About Perestrojka

In March, we will broadcast the last programme in the series
Perestrojka. This series has been made by Arthur Olof, who is
also a director at the Concertzender. We talked to him about
his love of Russian music.

“My special interest in Russia began during secondary school.

Initially with Russian literature and history. I wrote a report about the Russian Revolution for history and read all the plays by Tsjechov and the novels by Toergenjev, Poesjkin en Gogolj. Later on I also read the novels by Tolstoj and Dostojevski.
After leaving school I studied Slavic languages in Leiden, that was in 1976, the
time when Karel van het Reve was a professor there. Unfortunately, I did not graduate because I failed Old Church Slavonic, but that had more to do with my personal situation. However, one of my best friends at that time was a music student who introduced me to the music of Sjostakovisj, and that was the start
of a love that has continued to this day.

Russian music is also the theme of ‘Earwitness’, my other series for the Concertzender.

‘Perestrojka’ is a programme that concerns music that was produced during the period of the reconstruction (perestrojka) and subsequent collapse (destrojka) of the communist system
in Eastern Europe. I also make ‘Earwitness’, 'Everything in memory of you', a series about Russian music in the 20th century, with the life and work of Sjostakovitsj as the common thread. The Earwitness series began in April 2009 and there have been more than seventy programmes to date. It will continue until programme number 100, which will be broadcast in October 2016 according to the current planning.
During the previous jubilee of the Concertzender in November 2008, I talked in
an interview about the study of Sjostakovitsj that I had done together with Gusta Korteweg. As soon as the interview was over, I was asked by Kees van der Wiel,
the coordinator of New Music, if I would like to produce a series about Sjostakovitsj. That was the beginning of Earwitness.

The second programme in the Perestrojka series best illustrates the potential
of the series.

My starting point was a CD box-set about the Third International Music Festival
‘for humanism, peace and friendship between the people’ that took place in May 1988 in Leningrad. There were many new discoveries for me there, such as Wolf-
gang Rihms ‘Wölfli Liedbuch’, truly terrifying, and 'The Forest' by Siegfried Matthus, but in later programmes also wonderful music from the Baltic republics, Central-
Asia (Sjachidi) and from the Caucusus and Armenia. I have already written about Georgia in an earlier newsletter, in particular about Giya Kancheli's good friend Nodar Gabunia.
In fact, you should listen to all the programmes, something that is unfortunately
not possible on my PC ... the on demand function always stops somewhere in the middle of a programme.”

Programme 2 can be heard here.