Conductor Yuri Simonov The Unattainable Ideal

Conductor Yuri Simonov: The Unattainable Ideal
(An Essay-Reflection on Music and Power)
Translated from Russian by Аuthor Vladimir Angelblazer.
Victoria of British Columbia, Canada,
2026-02-09

It all begins with a pencil. In the hands of one child, it becomes the tool of a master painter; in the hands of another, it transforms into a conductor’s baton, sketching musical silhouettes. The "Sacco and Vanzetti" pencils of the Soviet era led many children to art schools and the Tretyakov Gallery, but only a chosen few to the Bolshoi Theatre. A painter, locked in a studio, creates a canvas and then reveals it to the light. A composer, having drawn a portrait in notes, seeks musicians and a conductor to breathe life into the work upon the stage. While museums serve as the guardians of visual masterpieces, music fills our vibrational space; it settles in our hearts, preserved within the musicians and conductors who perform these masterworks.

Yet, we must remember: "museum psychology" does not always harmonize with the "psychology of creation," for one is conservative while the other is revolutionary. A "genius painting" can be lost forever; "genius music" never. Both are created by man, but while a painting is an object of art, music is the language of communication with the Creator! Without sound, the human soul is literally famished — a truth anyone can test by sitting in a solitary cell. It all comes down to the pencil. One may use it to scrawl obscenities or paint vulgarity. Humanity can survive that. But bad music destroys and kills, for it is a vibration with which we coexist and through which we co-create "in the image and likeness" of the world around us.

Much has been written about Grand Dukes and Great Captains: truth and lies are woven into the single knot of the historical process, where they act alongside their retinues. Books about conductors are far rarer, for understandable reasons: musicality is not merely a training of muscles, but a genetic gift. I shall not write a book, for I am no conductor, but merely a witness and a "musical advocate." More than thirty years have passed since the events in which I was fortunate enough to participate. This is the story of the Great Russian Conductor, Yuri Ivanovich Simonov. His portrait has yet to be painted by my artist friends — the late Sergey Prisekin, or the living academicians Dmitry Belyukin, Nikolai Anokhin, or Ivan Dmitriev. I do not believe in coincidence. I met Simonov in the late eighties; he became my musical Sensei during a specific stage of my journalistic career in 1989. It was my destiny, as it was the destiny of many musicians, artists, and journalists drawn into this particular grain of sand on our life’s path. It was our mission, and our future depended on its resolution.

One evening, I believe in September, a call rang out at the "Yunost" (Youth) radio station from my "cadet brother," Igor Merny. We had grown up together for seven years at the Moscow Military Music School. He told me he was playing oboe in the Small State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR, founded in 1985 by the Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi, Yuri Simonov. Igor was agitated; on behalf of his fellow musicians, he begged for help — to "save the orchestra from informational slander and the misunderstanding of the inner life between the artists and the maestro." Since 1986, I had hosted the program "The Code of Laws," and thus, investigating conflicts and providing legal counsel fell within my competence. More than half the orchestra were talented young graduates.

Following my editorial assignment, I met repeatedly with the "victims" of this "second act of the Ballet de la Merlaison." What use is there today in retelling the emotional conclusions of artists who, isolated by the world of music, were detached from political reality and labor discipline? An orchestra or a theater is a state in miniature, with all its virtues and vices. This "Beethoven-sized" ensemble of 65 musicians succumbed to the "vibrations of revolutionary self-destruction."

The conflict was exacerbated by the intervention of Alexander Minkin, a theatrical observer for Ogonyok magazine. He cranked the flywheel of sensation with his publication. At that time, the journalistic crossfire in pursuit of "sensational facts" was gaining momentum. Everyone wanted "change at any cost." As the literary critic Tatyana Tolstaya later noted of Minkin: "Kind people with big ears and clean hands occasionally gift him wiretaps, and he ignites, printing them with indignant commentary." Or as writer Andrey Malgin recalled: "Minkin used to publish entire pages of wiretaps... it looked absurd: a naked transcript with not a word of his own, yet he was proudly listed as the author."

