ALEXANDER RASKATOV ABOUT COMPOSING

»For a composer it is important to achieve a synthesis of your musical childhood memories, from the folk music you’ve encountered, and the creations of composers you admire. All these influences need to fuse in an idiom that only you and no one else can hear, the transfor- mation of experience into music. My encounters with Russian folk music are just as important as those with the composers Schnittke and Weinberg. Achieving a synthesis like this is particularly important in an opera. An opera differs very strongly from a symphonic or cham- ber music piece. Opera is not a ›pure‹ genre. It demands an open horizon and a form of poly- stylism. You can see this as early as Mozart. But I’m also thinking of numerous reminiscences of Russian folk music in Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov or Shostakovich. In an opera you can put all kinds of things in a new and sometimes totally contradictory context, achieving paradoxical effects. Opera is not a purist or academic form. It needs to burst with life.«