By Danielle Bettendorf Staff writer
Jeffrey Fahnestock, adjunct faculty music, and Ilya Blinov, lecturer in music, will perform a joint recital on Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Stretansky Concert Hall.
The program will contain music from different countries and the pieces will be sung in different languages.
“[For] the first half [of the recital] we paired texts in Italian, French and German with a western European composer, and then the same texts set by a Russian composer,” Fahnestock said.
“In most cases they’re within a generation of each other, sometimes in the same generation. There are a few that are quite far apart, but the texts are so good that we decided to use them,” he added.
In contrast with the first half, the second half of the recital will be purely Russian.
“Many years ago I discovered the Rimsky-Korsakov set ‘To The Poet,’ and several of the poems are by [Alexander] Pushkin,” Fahnestock said.
“I thought it would be interesting to look for other texts by him, so ‘Eugene Onegin’ is by Pushkin, and it happens that the character that sings the aria is a poet, so that’s interesting,” he continued.
“Then we decided to add Rachmaninov, and there’s some Pushkin poetry, but also the idea of East meets West,” Fahnestock continued. “There are Russian translations of Victor Hugo or Heinrich Heine—western European poets translated into Russian.”
The “East meets West” theme is also reflected in the style of some of the pieces.
“I play a piece which is originally for voice and piano, but it’s transcribed for [a] piano solo,” said Blinov. “It’s a part of another western European tradition that was started by Franz Liszt: a famous composer and pianist who proved that pretty much anything can be played on the piano. That’s another example of how East meets West in this program.”
The concert will be the first time the two professors perform a recital together.
“I hadn’t had a chance to work with Dr. Blinov before, and we work right down the hallway from [one] another,” Fahnestock said.
“We work together as colleagues, but it’s the first time we’ve collaborated as musicians,” Blinov added.
Fahnestock said the recital also came about because Blinov is Russian and Fahnestock has “always had an interest in Russian repertoire.”
Fahnestock also credited Blinov with helping him with his preparation for their upcoming performances.
“Without Dr. Blinov, I would not be able to sing as well as I am in Russian,” Fahnestock said. “It’s not a familiar language to me, though I enjoy listening to it.”
“Very little Russian literature is sung here,” Fahnestock continued. “This is my 22nd year [teaching here], and I can remember last year [Blinov] did a program, and that was the first time in about ten years that any Russian literature’s been sung [at Susquehanna].”
“It’s very rare because it’s demanding: demanding for the pianists, and not many American singers have the facility in the language because we don’t concentrate on it,” Fahnestock said.
Fahnestock and Blinov will perform at Gettysburg two days prior to the performance at Susquehanna. They will perform the same pieces, but they expect the performances to differ.
“It’s unpredictable,” Blinov said. “We’ll perform these programs twice in a row, and we both know in advance that it’s going to be two completely different performances because there is an energy exchange between people on stage and people in the house, and people in the house contribute equally to the energy of the performance.”
“The rooms are different. The time of day is different; Gettysburg happens to be in the afternoon and then here it’ll be in the evening,” Fahenstock added. “That’s a lot [that’s] different.”
“It depends on anything. It depends on the weather; it depends on what you had for breakfast,” Blinov said.
“It’s quite unpredictable. That’s why live music is really exciting and fun to do,” Fahnestock said.
“We’d like to invite everybody from the campus community and the neighborhood to come hear live music anytime,” Fahnestock continued.
“It doesn’t have to be classical music, just live music. We tend to spend so much time with our music on our phones or iPods or through the computer that it becomes aural wallpaper. Live music is so special that it should be enjoyed that way,” he added.
