On the eve of the concert, we interviewed Fyodor, and he told us about the new album, his past projects and plans for the future. We also talked about music as a universal language, the approach to the study of which varies so much around the world, about Black Sea parks, Rachmaninoff and the Lebanese musical diary. Read more about all this in our interview, and we’ve left a link for you to buy tickets at the end.

Fyodor, could you tell us about the history of creation of the album “Old Photographs“?

After my grandfather, the sculptor, Honored Artist of the RSFSR Vitaly Zaykov passed away in March 2020, during a lockdown while going through his archives in the studio, I came across a collection of old photographs and unknown drawings made by him. I selected a few of my grandfather’s photographs and graphic works that struck me deeply, and tried to hear what the people in those pictures, people who are no longer with us, might have told us. That’s how this album got started. This is a very personal album, a look into the past through the eyes of an artist, through the eyes of someone infinitely dear to me. Each composition in this album is dedicated to a different event in the life of my grandfather Vitaly Zaykov.

What events from your grandfather’s life are depicted in “Old Photographs“?

My grandfather actually had a very extensive biography. He passed away at the age of 95, of which 70 years he spent serving the arts. Vitaly Semyonovich was born and grew up in the Ural Mountains, where he later created its symbol, the legendary monument “Tale of the Ural” in Chelyabinsk, fought in the Second World War, and then worked with Evgeny Vuchetich on the monument “The Motherland Calls!” on Mamaev Kurgan in Volgograd. Among his many works is the portrait in bronze of Jawaharlal Nehru, created in a personal meeting with the Prime Minister of India and Nikina Khrushchev in 1955, a gift to the Republic of India from the Soviet Union. In Evpatoria, where I was born and grew up, there are monuments of my grandfather on almost every street. It is a very vivid story for me because I helped him knead clay for many of them when I was younger.  In this album, I use the language of music for addressing all of this stories.

This is fascinating! Have other members of your family influenced your desire to study music?

Yes, my mother and grandmother are professional musicians. From an early age I loved watching my mother play the piano, I always went up to the instrument to pick up a tune and play with her. Then, in music school, I sang in my grandmother’s ensemble. Around the same time, I started composing music and taking part in various composition and piano competitions.

Despite attending music school and winning numerous music competitions, at university you decided to study landscape architecture. Can you tell us what happened?

My grandfather’s workshop has always been a center of attraction for many people of science and art, and he was often visited by architects, including landscape architects. I should mention that I graduated from school when I was 15, and at the time I was self-seeking, and I wanted to try myself in a new matter. A little later, I got a small firm, and we revived some parks on the southern coast of Crimea. Since I felt like I had overstudied at the time, I made the decision to take a break from music. Besides that, the form of study that the post-Soviet school offered, that path of the “classical pianist” didn’t quite fit my expectations because there was a lot of pressure and conservatism. I returned to music after a while on my own, started composing pieces for strings and piano, learned to play the guitar, played small concerts for friends, and then I saw the announcement of the international Rachmaninoff competition, held in Simferopol, and since my repertoire included many of his pieces, I decided to try playing, primarily because I loved the music of his. After winning a contest, I bypassed the music college and went straight to the conservatory on the rector’s invitation. I still wanted to try to follow that path, but my real happiness and discovery came from studying for a master’s degree at the Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona many years later.

How do contemporary post-Soviet and European schools differ?

The post-Soviet school often adheres to the “reach for heaven or die” ethos, which is characterized by its elitism, lack of freedom, and harsh attitude of the elderly towards the younger. European conservatories allow more freedom and encourage interpretation, for them it’s more about why rather than how. When I got a scholarship to study composition at the master’s program at the Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona, my professor Benjamin Davies said: “Our job is to give you the tools to write a wide variety of music while maintaining and strengthening your individuality. Write any kind of music you want, but you have to do it professionally”.

That’s great! In addition to your musical education, you have many interesting, individual and collaborative projects. You were involved in the production of “The Queen of Spades”, the world’s first classical opera in an immersive format. Can you tell us more about that?