In an orchestra that toured frequently abroad, there were surely those same "big ears" that Minkin exploited. I knew nothing of this filth then and was sincerely surprised that such nonsense was being printed. From a legal standpoint, the essence of the conflict was clear: a group of musicians, egged on by "Persimfans-ists" (referring to the conductor-less orchestra movement), refused to work, sabotaging international tours. Yielding to emotion, they chose to remain on the platform as the train departed for Budapest. This violation of the Labor Code did not stop the instigator Minkin, nor the obsessed sensation-hunter Alexander Politkovsky of the TV program Vzglyad. Politkovsky took to the airwaves in what we would now call "prime time," defending the musicians against Simonov. The conductor was held responsible for the breach of contract with Gosconcert. Someone outside the collective desperately wanted this. Yet, the performances went ahead; students from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music joined the remaining orchestra members, turning the ensemble into an international youth team under the Maestro’s baton. The Hungarian press lauded the tour. This did not satisfy our local villains — they thirsted for blood, striving to pit the musicians against their leader. On the day Politkovsky’s controversial report aired, my own investigation was pulled from the radio. No arguments were heard. My editor-in-chief, Boris Nepomnyashchy, banned the broadcast "so as not to conflict with our cousins at Youth TV."

The editorial policy of Soviet State Radio and Television was shifting toward commercialization and the hunt for "edgy" stories, destroying monuments and the country alike. Communist lies were being replaced by liberal-democratic ones. The "600 Seconds" style of journalism flourished — a "Nevzorovism" firing bursts of letters and words like a machine gun. Ideological apparatchiks with party cards began tearing down the ideals of law and justice with "Bolshevik energy," but now for the sake of dismantling "everything Soviet" at any price. Rebellion and revolution have a different music — the domain of the young.

Dеjа vu! Something had to be done to save the work, the honor, and the dignity of the musicians and the conductor, especially since the troublemakers were in the minority. The "case" never reached a civil labor court, hanging instead in the dark corridors of ideological power. Having failed to find justice via radio, I turned to the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Stepan Shalaev, proposing the creation of a Symphony Orchestra of the Trade Unions. Shalaev, a frequent guest on my programs, agreed to consider the project. Yuri Ivanovich and I prepared it with enthusiasm, addressing delicate questions of self-financing and international engagements. Every musician participated. We found a rehearsal space. The documents went to the Ministry of Culture for that final "scribble" of approval. The renewed "VTsSPS Orchestra" performed to grand acclaim at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall! And then it began... the "cockroaches" of envy crawled out from every crack. The Ministry began searching for "union money." The world of snapped violin strings, broken double basses, and cracked timpani rattled with a cacophony of meanness and lies.

In April 1990, our patron Shalaev became a "pensioner of union significance." The orchestra was not to be. The "democratized" taiga began to burn more frequently, shrouding not only Moscow but all of Siberia in a gray haze...

"Instead of warmth — the green of glass,
 Instead of fire — smoke.
 A day is snatched from the calendar's grid.
 The red sun burns to the ground,
 The day burns out with it.
 A shadow falls upon the blazing city...
 Changes! Our hearts demand them!" — Viktor Tsoi

Changes arrived soon enough, in bloody tears and hundreds of thousands of homeless children of a "new double-headed civil war." The Union collapsed into separate, illegitimate states without even "legalizing the divorce." The people had voted in the referendum of March 17, 1991, to preserve the Great Power, but the usurpers were in a hurry. The "Referendum," the "August Coup," the "Belovezha Accords" — this was a calculated special operation to reformat the Eurasian space known as the USSR.

Amidst these historical circumstances, we made one more attempt to save the collective by inviting Vasily Sinaisky, a gold medalist of the Herbert von Karajan competition. Negotiations lasted nearly a year, but ultimately the post went to Vladimir Ponkin, who, for some reason, omitted the further achievements of the USSR Small State Symphony from his biography. ("Oh, that Wikipedia!") In 1995, after being renamed the "State Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Ponkin," the sandy footprints of the violins and cellos were washed away by the Moskva River. It is wide and deep!

The decade of the nineties dealt a colossal blow to our academic musical culture. The finest musicians and conductors were no longer needed by their country. Many were forced to leave, accepting offers from Western impresarios. Only by a stroke of luck did the Bolshoi Theatre not turn into a brothel or a daily stage for the "raspberry jackets" of criminal chanson. A "thuggish Pugachev-ism" of the underworld blossomed. Obscene graffiti covered the fences of the USSR and the airwaves of central television. The country and its music fell into a criminal coma.

