The first major concert of 2026 at Dom Radio will be an evening dedicated to the music of Alexey Retinsky, the first composer-in-residence of musicAeterna. Since 2020, he has been a constant presence in the life of the musicAeterna ensembles and the Dom Radio cultural center. Retinsky has composed major symphonic scores commissioned by the orchestra, created music for performances featuring the musicAeterna Dance troupe, and participated in collaborative special projects dedicated to Charles Baudelaire, Kurt Weill, and others. He has also provided soundtracks for silent films, staged electroacoustic performances, initiated the “City as Sound” project involving street musicians, and recorded the score for Alexander Zeldovich’s film Medea with the orchestra (which received awards at the Kinotavr and White Elephant festivals), as well as presenting new chamber vocal works and much more.

The concert on January 15 will feature works written before this close collaboration began. The program includes two compositions for string orchestra and two chamber works, ranging from the early score Ultima Thule, written while Retinsky was still a student, to the opus C-Dur for string orchestra, created in 2020 when he was already an established composer. All these works, in one way or another, develop the core motif that drives the composer. Each is an attempt to transcend human experience into the transcendental, and in a musical sense, a search for the only true intonation in the balance between avant-garde and minimalism, sonorism and clear melody. The author defines it as follows: “Melody is not about ‘beauty.’ Rather, melody is a compressed fusion of something perceived as truth.”

The original cimbalom soloist for Ultima Thule noted: “In many ways, Retinsky’s music is very simple, but at the same time incredibly powerful. It is a universal, pure gesture.” The composer himself, in the program notes for the three-part cycle for violin and piano Dreams of a Bird, metaphorically explains the meaning of almost all his musical gestures: “The most common and perhaps most impressive dream is the one in which a person, overcoming gravity, soars above the earth. This is likely explained by the inexhaustible human desire for liberation from conventions and limitations. In that case, what do birds dream about?”

Program:

Alexey Retinsky (b. 1986)

Ultima Thule for cimbalom, bells, and string orchestra (2009)

…and the path widened for solo piano (2013)

C-Dur for string orchestra (2020)

Dreams of the Bird, Part III for violin and piano (2011)