On June 29, the Ruse State Opera will celebrate Danube Day with a special symphonic concert featuring works by Korngold, Liszt, Bartók, and Strauss, as well as the ballet suite “Vendetta” by Bulgarian composer Konstantin Kazanski. Conducted by Ukki Sachedina and featuring soloist Maxim Tzekov, the concert highlights the musical dialogue between cultures, traditions, and eras - a theme that naturally ties in with the symbolism of the Danube as a river of encounters and exchange.
Created more than four decades ago for the legendary ballerina Natalia Makarova and premiered on Broadway, “Vendetta” continues to thrive on the concert stage and attract new audiences. On the occasion of its performance in Ruse, we spoke with composer Konstantin Kazanski about the work’s extraordinary creative journey, his memories of his hometown of Svishtov, his connection to the Danube, and the role of personal artistic style in today’s cosmopolitan music world.
Your ballet suite, “Vendetta,” was composed more than four decades ago. How do you feel today, as this music continues to be performed on concert stages and reaches new generations of listeners?
The paths of creativity are unfathomable. As I adapted the orchestration for this specific upcoming performance, I kept in mind that this suite would be performed for the first time in a setting - composed of musicians and an audience - that is, in theory, more suited to it. It seems to me that both groups are now more open to cosmopolitan approaches. The rest is a matter of the quality of the performance, the listeners’ taste, and that alchemical moment during the performance.
You wrote this piece for Natalia Makarova, and it premiered on Broadway. What was the creative process like, and what were the biggest challenges in composing this music back then?
There were challenges from start to finish. I worked as closely as possible with choreographer Lorca Massine. He was responsible for selecting the styles, the motifs, the duration, the tempo, and the order… The timeline was incredibly tight, both for composing in Italy and for orchestration in Paris. Then in New York for rehearsals… After every performance, I’d stay up all night to add to and revise the score and stage directions. “Vendetta” was the final piece in the program, following Minkus and Bach. In case of failure, three other pieces had been rehearsed (Chopin, etc.) to replace whatever the audience didn’t like. Providence and the Broadway audience willed it so that my creation would remain in the leading role. That’s why, of the 28 performances originally announced, only 6 remained, since Makarova was having problems with one of her legs and the doctors had even advised her to cancel everything. So, there were challenges and problems galore. For the audience, this was “Vendetta.” For all the participants, it was an “Odyssey.”
The concert in Ruse is dedicated to Danube River Day. You were born in Svishtov - another iconic city on the Danube. Does the Danube play a role in your memories and in the way you perceive music and cultural identity?
Svishtov is not just my hometown. I grew up there and have been a lifelong patriot of Svishtov for the past 65 - 70 years. Ah, but then things, just like everywhere else in the world, evolve. Different people, different ideals… My music very often wanders along both banks of the Danube and has never been content to stay on just one. That’s part of my family heritage.
Your creative journey has taken you between Bulgaria and France, across various musical genres and cultures. In your opinion, how does a contemporary composer manage to maintain a personal style in such a diverse international environment?
For me, opportunities for more significant creative expression didn’t arise until after I settled in France. It took me some time to get a feel for what you call a “diverse international environment” and for that environment to get a feel for me. Then, it’s not you, but the environment that decides what you’re capable of and what you’re not. Your “personal style” evolves in all sorts of unexpected ways. They lead you to swim in waters you’ve neither heard of nor dreamed of. You learn to enter them - as if into the Danube… And no matter what the river is like, you swim in it as you know how, just as you learned as a child, in the Danube… With boundless personal freedom. The extent to which you’ve found yourself creatively becomes less important than the fact that you haven’t lost yourself.
* The photo is a still from a movie.
