Winterfest
Picks
Trio
Voronezh: young Russian master musicians storm Amerika
Stroganoff: The
Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family
Portland
Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-2811
Feb. 19-May 31, $6-$13
It must have been hard for John Buchanan, director of the
Portland Art Museum, to believe the woman he met at a Paris
dinner party back in 1996 was truly a Russian princess. It
must have sounded a little like the story of Anna Anderson,
who spent a lifetime trying to convince people she was the
youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas Romanov.
But Baroness Hélène de Ludinghausen's identity
was no historical mystery. The heir to a vast collection
of paintings, furniture and various objets d'art,
she had an earnest proposition for Buchanan. She wanted
to showcase the dispersed collection of her ancestors, the
Stroganoff family. After a glamorous life abroad working
for some of the top names in the fashion industry, including
Yves Saint Laurent, the baroness had turned her attention
to her ancestral homeland.
Buchanan agreed to do the exhibition. It took years of
research and parleying with museum authorities in Russia,
but Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian
Noble Family is finally here.
The Portland Art Museum is using Stroganoff, one
of the biggest shows ever curated in-house, to unveil the
last phase of Project for the Millennium. The timing
is serendipitous because Stroganoff is not so much
about an era or a style but about taste and who shapes it.
In much the same way as private donors in Portland are funding
the museum expansion, the Stroganoffs, through their acquisitions,
helped to shape cultural tastes in their day.
A powerful noble family since the 15th century, the Stroganoffs
turned the salt, fur and ore trades of Siberia into a wealthy
patrimony. The family's legacy includes the Stroganoff Palace
in St. Petersburg, a huge collection of Old Master paintings
and the work of some of the greatest craftsmen in Europe.
When the Bolsheviks claimed the holdings as state property
after the October Revolution, the palace became an arm of
the Hermitage, or state museum, and until recently housed
bureaucratic and military offices. Today the Hermitage is
under restoration, but it's comically underfunded and dependent
on the dedication of private organizations like the Stroganoff
Foundation, founded in 1992 by the baroness.
The family's greatest arbiter of taste was Count Alexander
Sergeievich Stroganoff (1733-1811). Alexander, a close friend
and advisor to Catherine the Great, lived many years in
western Europe soaking up classical and Parisian culture.
As a result, he brought home to Russia some of the finest
examples of European art.
In the meantime, Alexander served as president of the Academy
of Arts and lent huge amounts of support to Russian artists.
Through both the Academy and numerous architectural commissions,
Alexander shaped a Russian art influenced by current European
models. He also groomed Andrei Voronikhin, one of Russia's
premier neoclassical designers and probably Alexander's
illegitimate son, to be an architect and designer. Voronikhin
redesigned parts of the Palace, and his architectural drawings,
furniture and paintings make up a large portion of the exhibition
at PAM. A prime example of Voronikhin's neoclassical bent
is his design for the Malachite Coupe (pictured).
This three-legged marvel of gilt bronze and green malachite
is the kind of ornate object that one associates with the
opulence of the era. Each leg of the tripod begins with
a hoof that rises gracefully to the torso of an angel whose
wings support a stone bowl.
The coupe helps form a picture not only of the taste of
the Stroganoffs, but of the difficulties of mounting such
an exhibition. The fragile piece was one of the last to
be approved for shipping to the U.S. The museums wrangled
back and forth. The Hermitage at one point offered a copy.
The baroness and local curators were adamant about having
the original. As a centerpiece in Alexander's picture gallery,
the coupe is the chosen symbol of the museum's exhibition.
Without it, the show would be hollow. In the end, the museum
got its symbol.
High culture has always been supported by--indeed, defined
by--wealthy patrons, and the opulence of the Malachite
Coupe represents the taste of an elite. The Stroganoffs'
works of noblesse oblige spanned more time and more
genres than the those of the Medicis; they built churches,
commissioned buildings, supported artists and opened their
painting gallery to the public.
Without wealthy patronage, we wouldn't have museum expansions,
traveling exhibits or public art. But even wealth is subject
to the tremors of social upheaval, as both the French and
Russian revolutions show us. Whatever the baroness preserves
through this show and her foundation will restore to Russia
an important piece of its history.
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With just six strings and a bunch of
buttons, young Russian master musicians Trio Voronezh
storm Amerika.
BY
BILL SMITH
243-2122 EXT 310
|
Trio Voronezh
plays the Stroganoff Gala Opening
Portland Art Museum, Whitsell Auditorium, 725-3307. 6:30 pm
Tuesday, Feb. 22. Champagne, caviar, reception and private
viewing of the Stroganoff exhibition. $100. Second concert
8 pm Wednesday, Feb. 23. $13.50-$26.
Trio Voronezh's
self-titled CD is available on Angel Records.
Even though they come to Portland all the way from Russia,
Trio Voronezh is hardly unfamiliar to local classical fiends.
The group first stormed our shores in 1996, hitting the Oregon
Bach Festival and turning it on its ear. Now the young bucks
are back to help kick off the Portland Art Museum's Stroganoff
exhibit.
The trio combines the oscillating interplay of Vladimir
Volochin's three-stringed, mandolinlike domra and Valerie
Petruchin's monstrous bass balalaika with the harmonic atmospherics
of Sergei Teleshev's bajan (or chromatic-button accordion).
