music with socialist realism and repression. This created a problem for the artistic committee.
It already had been agreed with Rozhdestvensky and the festival board that the opening night programme would comprise Gubaidulina’s Offertorium, paired with Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The programme was believed to be artistically challenging, but also one that would draw attention and audiences. However, according to Varpio’s memoirs, at some point, the Soviet Ministry of Culture began to insist that the opening concert comprise Khrennikov, Shchedrin, and Prokofiev’s works. Varpio and Rozhdestvensky protested the changes. Finally, Varpio suggested that the orchestra perform two concerts: The first, with the ordered changes, would be scheduled in the afternoon, and the evening concert would remain as is. Thus, the programme insisted on by Soviet authorities was made into a special afternoon concert for only invited guests – government officials, diplomats, and other notables. This also eliminated the need to sell tickets. While Rozhdestvensky declined to conduct the concert, Leonid Kogan was willing to take over. The piano soloist for the concert was Khrennikov himself, and the violin soloist was twelve-year-old Repin.Footnote 63 The concert received a great deal of positive publicity and did not harm the week’s artistic programme. Present at the exclusive concert were, among others, President of Finland Mauno Koivisto, Minister of Education Gustav Björkstrand, and Helsinki city representatives.Footnote 64 Heikinheimo summed up the concert with a sneer by quoting Repin about Khrennikov’s music: ‘It was cheerful’.Footnote 65
It is unclear who exactly insisted that Khrennikov and Shchedrin be included in the week’s opening concert.Footnote 66 If it was Khrennikov himself, he might have wanted this for selfish reasons, or because he saw this as politically necessary. His approval was needed not only for the works of Gubaidulina, Schnittke, and others to be performed, but also for them to be allowed to travel to Helsinki. The week of Soviet music had been agreed to at a high governmental level, so Khrennikov was instrumental in approving nonconformist works for the festival. Thus, the performance of his music may have been necessary to emphasise his position as a composer who is taken seriously in the West in the eyes of the Soviet leadership. If his position were viewed as weak, he could have been replaced by someone else.
For the festival week, Agopov was assigned to accompany Khrennikov and to act as his interpreter. Agopov recalls talking with Khrennikov about Gubaidulina the preceding spring in Moscow, encouraging Khrennikov to give her a chance to appear in Finland. Also, as Khrennikov initially was chagrined about his works being scheduled in the afternoon instead of the evening concert, Agopov managed to sugarcoat the incident. As noted earlier, the audience comprised high-profile politicians, including Koivisto, so Agopov cited the president’s busy schedule. Ultimately, Khrennikov was satisfied. Agopov escorted Khrennikov to other concerts during the week, attempting to influence his appreciation of experimental music.Footnote 67 Whether or not Agopov managed to influence Khrennikov’s opinion, his attitude towards experimental Soviet music seems to have become more approving after the festival.
The extent of Khrennikov’s role in the planning of the week is an interesting question. Heikinheimo conducted an extensive interview with Khrennikov in 1990. In it, he reminisced about how Gubaidulina’s violin concerto had made a deep impact on him in Helsinki. After that, he came to value Gubaidulina highly as a composer.Footnote 68 Aho also recalls Gubaidulina mentioning that Helsinki was the first occasion where Khrennikov met her in person.Footnote 69 Although a closer examination of Khrennikov’s role would require consulting the Composers’ Union’s archive (not possible at the time this article was written), it can safely be said that Khrennikov could have directed the programme in a more conservative direction had he wanted to do so. Even though Varpio recalls that he threatened to cancel the week of Soviet music unless Gubaidulina’s Offertorium was performed during the opening night,Footnote 70 Khrennikov seems to have yielded rather easily. Varpio was a skilful negotiator, but this had not been enough in the past. Nonconformist Soviet composers had mostly been denied permission to travel even if their works were allowed to be performed in the West. Furthermore, many of the works performed during the week were not previously known to Finns, but were instead recommended by Soviet artists.Footnote 71 Khrennikov and the Soviet authorities could easily have manipulated the situation and included more conservative pieces in the programme had they wanted to do so. Instead, they came up with a fairly broad overview of Soviet music composed within the last decade or so.