Unemployed in Moscow, a People’s Artist of the USSR easily found work in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, London, and Paris. Productions of Khovanshchina, The Queen of Spades, Aida, and The Ring of the Nibelung followed. From 1994 to 2002, Simonov served as the Music Director of the Belgian National Orchestra (ONB). In 1998, when the musicians of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra invited him to be their chief conductor, Yuri Ivanovich agreed, and he leads that magnificent collective to this day!

In 2010, during the terrible peat fires in Moscow, Igor Merny, the orchestra’s first oboe, passed away at the age of forty-eight. I mourn him. Later, in 2012, director Pavel Lungin would film the drama The Conductor. To the music of Metropolitan Hilarion’s St. Matthew Passion, the film explores the spiritual mission and inner torments of the artist. Practically every creative collective experiences something similar. Perhaps you will agree with me that the "Mission of the Musician" in an orchestra is not to "find their own voice," but to achieve sobornost — a conciliarity of sound. The right to a "private voice" belongs to the creator — the composer, the conductor, and the soloist.

On March 4, 2021, at the Moscow Philharmonic, we celebrated the jubilee of the Great Maestro Yuri Ivanovich Simonov! Eighty years old, yet still active, sparking with jokes, he invited his students to conduct while he sat in the hall, listening with paternal pride. Congratulations from President Vladimir Putin and world-renowned artists poured in like a cornucopia. After thirty years of divergent paths, I watched the concert via live stream from Canada. A fellow "Suvorovite" cadet, Andrey Petrov, presented Yuri Ivanovich with a bouquet and my regards. Our invisible friendship across the years cannot be forgotten.

I realize now that we were bonded not just by that "Sacco and Vanzetti" pencil, with which a young Yuri and I once conducted imaginary orchestras a generation apart, but by a shared talent for feeling beauty in music. We don't need to be told if it is "good" or "bad." I am recharged by beautiful harmony. The image of Simonov is always with me when classical music plays. He is my supreme musical marker — the standard of orchestral sound, articulation, and the magic of gesture. Music is an endless theme for me. The warm sounds of the Russian accordion in Maly Alabukhi and the "Hungarian Cranes" flying from my mother’s violin travel with me everywhere.

I often contemplate the meaning of life. The professions we choose often become obsolete. Today, we live through several "destiny programs" that would have occupied the entire existence of a man two hundred years ago. We grow up fast — marrying, building houses, reaching the peaks of our careers. Our goals change, and for some, so do our ideals. In our forties, many feel a shortness of breath, a weariness of life. But for some, a second wind opens — the realization that there are no limits except those we build ourselves. Some finally understand that material excess is no substitute for the spiritual. Teachers are departing into the infinite. We are left with the thought that we must build an "ark of knowledge" for our grandchildren.

We live among the sounds and magnetic oscillations of the Universe. Man is a paramagnet — receiving and giving energy. That is why "in the beginning was the Word." That is why music is energetic food. We are "musical batteries." The charge we feed upon determines our longevity and health. I learned this from my mentors in electromagnetism, Valentin Patrasenko and Yuri Tkachenko. I even wondered if one could invent a "magnetotron" for brass musicians to improve sound quality. This idea is mirrored today by gadgets like Hans Kuijt’s "LefreQue sound bridge."

When I listen to classical radio in Canada or the US, I can't help but notice that much of the content is our Russian symphonic and operatic music. It gladdens me, yet the "world rankings" of conductors offend me with the underserved omission of our names. BBC Music Magazine lists only Evgeny Mravinsky at seventeenth, claiming he "inherited" the orchestra from an Austrian and was responsible for "preserving the Austro-German tradition" during Stalin’s terror. Or look at the British Gramophone: alongside the late Mravinsky, they list Valery Gergiev near the end, calling him "perhaps the busiest conductor in the world." What defines "prolificacy"? Two hundred concerts a year? When does this "walk-on," as musicians call him, find time to work on a score if he hasn't time to shave?

The "European West" would perish without the masterpieces of Russian music and the Swan Lake of Yuri Grigorovich! I concede their high organization and legal sophistication of "show business," into which they fold symphonic life. Billions are poured into it. But I would not call it the most perfect or spiritual. The opera house in Victoria, BC, is smaller and less "pompous" than any Stalinist House of Culture, and the performance quality made "my ears ache." Perhaps I am a spoiled listener. Still, the Western "institute of patronage" creates a wonderful atmosphere of public culture. Moreover, every Canadian middle school has a brass band, and the industry provides affordable, high-quality instruments — a dream we never had in Soviet music schools.

