Featured titles
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DADDY WASSUP, a flow novel by Andrei Gelasimov
Rights sold: France - SYRTES, Germany - AUFBAU, Russia - GORODETZ, World Arabic - AL MADA
Winner of the 2021 Moscow Art Prize (Russia)
One day in 2016, a rap group from Russia and its leader Booster, aka Pistoletto, aka Tolya, got in troubles during a tour in Germany. First their rehearsal was interrupted by a police raid in search for drugs, then at their night concert one the crowd got killed in a fight, and one of the musicians got arrested and put in jail. Tolya-Booster meets with frau Steinbach who owns the venue of their show, only to find out that she is in fact his once-girlfriend Maya who immigrated to Germany a decade ago. Back in 1990s then 17-years-old Tolya and Maya both lived in Rostov, a city with a well-deserved reputation of Russia's criminal capital: armed gangs all around, corrupt government and police agents, sweeping poverty, drugs, and beyond that a real war in the nearby Chechnya.
Novel's plot develops during about twenty years, from the late 90s to the present. There's no political declarations in the novel: Tolya-Booster is strictly and deliberately apolitical. There is no social pathos in it as well: none of the protagonists give a damn about problems of the society they live in. However, Gelasimov's fictional characters mirror the reality of what's happening with Russians for last two decades: carelessness, fatalism, disregard of any existing rules and laws, pure logic of survival, amazing neglect of death, endless insecurity, and firm belief that there's nobody around to help. Gelasimov's heroes has been through terrible times; and realize what they've lost.
In his main hit song Samsara, Booster formulates the main belief of his generation: one day the world will inevitably be a better place, though they are destined to see it only through the eyes of their children. Gelasimov defines his new book as a flow-novel. In rap terminology, flow is a term referring to rhythms and rhymes of song's lyrics and how they interact, i.e. it is the correct speed of reading, an impeccable technique of writing and playing text under the swinging bit.
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By Richter's Side. Dialogues with Sviatoslav Richter by Yuri Borisov (2003, 2011)
Rights sold: France – ACTES SUD, Japan – ONGAKU NO TOMO, Russia – RUTENA, AZBOOKA, Spain – ACANTILADO
Richter shared with his younger friend the stories of his childhood, and recollections of his meetings with other celebrities (Britten, Fischer-Dieskau, Gavrilov, Michelangeli, Picasso, Prokofiev, Serkin, Sofronitski, Vedernikov, Yudina, etc.). He explained his vision of music, comparing it with other arts: painting (Ernst, Renoir, Schiele, Vermeer, etc..), literature (Balzac, Block, Maeterlinck, Mann, Ostrovsky, Proust, Racine, Rostand, etc..), cinema (Alexandrov, Chaplin, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Pasolini, etc..). Notes taken during or after these extremely interesting conversations Borisov has later converted into a book, thanks to which we can look into the inner world of Sviatoslav Richter, one of the most exciting figures on 20th century musical horizon.
ABOUT SVIATOSLAV RICHTER (1915-1997)
- The Italian critic Piero Rattalino has asserted that the only pianists comparable to Richter in the history of piano performance were Franz Liszt and Ferruccio Busoni.
- Glenn Gould called Richter one of "the most powerful musical communicators of our time".
- Van Cliburn attended a Richter recital in 1958 in the Soviet Union. He reportedly cried during the recital and, upon returning to the United States, described Richter's playing as "the most powerful piano playing I have ever heard".
- Arthur Rubinstein described his first exposure to Richter as follows: "It really wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist: tears began rolling down my cheeks."
- Heinrich Neuhaus described Richter as follows: "His singular ability to grasp the whole and at the same time miss none of the smallest details of a composition suggests a comparison with an eagle who from his great height can see as far as the horizon and yet single out the tiniest detail of the landscape."
- Dmitri Shostakovich wrote of Richter: "Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him."
- Vladimir Horowitz said: "Of the Russian pianists, I like only one, Richter"
- Pierre Boulez wrote of Richter: "His personality was greater than the possibilities offered to him by the piano, broader than the very concept of complete mastery of the instrument."
- Gramophone critic Bryce Morrison described Richter as follows: "Idiosyncratic, plain-speaking, heroic, reserved, lyrical, virtuosic and perhaps above all, profoundly enigmatic, Sviatoslav Richter remains one of the greatest recreative artists of all time."
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