Heikinheimo evaluated the week’s composers beforehand, interviewing many and writing a lengthy article, with Schnittke featured in a separate article. It became apparent that Heikinheimo had the greatest expectations about Gubaidulina. As for Kholminov, Heikinheimo had heard two of his mini-operas before and was unimpressed. Regarding Tariverdiyev, he apparently enjoyed his company but had little to say about his music. As for Eshpai, Heikinheimo was impressed how much he knew about all the contemporary Western composers even though he had never travelled to the West; he had studied them through recordings and scores.Footnote 72 To sum up, Heikinheimo did not expect anything particularly experimental from the week apart from Gubaidulina and Schnittke. In retrospect, several other reviewers agreed, finding parts of the programme unchallenging for the audience.Footnote 73
And yet, the Action Report of the Helsinki Festival suggests that the choices were too modern for some. The statement that ‘the week [of Soviet music] could only contain Soviet music, excluding older Russian music’, and other similar comments hinted that the festival board would have wanted audience-friendly classics in the programme.Footnote 74 Naturally, every festival must strike a balance between selling tickets and being artistically courageous. However, in retrospect, the complaints were not completely accurate. The programme did include Modest Mussorgsky’s Songs of Death, Mikhail Glinka’s Kamarinskaya, and a few popular works by Shostakovich and Prokofiev. However, because the week was eventually made into a showcase for new Soviet music, featuring composers the audience hardly knew in advance, the programme was a result of bold choices.
One important feature – and an incentive for the Soviets – was that the Finnish Broadcasting Company recorded many of the concerts during the Helsinki Festival. Finnish radio and TV broadcast several concerts, and the rights to air the concerts were distributed widely in the West through the European Broadcast Union. Orders for concert rights came from the BBC, various West German companies, across Europe, Japan, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.Footnote 75
The aftermath
After the week ended, organisers seem to have been unhappy with the event. In an internal memo sent to the festival board, it was stated that ‘despite several high-level ensembles and soloists, the artistic offerings of the week did not reach the set expectations’. The festival organisers blamed Soviet authorities for last-minute changes, as well as the mediocrity of some of the works they had demanded to be played. However, it also was stated that the week did draw a fair amount of international attention and lured several well-known critics from abroad to Helsinki. Still, instead of the Soviet concerts, the leadership viewed the top features of the festival to be the visit by the London Philharmonic and a Finnish performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra.Footnote 76
The festival organisers seemed dissatisfied for several reasons. First, the reviews were mixed. Gubaidulina and Schnittke were mostly praised as innovative and original composers, but most of the others were deemed mediocre at best. Many of the composers that the Soviet authorities selected generally were viewed as composing in styles that work on screen and stage, but not in concert halls. The festival’s audiences were accustomed to classical music of the highest standards, and many critics felt that the week of Soviet music fell short of this. Heikinheimo described the week as a ‘missed opportunity’ and an ‘organisational test match between Varpio and Khrennikov that ended with a Pyrrhic victory for the latter’. Heikinheimo concluded that too many concessions were made to the Soviet bureaucracy. However, he admitted that without compromises, Schnittke and Gubaidulina would never have been allowed to appear in Finland. Nevertheless, despite excellent ensembles and technical mastery, he dismissed most of the compositions as poor, insignificant, or uninteresting. Heikinheimo also noted that young composers were missing, with all featured composers well over 40.Footnote 77 Whether there was a real struggle between Khrennikov and the Helsinki Festival is debatable. The biggest issue was likely whether certain composers like Gubaidulina would be allowed to participate in person.
Part of the reason for the festival’s gloomy evaluation of the week’s success was that Finnish audiences were mostly accustomed to conventional musical repertory. The Soviet week introduced new music, which contemporary audiences often shun. For example, the concert featuring Schnittke’s First Symphony attracted only a small audience, even when paired with Mussorgsky’s Songs of Death.Footnote 78 A similar problem was experienced in one of the main concerts of the week, conducted by Rozhdestvensky. The programme comprised Denisov, Schnittke, and Giya Kancheli.Footnote 79 Although Schnittke and Denisov in particular were already well known within the Western musical world, they did not draw a large audience.Footnote 80 Still, based on Helsinki Festival records, this was not entirely true. Altogether, the audience for classical concerts decreased slightly compared with the previous year, but only marginally. The Moscow Chamber Opera drew a larger audience than expected. Furthermore, although the festival paid significant fees to some Soviet artists, the visits were mostly part of official cultural exchanges and were paid for by the Soviet government.
