One side benefit of exploring the world of modern classical music is a much better appreciation of world history and, consequently, geography than I had prior.
What I didn’t know about Kazakhstan before embarking on a survey of its modern-era composers a couple months ago could have filled a book, titled “Kazakhstan.” I am not implying your knowledge of world history and geography is as slack as mine was, but just in case it is, here’s a few facts that are worth knowing about Kazakhstan.
- Kazakhstan is in the very center of Asia, and it is huge. If you had a map of Asia the size of a normal front door welcome mat and dropped a baked potato right into the very middle of it, you’d have a good idea of Kazakhstan’s size and position. (I suggest baked, as a baked potato will not bounce.) Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe, from Moscow to Lisbon, from Sicily to the Arctic Circle. It is the largest land-locked nation in the world (the toxic puddles that are the Caspian and Aral Seas do not count as water.) It is also, of course, not a real country at all. It was, up until Russia’s intrusion, part of a vast and borderless Asian steppe, from what is now eastern China (where the Moslem Uyghars live) and Mongolia and all the way over to eastern Ukraine. Despite its association with the USSR, which wanted the territory for its almost limitless deposits of ores and oil, and despite Stalin’s social engineering schemata, Kazakhstan is wayyyy more Asian than European. Which is to say, the people settled there before Russia’s arrival look more Mongol or Chinese than Middle Eastern.
Like everywhere, for most of human history what is now Kazakhstan was controlled by tribes and tribal chieftans. The borders of Kazakhstan and the other central Asian countries were imposed in largely arbitrary fashion by a European power (Russia) with the same care that other European nations employed in drawing up maps of Africa and the Middle East, places where times of peace are rare or non-existent today.
- Kazakhstan was indeed a Soviet republic for most of the 20th century. As in other formerly border-free amalgams of peoples, Kazakh’s statehood within the USSR brought some unity to a region with many different languages and cultures. Principally, it seems, that unity stems from imposing the Russian language in schools and government work. The imposition of a Soviet administrative structure, though far less positive, also brought a sense of unity.
I have read traveller’s accounts of trips in central Asia – The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron is one I would HIGHLY recommend – and I gather the loss of a unifying language and a sense of central authority are the things that people miss most about their years as a Soviet republic. Of course, enough time has passed at this point – 30 years – that there aren’t so many who can remember the Soviets, though there are still lots of Russian (Slavic) people there, roughly 24% of the population, ethnicity-wise.
Aside from that, Russia’s legacy to the steppe republics-cum-nations like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is grim. The Soviets left an entrenched and corrupt bureaucracy. Kazakhstan does not do well on human rights inventories, shall we say. And the Soviets’ utter lack of concern about environmental damage left its mark as well. A correlation useful for Americans is the scrubland in the U.S. West, home to vast Indian reservations and a zillion megadeadly Superfund sites.
As with Ukraine, Stalin’s role in creating the disaster in the steppe region designated “Kazakhstan” can hardly be overstated. As in Ukraine, Stalin presided over a famine that killed millions. Less quantifiable than environmental devastation, famine death tolls, or human rights abuses, the toll Russian presence took on the ancient cultures in the region is probably just as grim. “Folk” music had its own prescriptive dictates under Stalinist Russia.
- Soviet intrusion in the Kazakh region is, of course and nevertheless, the reason we have the music on this mixtape. As in Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Estonia and (as far as I know) all of the states in the former union, Soviet hegemony saw the creation of a national music conservatory. Kazakhstan’s is different, so far as I can tell, in that it seems to have been started without Moscow’s oversight. Also unusual is the fact that the Almaty conservatory didn’t begin operation until 1944. The Kurmangazy Kazakh conservatory did not produce, so far as I can tell, the large number of professional composers that Tblisi’s or Kiev’s did. That may owe a lot to its distance from Moscow (3,911 km. or 51 hours by car). Tbilisi is in the backyard compared to Almaty.
It is very difficult to find much in the way of non-Cyrillic info on Kazakh composers. And aside from classical-music-online.net, which has a helpful sort-by-country index, it’s hard to find any music at all. (To that end, if by any million-to-one chance somebody with knowledge of this music happens to read this post and can fill in some of the many info holes in the playlist below, please write with deets!)
That said, there is a lot more great classical music from Kazakhstan than this mix represents. I had to leave off a bunch of interesting music because it was too poorly recorded or because the recordings had deteriorated before they could be digitalized. Hopefully, that will change with time, but I sort of doubt it. (C’mon, Naxos!)
