City of music . . . Moscow's Cathedral of the Archange.Credit: Paul Burrows
I have dreamed of Russia since I was a little boy. My first and special passion among composers was Tchaikovsky but I was almost equally fascinated by all those multitasking composer geniuses in which Russia specialised: Borodin the chemist, Rimsky-Korsakov the sea captain, Balakirev the railway clerk. I was startled by the grotesque and earthy attack of Mussorgsky and bewitched by the sumptuous harmonies and languorous melodies of Rachmaninov and Skryabin.
For a young boy intent on discovering everything he could about music, the Russians were extremely approachable: colourful, tuneful, emotional - but also small in number. Their great modern composers, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, were also immediately accessible - by the time I was going to concerts in the early '60s, orchestras were finally able to dispatch The Rite Of Spring with something like ease.
But though now familiar, none of this music lost its exoticism. It spoke of another world of experience: pagan, like the music of Stravinsky; semi-oriental, like that of Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin; or charged with a particular kind of autobiographical emotional intensity, like the music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
Russia's unimaginable land mass, encompassing the Baltic countries, Siberia's frozen wastelands and the Asian territories of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to say nothing of the great cities of Leningrad - as it was until I was in my 40s - and Moscow, was deeply mysterious.
By now, Russian musicians were regular visitors to the West but it wasn't until I started reading the great writers that the shutters really opened for me. I enrolled in Slavonic studies at university after becoming fascinated by the vast drama - brutal, visionary, holy and corrosive - of Russia's history: from the ironic elegance of Pushkin to the wild, tragic farce of Gogol; from Turgenev's subtlety to Dostoevsky's nightmares; from Tolstoy's vast canvases to Chekhov's pinpoint precision.
It was deeply illuminating but I didn't hang around to plumb its full depths, instead running away to become an actor - whereupon I discovered the astounding dramatic literature. Almost all the novelists had written plays, too: Chekhov, Gogol, Gorky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Babel; Ostrovsky wrote 47 plays, which give a complete picture of Russian life in the second half of the 19th century, and his work was set by many composers.
Thanks mostly to Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre, the Russian theatre was central to acting and staging in the 20th century and all British actors longed to see the birthplace of all of this for ourselves.
But it was difficult. Some hardy spirits braved the bureaucracy, the physical hardship of travel (Aeroflot, the airborne gulag), the churlish service, the draconian supervision, the punitive cuisine. Some learned the language and came back with wonderful tales. But almost no one pretended that it was a pleasure.
Decades rolled by, the Cold War ended and then finally, suddenly, the unimaginable happened: the Soviet Union collapsed - and I still hadn't been to this country that so intrigued me. Then, three years ago, I impulsively went to Moscow for the New Year.
Airports are an unreliable guide to the country one is visiting but Moscow's is particularly unlovely. Then there's the journey into the city - extraordinary because this country that so ostentatiously turned its back on capitalism for more than 80 years has now embraced it with a fervour that makes Las Vegas look austere.
Tchaikovsky and Glinka seem very alien here as one crawls along the motorway. It can take two, three, four hours to get into town. But when you hit the Manege, the former riding school that is really the beginning of the city centre, and get a first glimpse of the forbidding Kremlin Palace, you know you're in Russia.
The splendid National Hotel, with a grand piano in every suite, looks straight onto Red Square, at the end of which is the famous Cathedral of St Vasily (St Basil to us): squat, gaudy, oriental. If this isn't Russian, nothing is. The saint himself - Basil the Blessed - was that very Slavonic thing, a holy fool; he is buried in the vaults. Inside the cathedral is a honeycomb of chapels filled with musty icons, dimly visible under flickering candles. Bearded priests intone the Orthodox liturgy, while recorded choirs chant the sacred texts in earth-trembling rumbles and ecstatic cries.
Built by Tsar Ivan IV - whose name echoes down the centuries more famously as Ivan the Terrible - the cathedral was conceived as an act of thanksgiving for the tsar's decisive victory over the powerful khan of the Kazakhs; each dome represents a battle. It owes nothing to any Western architectural norm. When the cathedral was completed to the tsar's satisfaction, the architect is said to have had his eyes put out for his pains. So much of what this cathedral represents, what it is, expresses the Russian experience and is to be found in the music: the relationship with the Orient, the profound spiritual fervour, the political despotism.
Red Square was the centre of political life, the place of proclamations, the open-air theatre of power, until Peter the Great moved the capital to his newly built city on water, St Petersburg. With the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Moscow again became the capital; soon it had a new tsar, in all but name: Ioseb Dzhugashvili, known as Stalin, the Man of Steel. He left his mark everywhere, from the monstrous Stalinist Gothic apartment blocks dotted across the city to somehow mirror the seven hills of Rome, to the underground railway system - a kind of vision of transport heaven - to the Kremlin, which he personally commanded, and the great red stars that surmounted it. His vice-like control of every aspect of life meant that no one could remain unaffected by his rule.