The Finnish government funded the week of Soviet music with 350,000 FIM,Footnote 81 compared with the festival’s entire 1984 budget of 2,677,000 FIM.Footnote 82 The festival paid the Moscow Chamber Opera and Latvian Chamber Orchestra virtually nothing, while soloists received high fees. Furthermore, the invited composers – Gubaidulina, Schnittke, and Khrennikov – received healthy fees from the festival, most likely because, apart from Khrennikov, they probably would have received next to nothing from the Soviet Union.Footnote 83 Ultimately, the week’s bottom line was positive.Footnote 84 When it came to star power, however, past festivals had hosted more high-profile Soviet soloists than the week of Soviet music. Kagan and Rozhdestvensky were the only big stars featured in 1984. Gilels was hired separately to perform, but outside the Soviet week.Footnote 85 Well-known soloists could often draw audiences even if the programme was not well known. In 1984, however, they were largely missing.
In addition to visiting composers, the 1984 festival hosted an exceptional number of invited Soviet guests. While the festival had featured notable Soviet musicians and ensembles in the past, Soviet officials and politicians had mostly been absent. However, in 1984, the Soviet delegation was large, led by Madame Pankova from the Soviet Ministry of Culture, along with Mikhail Krasnov and Andrei Andreyev from its various departments. Other delegates included Ludmila Bol’shols and Yulia Kaidukova from VAAP, Olga Desnitskaya and Svetlana Cheidze from the Glinka Museum, and Soviet journalists Arkhipenko (Kommunist), Lednev (Sovetskaya Kultura), Gripov (Medalya), Popov (Muzykalnaya Zhizn), and Porokov (Liteturnaya Gazeta).Footnote 86 This indicated that for the Soviets, the week was a high-profile event and part of an official cultural exchange.
In retrospect, Finnish estimates for the week of Soviet music differed. Composer Jouni Kaipainen viewed the week as a success, writing that instead of music, the focus in the West was often on politics, specifically imagining to what degree the Soviet authorities moulded the Soviet composers’ works. In his opinion, the week, for the first time, introduced Finnish audiences to a wide range of Soviet composers. Even so, Kaipainen felt that Gubaidulina and Schnittke left the biggest impression, asking rhetorically, ‘Perhaps the musical languages of composers living in capitalist or communist societies are not as different as it seemed some time ago?’Footnote 87 This was probably one of the Soviet aims for the week as well. In retrospect, Aho also viewed the week as a great success; however, contemporary reviews elicited a mixed bag. Some critics found Schnittke’s works brilliant, while others found them somewhat diffuse. The same was true for Gubaidulina. At the smaller concerts, many Soviet composers were dismissed as unsurprising. The Latvian Chamber Orchestra had a well-known soloist, Kagan, but the programme was described as lukewarm, lacklustre, and even dull.Footnote 88 Significant parts of the programme were selected in the Soviet Union, even though the festival’s artistic committee suggested several composers. However, the main concerts were, by most accounts, described as successes.
For Schnittke, the performance of his First Symphony was a major event. It had premiered in 1974 in Gorky and had since been a topic of intense discussions within the Composers’ Union. It was not officially banned but had not received performances after its premiere (and second performance in Tallinn in 1975). This gave the work a special aura, and bootleg versions of it circulated widely among Soviet music students.Footnote 89 The New Grove states that the ‘situation changed only when Gorbachyov came to power in 1985. It was precisely from this time onwards, when… he was finally able to travel to attend performances of his works outside the Soviet Union.’Footnote 90 It is obvious that the situation had started to change earlier than that, as Schnittke was able to travel to Helsinki and witness his First Symphony performed well before even the first hints of Gorbachev’s new policies could be felt. For Gubaidulina, the Helsinki Festival proved to be even more of a watershed. After Helsinki, she began to receive commissions from abroad and was also allowed to travel extensively. The week of Soviet music was a major occasion for her career.Footnote 91
Conclusion
The week of Soviet music vividly reflects the transitional state in which Soviet musical life found itself in the early 1980s. The Soviet musical establishment had evidently started to feel that it had to come to an accommodation with experimental tendencies in domestic musical life. Although the Composers’ Union and Soviet bureaucracy appeared unchanged, beneath the surface, intense controversies were being hotly discussed throughout the 1970s. Furthermore, previously forbidden styles surfaced and reached Soviet concert stages. These tendencies also started to receive increasing attention in the West.Footnote 92 While experimental music was still officially regarded with disfavour, the official rhetoric about ‘decadent Western tendencies’ was becoming increasingly embarrassing for a Soviet musical leadership certainly aware that the great majority of contemporary Soviet music was regarded as an anachronism in the West. Even Khrennikov had made some modest updates to his style in works such as the Third Piano Concerto (1983–84) in an attempt to be more modern.
