But it signals much more than that. The fact is that good Russian music is being played more and more in concert halls and on the classical music radio stations all over the country. I love it. Even if I was raised on the desert near El Paso, Texas,  I loved Russian music from an early age. Rimsky-Korsakov of course (our kids were raised on “Peter and the Wolf.”) As I write this, Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges,” is being played on our great classical music station here, KUSC. There is so much to enjoy: Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky – the list goes on and on. So many greats. Such romance, such stories in song and melody. I lived in Russia for six years and what a treat in the evenings.

 So fireworks may end the summer outdoor concerts, the stirring and romantic music from the great Russian composers is heard all over all the time. A KUSC announcer once said, “Russian music, like Russian literature, is always excited about something.” Maybe that is why we like it so much. Nothing boring there.

You can find me at www.en.rian.ru. Go to “Features and Opinions” then “Columnists.” Read the others, too.

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I was invited to a concert of Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic Sunday.  Actually it was a film special wide screen concert , and it was fantastic.

It was an incredible performance – Tchaikovsky’s three Overture-Fantasies inspired by Shakespeare plays – Hamlet, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet. Interspersed between these wonderful symphonic poems readings from the Bard’s immortal works. See http://www.laphil.com/laphillive/. There were tears.

The music was perfect. Dudamel was great and not as expressive as the photos often show him. He is so natural and not a egocentric maestro. It is clear the orchestra loves him. The music was as it was one instrument. His interpretation is deep and so clear. The camera work was so revealing. It is an amazement to me how each one of the players and their instrument was as a complete instrument for expression. The whole thing was the best example I have seen of absolute oneness of perfect performing art.

And that this is going about the US and Canada is so good for the arts. And Gustavo’s dedication to youth is so needed. He is only 28 years old, but so connected the great history of music to today’s audience. In this fragmented world, to know that the young indeed can get into the beauty and discipline of good music for an hour or two, is a great service to mankind. Dudamel will make a big impact in the world of music.

Please check locally where the next one – June 5 (Brahms) may be in a theater near you in America and Canada. Check the web site with a trailer at http://www.laphil.com/laphillive/toolkit.cfmI  highly recommend it. An unforgettable experience.

When asked by a Westerner why I came to Russia, I give an MBA sort of answer, all about opportunity and growth, with statistics, etc., and of course that is right. When I am asked by a Russian why I came to Russia, I generally answer, “I like the music!” He nods, smiles, and says, “I understand.” Economic opportunity, sense of adventure, this is what the American wants to hear. But, the Russian understands other reasons. Really, it was the music.

I was unconscious of this until asked this question once by a Russian colleague, and I remembered my sister. The earliest music I remember was Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” Winnifred was a Russophile when, in the university it was popular to get caught up in the utopian notions of our ally, the Soviet Union.

By the time I was fourteen, I had collected, on scratchy vinyl 78’s, Prince Igor, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies 4, 5, and 6, Rachmaninoff’s 2^nd and 3^rd Piano Concertos, and Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia. Almost all of my tiny salary from working part-time in a department store went for recordings of Russian music.

They say Russian music, like Russian literature, is always excited about something. Why is it then that almost all Russian music, even Shostakovich, is written in a minor key? Mozart wrote over six hundred pieces of music and eighty percent are in a major key. What is the difference? Russia is a melancholy land.

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This weekend will be the season opening of Orange County’s  Pacific Symphony Orchestra, considered one of the top regional orchestra’s in the country. On the program is Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, Jon Kimura Parker, soloist. Tchaikovsky was a genius and his music is immortal. A radio announcer said that “Russian music, like Russian literature, is always excited about something.”  That is true and Tchaikovsky’s music is often excited, but also it can be romantic and sweet. For all the excitement, he is also known for his love of the waltz tempo in his symphony and ballet music.

My photo above is of his desk in his home in Klin, north of Moscow. I visited once there and it was an experience. At this desk in 1893, he left the unfinished composition of his Third Piano Concerto, to go to Saint Petersburg to conduct the premier of his famous Sixth Symphony, It was a flop. Depressed about this, and some other things, he died a few days later from cholera, the records show. What a loss, but he was at his peak, and we have it all to enjoy today. Such a great man.

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What magic a photo is! It captures a scene, a sight, an expression, a moment in time and we keep it in some way to revisit, to explain, to maybe prove something. In this case it is the desk of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at his last home in Klin, north of Moscow. At that desk the composer wrote his last notes of music, the unfinished Third Piano Concerto, then left on the midnight train to Saint Petersburg to conduct his last, the Sixth Symphony, and to die. He left us on November 6, 1893 (new calendar).  But we have him with us forever, immortal.

In my world travels over the years, I usually had a camera. but I remember so well the shots I missed–either no camera or no opportunity. Out the car window on a Malaysian country road, dodging the bicycles, was this sight of a worn square brown building with six windows, the whole building side a faded scene which was once a Coca-Cola ad.  And out of the top left window, some thrity feet above the rocky ground, dangled the bare legs of a boy. He looked natural there, unconcerned, in a little escape from the heat of the room beyond him. And we drove on. Pictures in the camera of the mind last just as long, maybe longer 

See the photos on this web site, a few of the thousands I have taken around the globe. Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

It is hard to explain why I like classical ballet so much. I was introduced to it as a teenager, when my mother took me to watch The Ballet Russe as they stopped in dusty El Paso, Texas on their way to more cultured cities. I don’t remember the program, probably Swan Lake. But I loved it for some reason and thus always have. It is, to me, the natural coming together of music and human expression. Martha Graham said it well, “Dance is the loftiest, most moving, most beautiful of the arts, because it is not a mere translation or abstraction of life; it is life itself!”

It is not only the Russian ballet but also the music of American Aaron Copland and his great folk ballet scores, “Rodeo.” “Billy the Kid,” “Appalachian Spring” and others with the choreography of Agnes DeMille and Martha Graham. I love those stories and dance art.

But it is Russia where ballet reached it height as a performance art. In my opinion, it remains there. With the dedication and determination so typical in Russia, they took the dance from France and made it their own. Today still the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, known during Soviet times as the Kirov, is, for me, the world standard in classical ballet. My favorite ballet is “Romeo and Juliet” by Prokofiev. Their dancers, including the Corps de Ballet, are the best. My favorite dancer is Ulyana Lopatkina who as Odette/Odile in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake cannot be matched. She is The Swan.

I have been fortunate to see the Mariinsky (Kirov) in St. Petersburg many times, and in Moscow, London, the US. The ballet is another one of those art forms in which Russia has simply excelled. The immortal Anna Pavlova said it best, “No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.” And the Russians work very hard at it. That is why they are the best.