The result is a beautiful noise of furious virtuosity and
humor.
At the Bach-fest, the artists formerly known as Soviets
showed revolutionary style. From the Baroque interplay of
Vivaldi and Bach to challenging modern fare by the group's
countrymen Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Shnitke, the three
silenced those detractors who turn their noses up at the
thought of folkloric fancy in the house of Bach.
If that were all they did, it would be enough to impress.
However, the group's uniqueness--and why it gets the post-modern
stamp of approval--lies in its mixing of any music that
floats the three members' improvisational boat. "We've always
chosen from all kinds of music," says 26-year-old balalaika
player Petruchin. So after a straight reading of Vivaldi
(if you call transcribing the Italian master's Concerto
in G major for domra, balalaika and bajan playing it straight)
they'll launch into a tango by Astor Piazzolla or a free-form
Gershwin medley or a raucous Russian folk dance by Volochin's
domra mentor, the contemporary Russian folk composer Zigankov.
Petruchin, his long hair falling past his shoulders, asserts
that the band plays with as much fire and intensity as a
rock-and-roll band.
Petruchin and Teleshev met 15 years ago in the working-class
Russian city of Voronezh ("vo-RO-nesh") while in music school
and hooked up with Volochin when the latter won the 1988
All Russia Domra Competition. Petruchin, who originally
played accordion himself, switched to the bass balalaika,
and the trio began traveling through Europe and busking
on city streets. A tape made by a friend while playing in
the Frankfurt subway was sent to the Oregon Bach Festival
and duly impressed festival founder Helmuth Rilling. The
trio has appeared there in each of the past three festivals.
The Eugene exposure led to a stint on Garrison Keillor's
Prairie Home Companion and, finally, to a three-disc
deal with EMI Angel. The first disc, which also includes
an Argentine tango and pieces by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn,
was released this past year to great acclaim.
Trio Voronezh is still far from being a household name.
But the three ambitious Russians are working on it. "We
don't know of another trio playing both Russian folk and
classical," says Petruchin. "In fact," he adds, "we don't
know of another trio in Russia at all. They're all quartets."
WINTERFEST PICKS
SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY
Vladimir Mayakovsky's feral face,
captured in a 1924 print by Alexander Rodchenko, presides
over this premium selection of shots from the heady, horrible
period of Soviet fluorescence between 1930 and '60. Even
as Stalin murdered millions, the Soviet Union transformed
itself from a backwards feudal state to an industrialized
dynamo, and that fluxing energy radiates from the gorgeous
black-and-whites of Rodchenko, Yevgheny Khaldai, El Lissitzky
and others. It's not the whole story--or anything close--but
a country's self-made image can be just as instructive as
the skeletons heaped in its closet. This is a remarkably
energetic exhibit, and you should go. Simple. (Zach Dundas)
S K Josefsburg, 403 NW 11th Ave., 241-9112. Ends Feb.
26.
AFTERNOON OF RUSSIAN CHESS
To paraphrase PJ O'Rourke:
If the Russians are smart enough to make chess a national
sport, how come the country's so messed up? Chalk it up
to a national affinity for paradox. In fact, Russia and
her old Soviet sisters have produced the lion's share of
20th-century world champions. Maybe the naturally introspective
and passionate peoples of the late Red empire feel like
the conspiracy-ridden drama of their existence plays out
in the 64 squares' violence, calculation and improvisational
daring. Whatever. For certain, though, chess is more than
a game in the Motherland. Check (no pun intended) out this
gathering to discover whether the next Kasparov is hiding
somewhere in the Pac Northwest. (ZD)
Whitsell Auditorium and Sunken Ballroom at the Portland
Art Museum
1219 SW Park Ave. 1-5 pm Saturday, April 15.
Call Oregon Council for the Humanities, 241-0543 or 227-2583,
Literary Arts, for tickets.
ICE HOCKEY: KHABAROVSK VS. PORTLAND JUNIOR WINTERHAWKS
In
an oft-frozen land, hockey is surpassed only by soccer in
sporting popularity. Russia's talent pool is so deep that
the country stocks half the NHL, layers of North American
minor leagues, its own tough national circuit and the putative
Olympic teams of theoretically de-Russified states like
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Junior Winterhawks may not
know what hit them after this collision with young skaters
from our Russian sister city. Then again, remember Lake
Placid! (ZD)
Tournament runs Feb. 18-21.
Valley Ice Arena, 9250 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, 297-2521.
Call arena for ticket prices and game times.
GOGALLERY
When I met Luba Gonina at her tiny gallery
in Old Town, she began our meeting in the Russian style--with
a shot of vodka. Many deals went badly for the Americans
when they first started doing business in the former Soviet
Union for this very reason. Americans' capacity for vodka,
Luba explained, is no match for the Russians'. Indeed, I
would have given away the family farm halfway through my
next drink. Fortunately I was only there to talk about art.
Visit Luba's charmingly cramped gallery and let her sell
you a painting--or a bridge. (Michaela Lowthian)
GoGallery, "Reflections of Russian Classical Culture"
by Nina Mikhailenko,
328 NW Broadway, No. 117, 294-1903. Ends March 3.
A group show of Russian-American painters follows in March
and April.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 16,
2000
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