The week of Soviet music in Helsinki, then, was not only a mediation between experimental and conservative trends in Soviet music. Soviet musical life was in the middle of a rebranding process, expanding its understanding of what constituted acceptable classical music in the Soviet Union. Only two years earlier, in 1982, Denisov’s Peinture, Gubaidulina’s Offertorium, and Schnittke’s incidental music had been performed in the Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the first such concert in a big venue in the Soviet capital.Footnote 93 The first two works mentioned were also performed in Helsinki, which is likely not a coincidence. It seems that Soviet authorities – and particularly the Composers’ Union – were much more open to the idea of presenting their musical culture in broader terms than before. The Helsinki Festival was the first occasion where this approach seemed to have been tried in practice. Another new feature was the presence of a large number of composers. Previously, few composers – nonconformist ones in particular – were allowed to travel abroad. Finland was a relatively safe Western country from the Soviet point of view and had been used as a testing ground for Soviet musicians many times in the past. Now it seems to have served as a try-out for a new approach to contemporary Soviet music. Rarely, if ever before, had the Soviet Union sent abroad such a broad array of contemporary Soviet music and composers, a practice that became commonplace during the perestroika years. The Soviet musical establishment was trying to reinvent itself, albeit cautiously. The week of Soviet music, then, was a momentous event, increasing Soviet composers’ access to the West and paving the way for a serious expansion of contacts during perestroika. This was tolerated and even made possible by the Composers’ Union. But this also plunged more conservative Soviet composers into a whole new environment, one in which avant-gardists who traditionally had been despised in the Soviet Union were now the ones praised, forcing them to critical self-reflection. This trend only intensified in the coming years.
A young generation of Finnish composers was actively involved in the making of the week. Their key contribution was to notably increase the amount of contemporary Soviet music in the programme. While the event was based on a governmental agreement, the Finnish government did not have much to say concerning the programme. It is even likely that, had the week been arranged some years earlier – as originally planned – the programme would have been much more conservative and focused on classics rather than contemporary Soviet music. Furthermore, unlike most previous instances where nonconformist Soviet music had been played in the West, the Helsinki Festival was part of official cultural exchange. Thus, all composers who played during the week of Soviet music were approved by Soviet authorities and, in most cases, paid by them. Thus, even if Schnittke and Denisov had already become acceptable in the Soviet Union, being exported as part of official Soviet music was a further step towards their full approval. For Gubaidulina, the event was even more groundbreaking, marking the beginning of her international career.
While the Soviet programme was quite extensive, there were some other interesting features that have not been discussed in the confines of this article. The first observation is that the programme included quite a few composers from the Soviet republics. It was typical that Moscow and Leningrad were preferred in cultural exchange, and it was much more difficult to gain access to foreign countries from the Soviet periphery. Even though composers coming from the Soviet republics were mostly featured in smaller concerts during the Festival, their notable number seems like a new feature. Another interesting observation concerns those who were left out: there were no young composers or émigrés in the programme. Age-based hierarchy was difficult to overcome in the Soviet Union. While young musicians could reach important status, for composers this was virtually impossible. Only established and meritorious members of the Composers’ Union were accepted into the week’s programme. Émigrés, like Pärt, were also considered persona non grata and left out of consideration. These exclusions would only start to be redressed deep into the perestroika period.
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