New homes for the clash of old and new in the arts
Even in the grimmest of Soviet times, Moscow did not lack world-class concert halls and theaters -- the Bolshoi, the Conservatory, the Tchaikovsky. Now, in a new Russia and a new Moscow, a new hall has arrived with aspirations to join the city's elite venues.
The Moscow International Performance Arts Center, beside the Moscow River, opens its first full season on Sept. 27 with a musical tribute to Yevgeny Svetlanov, the pianist, composer and conductor who died last year.
The center, on the Kosmodamianskaya Embankment off the Garden Ring Road, is part of a business and hotel complex called Riverside Towers, and the building itself is a symbol of Moscow's dazzling, often dizzying rebirth. A sleekly modernistic glass-and-steel cylinder, it has been compared to a spaceship and a kettle; it might be mistaken for a basketball arena were it not for the giant treble clef that crowns it. Inside are three separate halls -- the Great Hall, with 1,735 seats, a smaller Chamber Hall and a multiuse theater.
The Great Hall's blithe, modernist interior is faced entirely in Siberian larch, a blond wood considered one of the best for acoustics. The effect is stunning. By next year, the center plans to install the country's largest organ. The City of Moscow, which built the center, envisions it as the city's equivalent of Lincoln Center.
The president and musical director is Vladimir Spivakov, the violinist and conductor, whose chamber orchestra, the Moscow Virtuosi, has made the center its new home. Mr. Spivakov, whose contract with the Russian National Orchestra ended in acrimony last year, will also lead a new, rival orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia.
The season's schedule, still a work in progress, ranges from Stravinsky and Gershwin to Liszt and Mendelssohn to a weeklong festival of Mozart beginning Nov. 14. Tickets, which range from less than $3 to nearly $100, at the rate of 30 rubles to the dollar, can be ordered at (7-095) 730-4350, fax (7-095) 730-4355, www.mmdm.ru.
The center, like all of Russia, is not immune from the clash of old and new. On Nov. 7, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, still observed as the Day of Reconciliation and Accord, the center plans a concert called ''Hammer and Sickle,'' featuring, among others, the ''Song of Stalin'' by the Soviet-era composer Isaak Dunayevsky.
When it comes to dining, however, there is little nostalgia for the Soviet past. It seems nearly impossible now to imagine that there was a time without sushi bars, chic coffeehouses and glittering upscale restaurants.
Typical of the newest, Noa is an Italian restaurant on three floors at 7 Protochny Pereulok, (7-095) 244-0777, not far from New Arbat Street. A large metal grille that covers the exterior opens in the evening; the interior is modish, warmly drenched in red and black. The menu focuses on seafood, and the prices are staggering, with main courses exceeding $40.
The taste for international cross-fertilization extends to museums. Until Nov. 23, the New Tretyakov Gallery, opposite Gorky Park, is showing an exhibition on Cubism organized with the Sprengel Museum of Hanover, Germany, where it appeared earlier. Assembling 130 Cubist and Cubist-influenced works from Western Europe and Russia, it underscores the overlapping influences of early 20th-century art before the Revolution sent Russia on an altogether different course.
Tickets cost roughly $7.50. The gallery is open daily except Monday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Information: (7-095) 238-1378 or (7-095) 238-2054.
Photo: An Army band in front of the new Moscow International Performance Arts Center. (Photo by Sergei Kivrin for The New York Times)
