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Anton Batagov SAMSARA OCEAN
Prelude in C minor, BWV 999 [Bach, between 1717 and 1723] _____
Recorded at Forte Piano Recital Hall, Paramus NJ Special thanks to: Carina Abramyan, Tatyana Kozynets ________________________
I recorded this album in August 2022. I have never mixed music written by me and classical music in one album before. Now I decided to do so. In one way or another, I've always been both a "performer" and a "composer". My “interpretations” of the classics have always sounded, shall we say, weird (compared to how it is “supposed” to be played), and my own stuff has always had echoes of my performing experience. But now every sound has to make its way through the impossibility of speaking the language of music and speaking at all. Everything that seemed important and meaningful became meaningless. And it's impossible to continue making art as if “everything is normal”. The itinerary of the album includes some of the famous classical pieces and some of my own compositions. It goes through my entire life – from the time when my mother put me on her lap facing the keyboard, placed my hands on top of hers and played these Bach's Preludes for me (that's how I "got into music") – to the present moment. From Music for December (1993) to Chaconne in A minor (2021). From Schubert's F minor Moment Musical to my solo piano transcription of Tchaikovsky's very last song (Alone Again, As Before). This album's eleven tracks are like scattered pages discarded on the shore of Samsara ocean and fallen into someone's hands. An attempt to understand the connection between them, how and why it all happened, and what will happen now. If anyone survives on this planet at all, I am not sure that there will be a desire and an opportunity to listen to music. But just in case, let this album exist. _____
Rock-n-rOlga I wrote this piece in 2021 for pianist and composer Olga Ivanova. She wanted to make a concert/album program consisting of nocturnes by different authors, and asked her colleagues to write nocturnes for her. As you know, 19th century nocturnes are a kind of "landscapes": lyrical, sometimes tragic, and, as a rule, with a beautiful melody. The 20th century brought new colors. The 21st century combined everything and removed all the quotation marks placed by postmodernists. I suggested that a beautiful and successful young lady who composes "academic" music and performs piano recitals might want to go to a night club to listen to something quite different, and dance. So I wrote a piece called Rock-n-rOlga. It's a nocturne. Sort of.
Breathing In Breathing Out: E minor This composition written in 2005 is the main tune of the movie Breathing In Breathing Out directed by Ivan Dykhovichny. In the original soundtrack there were two versions of this piece – the "loud" one and the "quiet" one. Recently I made a new revision of the quiet version and recorded it for this album.
Chaconne in A Minor Written in 2021, commissioned by a New York festival Bang on a Can . A chaconne is not a title but a form: a simple chord sequence followed by numerous variations. All sorts of textures, melodies, and other things are built on the basis of those chords. It was one of the most common forms in baroque times. For a "minimalist", a chaconne is something really native because these are the principles that "minimalist" compositional methods are based upon.
Samsara Ocean This piece was written in 2006 as an opening track for the album Daily Practice, conceived and recorded in collaboration with Lama Sonam Dorje (Lama Oleg). Samsara is traditionally referred to as an ocean of grief, an ocean of sorrow, an ocean of tears. In 2022, I made a solo piano version of Samsara Ocean.
Music for December This composition was written in December 1993 (hence the title) for sampling keyboards. A few days later I met a film director Ivan Dykhovichny. He was looking for a composer for a new movie. We met, he listened to this piece, and said: "This will be the music for the movie". And it turned out that the title of the music became the title of the movie. Ivan and I were friends and collaborators for 16 years, until his death. In 2022 I made a solo piano version of Music for December.
I am not going to write anything about the classical compositions included in this album. I doubt they need my words.
AB
________________________ (c) Melodia 2024 ________________________ Album release date: December 13 ________________________ Concerts: November 24 - Harrison NY December 9 - Berlin December 10 - Prague December 14 - Moscow December 15 - St.Petersburg ________________________
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