Last Saturday, a concert of participants of the Moscow Festival “Musica Integral” was held in the JINR Cultural Centre “Mir”. It is the fourth year when the Festival is organized by the Association of student clubs of classical music that unites students of conservatories and musical universities and students studying at other, non-musical departments but having a musical education. A laureate of international contests, Honorary Artist of the Russian Federation, a pianist Ekaterina Mechetina presented her colleagues to the Dubna audience.

A Russian-American quartet on the stage

“I had talks with the Directorate of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in February at the presentation of the new grand piano of the Cultural Centre,” Ekaterina started her speech with a prehistory. “We discussed various issues, and I told them about the Association of Student Musical Club. The Association includes not only musicians but also people who have chosen other professions. Everything started four years ago at the contest named after Tchaikovsky when a cello player and a physicist Boris Zhilinsky told me about the concept of the Association. It interested me a lot, and we promoted this idea to the president who supported us. We managed to register the Association as a non-commercial organization. Since then, we have been holding the musical Festival with the final gala-concert in the Big Concert Hall of the Conservatory for three years. Yesterday, participants of the Festival performed with the Big Symphony Orchestra.

Professional musicians, professors of conservatories, soloists, and laureates join our movement. They organize workshops to participants of the Association, spend their time for our idea to thrive. It is a great pleasure for me that we are giving a concert in Dubna today. The Association unites students of not only Moscow but Ekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk universities. A separate festival is held in the Novosibirsk Academic Town.”

As Boris Zhilinsky added, “nothing would have happened without Ekaterina Vasilievna who helped to establish the Association, invited famous musicians. It is a cherished dream of students of other professions to perform with her. We are glad to perform in Dubna, the mecca of physicists, and we hope that it will be a great tradition.”

FLNP staff member Olga Ivanshina performs

Boris opened the concert with the ensemble that performed “The Trio Pathétique” by M. I. Glinka. As Ekaterina told us, all participants of the trio are now passing their military service, and Boris even participated in the recent parade at the Red Square as a member of the orchestra. Works by medieval and modern Western composers as well as author works were performed at the concert: an oboe player Tim Melnikov performed two his own piano pieces of music, and a student of the MSU Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies Madlen Stiskal (USA) jointly with colleagues played her piece of music for the ensemble of string and wind instruments. The audience was surprised to see the participation in the concert of an FLNP staff member Olga Ivanshina who performed a famous Prelude in C-sharp minor by S. V. Rachmaninoff. At the end of the concert, all participants performed the Rhapsody in Blue by D. Gershvin with a brilliant piano solo by Ekaterina Mechetina. In the farewell sayings, Ekaterina expressed hope that Dubna would firmly stick to the Festival’s geography.

Final chord of the concert: emotional performance of the Gershvin’s masterpiece by Ekaterina Mechetina accompanied by the orchestra of the Festival’s participants

Olga Tarantina, JINR Weekly Newspaper
Photos by the author