Artists, who experienced a brief heady period of freedom after the collapse of the monarchy, were increasingly regimented, obliged to subjugate their work to the ideals of the Communist Party. Through the concert agency, which controlled all public performances, the composers' union, the cultural commissars and frequently through Stalin's own direct intervention, Soviet musicians were minutely controlled.
It is astounding that so many composers - Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky and Kabalevsky - were able to produce music of real power and individuality, all engaging in various degrees with the idea of state art, so alien to their Western counterparts. It is chilling to stand in the building in which the greatest Russian composers of the 20th century, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, were denounced for the crime of writing formalist - that is, not accessible - music. Music has always been central to Russian cultural life: in the pubs, the fields and in the conservatories. At the height of Soviet rule, musical life was supported massively by government funds, to the extent that Russian musical education was without compare in the world and remains extraordinarily thorough.
The two great composers who escaped from Soviet rule, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov - perhaps the two greatest Russian composers of the 20th century - never had to deal with authority, never had to pretend to socialist aspirations they didn't have and never had to wrestle with their own consciences.
Radically different from each other, united only in a mutual admiration for Tchaikovsky, they were both, despite their long exiles from their native country, profoundly Russian however international their lives and indeed, in some senses, their musical styles might have become.
It is when you leave Moscow and head for the countryside that you see that other crucial element of the Russian experience: the direct connection to the land, to the relentless procession of the seasons and to the pagan world. The forests, the snow, the animals, the witches, the giants and the dwarves - all these are part of the Russian inner landscape. You feel it even in the dachas just outside Moscow, those little second homes to which everyone flees at the first opportunity, back to nature, out of which so many stories seem to dance. Go deeper into the interior and you are in another world altogether.
We never went that far. But Moscow - with its wild nightclubs, extraordinary restaurants and new buildings everywhere, as well as a deeply unsettled political climate - is profoundly connected with the history of the vast, contradictory country. Simply to be there is to understand Russian art and music in an entirely new way.
An edited extract from Classical Destinations II: Great Cities And Their Music by Simon Callow and Paul Burrows (Hardie Grant Books, $49.95).
A city's grace notes
THE Kremlin has been the seat of power in Russia since the late 15th century. Even when Peter the Great moved the Russian capital to St Petersburg in 1712, the tsars continued to use it for coronations.
Since the collapse of communism, the Russian leader and administration are once again resident in the Kremlin, so a large area of the complex is off-limits to the public but many of the key buildings can still be accessed.
Within the Kremlin walls are the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Cathedral of the Archangel and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, all commissioned by Ivan the Great. Standing at one end of Red Square is Moscow's best-known church, St Basil's Cathedral, with its collection of "onion" domes. On the opposite side to the imposing Kremlin wall is the famous GUM department store. During the Cold War, Westerners marvelled at the almost military regimentation of GUM, with its starkly empty shelves. But nowhere in modern Moscow is the transition from communism to capitalism more dramatically evident than in GUM's smart boutiques.
On the opposite side of Red Square is the district of Tverskaya. This area was reshaped by Joseph Stalin, who wanted to create wider boulevards flanked by large grey apartment blocks (a style that subsequently became known as Stalinist Gothic). This style is best exemplified in Tverskaya's main road (or ulitsa), which is now Moscow's leading shopping street.
Nearby is the Manege, which originally served as a military drill ground and is overlooked by the Bolshoi Theatre, the Maly Theatre and several of Moscow's grandest hotels.
This is the musical heart of Moscow, as Tverskaya is also home to the Moscow Conservatory. Founded in 1866 by Nikolai Rubinstein - brother of the composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein - it is the biggest music school in Russia. In 1940 - 100 years after Tchaikovsky's birth - the Moscow Conservatory was renamed in honour of its most famous teacher.
The statue in front of the building depicts Tchaikovsky conducting - in reality something he hated doing - and in the railings the opening notes from his most famous works can be seen. The Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, a converted theatre, is Moscow's premier classical music venue.
Not far from the Moscow Conservatory is a quiet side street off the Tverskaya Ulitsa, named the Bryusov Pereulok.
In the 1920s and '30s, the apartments here were mostly allocated to theatre staff but at No. 8 was the Composers' Union, set up as a place where musicians could meet and perform. At different times it was home to both Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich and it was here, in 1948, that they and others were denounced for "formalistic deviations and anti-democratic musical tendencies".
In a small square in front of the Composers' Union stands a bronze statue of the Armenian composer and conductor Aram Khachaturian, another who stood on that nearby stage to face condemnation. A staunch supporter of communism, Khachaturian later said he was so "crushed" he contemplated changing professions. Almost a caricature, the statue was unveiled in November 2006 and depicts an exultant Khachaturian amid instruments and scores, a testimony to the enduring nature of classical music.
Getting there: Moscow has two main airports: Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo. Thai Airways (via Bangkok, $1551) and Emirates (via Dubai, $1499) fly to Domodedovo. (Fares are low-season return from Melbourne and Sydney, not including tax.) Australians require a visa for stays up to 30 days, for which you must have supporting paperwork from a travel company in Russia.
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