It was a very unique, complex project that took over two years to prepare. I worked as a composer and sound producer, I designed the new introduction and transition scenes between the acts using electronics. The aim of director Alexander Legchakov was to create a new, modern reading of the opera, using various scenic, lighting and plot solutions. For example, the audience became an integral part of the narrative, which was set in many halls of the Goncharov-Phillipov estate. More than 100 artists took part in the project, including the Gnesin Academy of Music Orchestra and the soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Fyodor, are you considering writing music for films?

Yes, I have experience with a number of short films, and I’ve just begun to write for a full-length feature. Last spring, I worked on the music for the short film “Sweetheart Friend” directed by Dmitriy Kravitsky, one of the main roles in which was played by Aliona Khmelnitskaya. I also wrote the music for the short film “Necios” (“Fools”) directed by Junda Chen. The film was included in the official Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions and Pinewood Studios 2022 in the UK. Last autumn we went on a musical expedition to Beirut with the Swiss director Alexandre Strehli, where I started working on the music for a full-length feature in which the life story of a Syrian refugee is encountered.

Great, looking forward to the release of the new film! Is your fifth album “Middle East Diary” inspired by your journey to Beirut?

Yes, it’s an album born as a result of my musical expedition to Lebanon last autumn, an expedition to a country with an ancient history, with an inconceivable mix of cultures, languages and religions. By studying local folklore and Arabic harmonies and working with local musicians who played in traditional Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian instruments, my aim was to create compositions that would present the East to the listener in different ways: as a magical fairytale, as a paradise garden, but also as a place of acute religious, political and social controversy. I wanted to portray how I was drawn to and felt a connection to the East, which comes from my Crimean roots and my fascination with Crimean Tatar culture; I tried to touch the Lebanese life hidden from the eyes of outsiders, to understand and reflect on it.

Have you presented this album for the public yet?

Not yet, although I will play a few songs from the record at shows in London and Dubai in May. They will be available in piano solo and piano trio versions, but I’m also considering putting together a programme with musicians from the Arabic countries.

We are looking forward to it! Fyodor, can you tell us whether to expect any new projects from you in the near future?

Soon, my new album “Portraits of Cities” will be released. Over 50 artists from diverse musical traditions from across the world helped me create it, and I learnt a lot from them. I’m not going to spill all the cards just yet. Simply said, every city has an own character and tone, and my objective was to convey an image of a city in musical form.

We anticipate that your inspiration for a solo record will come from London. At your concert on May 5th there will be compositions dedicated to Rachmaninov. Is that a separate album?

We want to record that program as a separate mini-album. The appeal to the works of Sergei Rachmaninoff stems from my great love for his compositions, the roots of that love can be traced back to my early childhood. Last year I felt that his emigration history has many parallels with the Russian emigration of today. In working on the Variations, I sought to express the pain felt by someone who has lost their homeland, but at the same time it was important to me that the album should end with a hopeful composition – hence the reference to the Prelude in G Major, a transcription of which I called: “A New Home, a New Hope”.  The Variations will be performed by a piano trio (Gosia Kuznicki – violin, Ekaterina Solomennik – cello) and soprano Aleksandra Kenenova. Letters by Rachmaninoff and contemporaries will be read by my friend, the wonderful actor Nikolay Mulakov. Through the thematic material of several preludes and romances, through the texts of letters from Sergei Rachmaninoff and contemporaries who recently left the country, Variations traces the historical parallels between the tragedies of the two waves of emigration associated with the loss of homeland and meanings.

At the present, emigration is a particularly heated subject. How do you feel being away from home?

After a difficult year of pain and loss, everyone is probably in the process of reinventing themselves. As someone who has had the good fortune to live in many locations over the past five years, travel extensively, and learn about the cultures, traditions, and music of other nations, I can say that I consider myself a citizen of the globe, and my home is the entire planet. I speak five languages, but the sixth is the universal one – it is the language of music, which I believe provides a unique opportunity to rise above borders, above religions and nationalities, above political and social contradictions, above all dead systems – above everything that divides us.

Tickets for the Fyodor Biryuchev concert on 5 May.