Kazakhstan may be the only country in the world where its best-known composer is a woman. Gaziza Zhubanova (1927-1993) was the daughter of one of Kazakh classical music’s founding fathers, Ahmet Zhubanov (1906-1968), and she authored two outstanding string quartets, two very… interesting (in a good way) symphonies and two oratorios that sound like music from a parallel universe. She was not, I don’t believe, trying to sound weird. Kazakhstan, I gather, is like a parallel universe, or at least was while she was writing. Now I suppose all the well-off people have iPhones and Instagram.
The Kazakh State String Quartet, heard thrice on this mixtape, also goes by the name the Zhubanova Quartet, if I read my liner notes correctly…
There are works by three young Kazakh composers in this mix, two of them women, all of them with excellent Soundcloud pages. Galya Bisengalieva is a London-based Kazakh who plays directs and plays violin in the London Contemporary Orchestra in addition to composing. Her records, hypnotic and pulsing with a steppian throb, can be found on bandcamp. There are two cuts herein from her latest album, Aralkum, which portrays the ecocide of the Aral Sea. Aralkum is the name of the desert where the Aral Sea used to be. On her Soundcloud page you can hear her performing Mahler and Mozart in addition to her own works.
Aijeram Seilova (1987- ) is a Hamburg-based composer. Her percussion and electronica piece, co-written with – I assume – a German dude is, I think, my favorite percussion piece of all time.
Sanzhar Baiterekov (1987- ) would seem to be a genius in his own right based on his Soundcloud page, but, somewhat distressingly, most of the stuff on the page is over 7 years old. He moved to Russia in 2009 and is hopefully still alive.
The main raison d’etre for this mixtape, though, is the 4th symphony by the Uighur composer Kuddus Kuzhamyarov (1918–1994, also spelled Quddus Khojamyarov.) Like Bisengalieva’s Aralkum, the symphony (date unknown but probably from the 1980s…?) portrays a desolate region in eastern Kazakhstan, the vast Takla-Makan desert. I found a much cleaner version of this masterwork online than the one I played on the radio and I need to share it. It is, like the Zhubanova oratorios and symphonies, parallel universe music and is, to my mind, one of the finest folk-based symphonies to emerge from the Soviet republics, if not the best. And that, I should note, is saying something. Here at Concentration Camp, at any rate. I hope I get to hear his second and third symphonies some day.
0:00:19
Galya Bisengalieva: “Moynaq” (excerpt)
Aralkum (bandcamp)
0:00:57
Korkyt Ata (9th C.): “Konur”
arranged by A. Kazakbayez for 3 kobuz & string quartet
Kazakh State String Quartet w/ Kazakbayev Alkyat, Zhusupova Zhanar &
Omarova Madina (kobuz)
Great Steppe Melodies (Divox, 2016)
0:06:43
Artyk Toxanbayev (1958- ): “Steppe Sketches for Violin & Cello & Piano”
Sholpan Ungarova (piano), Harald Aadland (violin) & ?
0:10:29
Ahmet Zhubanov (1906-1968): Tajik Dances, #?
unknown performer
0:13:06
Gaziza Zhubanova: String Quartet No. 1
Kazakh State String Quartet
Kazakh Classical Music (Divox, 2016)
0:28:18
Bisengalieva: “Moynaq” (excerpt)
0:29:39
Kuddus Kuzhamyarov (1918–1994): Symphony No. 4, “Takla Makan”
Tolepbergen Abdrashev (Conductor): Kazakh State SO (?)
0:54:45
Alibee Mambetov Zhubanov (1961–2018): Piano Trio, “Elegy”, 2nd movement
Makpal Beckma (v), Askar Mukanov (c) & Karina Izmailova (piano)
0:57:21
Bisengalieva: “Moynaq” (excerpt)
0:59:07
Gaziza Zhubanova: “Folk Dance”
from the ballet The Legend of the White Bird
Nurlan Ismailov (p)
1:02:58
Sanzhar Baiterekov (1987- ): “Helios,” Concerto for Violin & Orchestra (2013)
Roman Belyshev: Orchesta of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation
1:12:47
Aijeram Seilova (1987- ) & Steffen Lowry: “Nebuli”
Fabian Otten & Chia-Hui Choi (percussion)
live performance – Hamburg, 2014
1:27:00
Kazakbayev Alkyat (1972- ): “Ablaikhan Zhorgylk”
Kazakh State String Quartet w/ 3 kobus (see above) &
Temirbekov Nuraly (drum)
Great Steppe Melodies (Divox, 2016)
1:32:29
Galya Bisengalieva: “Aralkum”
Aralkum (bandcamp)
Concentration Camp 