А. Reshetnik
Integrity as a feature of A. Kamensky’s work in the context of piano culture
The concept of piano culture appears in many studies and publications, however, the presentation of Soviet piano culture in a comprehensive manner requires analysis. Hence, the topic of the article is considered relevant. The material for analysis comes from various publications devoted to the problems of Soviet pianism, in the center of which stands the outstanding figure of the A. Kamensky. The article notes that the universalism of the piano allowed this instrument to form a semantic artistic field around it, in which communication with the listener took place. In this semantic field, specific tasks were set for the virtuoso performer. Pianocentrism, characteristic of musical thinking at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, which assumed this particular instrument as the basis for the popularization and dissemination of music, gave the pianist a new role as popularizer and educator. Within this framework of ideas about a virtuoso pianist, performer and composer roles were closely related. The universal approach to the piano, which became widespread in Soviet piano culture, was reinforced in the first half of the twentieth century by new trends in education, the goal of which was to create a new image of the Soviet performer. The focus of the study is the analysis of the phenomenon of “integral” pianism, characteristic of the piano culture of the first half of the twentieth century, which became a distinctive feature of A. Kamensky’s performance. The main goal of the author is to reveal integrity as a fundamental property of pianism, as well as to identify the main trajectories of interaction between concert performance, composition and pedagogical activity of A. Kamensky. The article emphasizes that A. Kamensky created many piano transcriptions. In particular, it is noted that B. Asafiev highly appreciated his transcription of “The Rite of Spring” by I. Stravinsky. The result of the analysis is the final thesis about the integrity of Kamensky’s work, that combines education, composition, pedagogy and pianism.
Key words
A. D. Kamensky, piano performance, Soviet pianism, integrity as a creative phenomenon, communicative model of pianism.
For citation
Reshetnik А. Integrity as a feature of A. Kamensky’s work in the context of piano culture // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 130-139.