In the late nineties, I studied "Music Business Administration" under the legendary William Krasilovsky, a consultant for Warner Brothers and attorney for 138 composers, including Duke Ellington and the estate of Rachmaninoff. This led me to Montreal, where Charles Dutoit was the chief conductor. Expecting the masterpieces of Ravel and Honegger, I found that Canadian musicians strike too! They picketed for a year over salaries that seemed small to them but grand to others. I was shocked. After 25 years, Dutoit left in 2002.

What is happening to the world of classical music today? I see an "Apocalypse" — a lifting of the veil by the digital world. The computer has replaced the composer’s pencil. Global pandemics have halted tours. Humanity is under "house arrest." Programmers are teaching AI to compose operas. We may soon see holographic "Persimfans-machines" performing perfectly, without human breath or the rustle of sheet music. The "post-human" era approaches. Totalitarian liberalism leaves no choice: be a "liberal" or be left off the train of history.

Are you frightened?

Do not be. I am certain there will be brave souls with "natural intelligence" who will pull the plug on the AI. The digital world can never replace the human need to feed on the "Ambrosia" of a beautiful symphony.

Russia often falls into a slumber or is "pregnant" with something new — be it a revolution or a bright future built on ruins. It has always been hard for us to live and easy to die. But through music, a society either degrades or regains its National Spirit. A boy-bugler leads soldiers into battle under fire — such is the power of music. We need to do our "homework" — to bring our Fatherland into harmonic resonance and take our place as a self-sufficient Russian Civilization. We have everything we need. We only lack order. Persimfans...

The "collective Persimfans" of political power without a chief conductor has proven fragile. Managing a symphony of different peoples united by "Great Rus" is heavy — "Heavy is the head that wears the Crown of Monomakh," as Boris Godunov sings.

In the 21st century, there are few good conductors because few can afford to only conduct. The main concern has become "skimming the cash" and trading away the musical heritage of our ancestors.

The maestro enters. In a black tailcoat and white tie, he draws a "magic conducting sword" from his waistband. He strikes, and the orchestra gives birth to the angelic sounds of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Verdi, and Shostakovich. They fill the space, resonating within us. The Temple of Music. The listener is hypnotized by a school that absorbed the "strict manualism" of Europe and the "cosmic breadth of the Russian soul." To this, Yuri Simonov has dedicated his life.

In my ranking of the world’s greatest living conductors, Number One is the People’s Artist of the USSR, the professor, the maestro: YURI IVANOVICH SIMONOV. There is no prestigious stage or world-renowned orchestra he has not led! From the "apostle-teachers" like Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and Mravinsky, the Russian tradition was passed down. Yuri Simonov has dedicated his life to forging the most advanced and effective Russian Conducting School.

The eternal question "What is to be done?" rings out with new urgency. The ancient mages left an answer for the coming flood: "BUILD A NOAH'S ARK." This is not a call to literal shipbuilding, but to the sacred duty of cultural preservation. The sands of history are narrowing. Our primary creative act today is to build this ark for our families, to safeguard our lineage.

We live in a "crisis of knowledge." Both the West and Russia have abandoned the true keepers of wisdom. Even in schools, the guardians are gone. In their place: primitive scribbles instead of calligraphy, celebration of mediocrity instead of talent, and the worship of false idols. Ethics are lost.

Thus, true leaders — those capable of leading a nation like a single symphony — become ever rarer. But I am an optimist. The music will play on.

Russia, in particular, has lost its "conceptual sovereignty." We are stuck, suspended between a past alien to the Russian Spirit and a future yet to be defined. The geopolitical compass offered to us points only to a false dichotomy: join the "West" or submit to the "East." But this is a diminishment of our destiny. Recall the knight in Viktor Vasnetsov’s painting: he stands not at a fork of two roads, but at a crossroads of four. True power is seized neither in the public squares nor on the platforms of a departing train...

