‘Musicians remain silent and afraid’ How Russia’s legendary Sound Recording State House changed hands, and became linked to a presidential agency and Dmitry Medvedev’s sneakers 8:49 pm, April 15, 2019 Source: Meduza
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/04/15/musicians-remain-silent-and-afraid
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/06/09/support-ivan-golunov-by-republishing-his-work
https://web.archive.org/web/20190609174251/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/06/09/support-ivan-golunov-by-republishing-his-work
Since last summer, two state enterprises have been exchanging property in Moscow: the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) and the “Izvestia” publishing house (which no longer has any connection to the newspaper or website that bears the same name). The main asset being transferred from VGTRK to Izvestia is the Broadcasting and Sound Recording State House (GDRZ), which was traded for the building that houses the studio for a national TV talk show hosted by Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov. Since last August, Russia’s musical public has been petitioning the country’s leaders, warning that GDRZ’s new owners plan to liquidate the unique studios that recorded generations of classical musicians, closing down a space where two national orchestras rehearsed until recently. The head of the Izvestia publishing house is 38-year-old Ekaterina Smirenskaya, whose father is business partners with Vladimir Dyachenko. According to an investigative report released two years ago by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev sometimes uses Dyachenko's name when placing orders through foreign online stores.
The first rumors about the Broadcasting and Sound Recording State House (GDRZ) being transferred to the “Izvestia” publishing house started appearing in the summer of 2018. In August, the newspaper Kommersant reported that the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) planned to trade the recording house to Izvestia for several other buildings.
A couple of state-owned enterprises exchanging property would have been a forgettable affair, were it not for the recording studios and orchestra rehearsal rooms run by the conductors Yuri Bashmet and Vladimir Fedoseyev. When the deal was reported, classical musicians and sound engineers sounded the alarm, worried that GDRZ’s new owner will abandon its unique, historical studios, dismantle and throw out its valuable equipment, and convert the building into a business center.
People wrote open letters and appealed to both the president and VGTRK’s leaders, asking them to preserve GDRZ’s studios by trading them to the Union of Composers and “Firma Melodiya” for non-residential space. State Duma Culture Committee Chairwoman Elena Yampolskaya and many top cultural figures have also publicly backed GDRZ. Anatoly Veitsenfeld, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Zvukorezhissyor (Audio Producer) and a sound engineering instructor at the Russian Institute of Theater Arts, published a petition asking “the country’s leadership” not to destroy the unique recording complex. By April 2019, there were almost 60,000 signatures.
Specialists were especially concerned with the fate of GDRZ’s Fifth Studio. Veitsenfeld told Meduza: “It’s actually a concert hall, but it was built like a studio — a ‘room within a room,’ or a ‘floating room,’ which means the studio’s walls are separated from the building’s walls by anti-vibration dampers that eliminate any mechanical noises. You usually find this in sound-recording studios, but small ones, whereas a studio this size (an area of 600 square meters [6,459 square feet] and a volume of about 8,000 cubic meters [282,517 cubic feet]) is a unique approach. After it was built, they spent 10 years fine tuning the acoustics, until they got it perfect. There’s no other concert hall like it. When someone says, ‘you can always record at the Moscow Conservatory’s Great Hall — they’ve got good acoustics there,’ this person admits their own incompetence. I’m sorry, but the high windows there overlook a busy street.”
Music producer and bass-guitarist and singer for the Soviet rock band “Mashina Vremeni” (Time Machine) Alexander Kutikov agrees. Mashina Vremeni recorded its first songs at GDRZ. “The Fifth Studio is the biggest in the world and very rare for its acoustic data,” Kutikov explains. “You could safely call it a national historical-cultural heritage site. Its destruction is simply blasphemy — a complete misunderstanding of how important such facilities are in the world. It’s surprising, of course, that the classical musicians who recorded for years in this studio are silent and afraid to defend it.”