"O field, O field, who has strewn thee With the bleached bones of the dead? Whose fleet steed trampled thee In the final hour of bloody fray? Who fell upon thee in glory? Whose prayers did the heavens hear?" — (M.I. Glinka, opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, poem by A.S. Pushkin, Act II: No. 8, Ruslan’s Aria performed by Evgeny Nesterenko, conducted by Yuri Simonov, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, 1978)

The answer lies not in collective, futile action, but in a quiet, resolute individual duty. We must preserve knowledge within the family to pass it on to the generation that will one day resurrect Russia. We must forge "neuro-musical connections" with other such "Arks" — families and communities dedicated to preserving their national souls. An Ark is built not of timber, but of words, memory, faith, language, music, and craft. Its beams are sacred texts and ancestral songs; its nails are the duty of fathers and mothers; its pitch is the prayers of children. Only this vessel will not sink when the waters of chaos rise.

And yet, my intuition suggests a ground for hope. Across the land of this "New Russia," more and more people are being awakened by the "trumpets of angels" to a great task: to gather the scattered shards and assemble the "Ark of Russian Civilization." Great conductors are the guardians of music. And music itself is the unattainable ideal, the Divine language through which we converse with the Creator...

The Ark is not intended for survival alone. It is intended for the dawn. Beyond the flood awaits the Mountain of the Covenant, a new Ararat, where the rainbow shall once again seal the heavenly promise. It is not enough to endure — one must endure for the sake of transfiguration.

Ultimately, everything rests upon a principle as simple and profound as the "Sacco and Vanzetti pencil" — a symbol of creativity born of conviction, not convenience.

Learn from the best. Not a single bar of rest!

It would be the height of conceit to compare oneself to Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. And yet, observe: they did not write political manifestos. Their genius lay in exploring the human soul in all its depth and contradiction. Yet the insights of their works could serve as the foundation for any program worthy of the name. As for me — I am no politician, but merely a witness to an era. I have seen pines bend in the storm and rise again in the sun; I know — the Ark can and must be built. My role is merely to point toward it, so that each person may, in their own way, begin to build.

Recorded while watching the Jubilee Concert in honor of the eightieth birthday of Yuri Ivanovich Simonov, featuring his students — conductors Igor Manasherov, Dimitris Botinis, Alexei Rubin, Nikolai Tsinman, and Andrey Kolyasnikov. Buyan Island, the Kingdom of the Glorious Saltan, March 4, 2021, Pacific Time.

Vladimir Vasilievich Khlynin (Angelblazer), Witness of the Era.

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The Unattainable Ideal: Yuri Simonov, Music, and the Ark of Culture
By Vladimir V. Khlynin ( Angelblazer)

In this evocative and deeply philosophical essay, author and "musical advocate" Vladimir Khlynin offers a sweeping reflection on the life and legacy of Maestro Yuri Ivanovich Simonov, the legendary former Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre and current Music Director of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

Far more than a standard biography, the work serves as a socio-cultural manifesto. Khlynin traces a journey beginning with the symbolic "Sacco and Vanzetti" pencils of Soviet childhood — tools that could either scrawl obscenities or conduct masterpieces — to the turbulent frontlines of the 1980s and 90s. He recounts the dramatic struggle to preserve the Small State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR amidst the "vibrations of revolutionary self-destruction" and the collapse of a superpower.

Key Themes Include:

The Metaphysics of the Baton: An exploration of the conductor’s role not just as a time-keeper, but as a spiritual leader and a "paramagnet" of cosmic energy.

The Russian Conducting School: A tribute to the lineage of Rimsky-Korsakov and Mravinsky, which Simonov has defended against the modern "commercialization" and "prolific mediocrity" of the global music industry.

The Concept of the "Ark": A call for a cultural "Noah’s Ark" — a sacred preservation of national identity, music, and ethics in an age of AI-driven automation and "digital totalitarianism."

Personal Witness: First-hand accounts of the 1989 orchestral crisis, the influence of the "Persimfans" movement, and the enduring power of Russian classical music in the diaspora.

Written on the occasion of Simonov’s 80th birthday, Khlynin’s work is a poignant reminder that music is the "language of communication with the Creator" and that the mission of the musician is to achieve sobornost (spiritual conciliarity) in a fractured world. It is an essential read for those seeking to understand the deep, often hidden connections between high art, historical destiny, and the human soul.

About the Author

Vladimir Vasilievich Khlynin (Angelblazer) is a legal expert, journalist, and cultural commentator. A graduate of the Moscow Military Music School, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Faculty of Law and the Trebas Institute (Vancouver), he provides a unique perspective as a "witness of the era" who has observed the intersection of music and power across both the Soviet Union and North America.