Cellos

Rabbani Aldangor

In the orchestra since 2018

Rabbani Aldangor began his musical way in Kazakhstan (the class of Zoya Kuznetsova), where from an early age he performed as a soloist with the Karaganda Philharmonic. Rabbani is a graduate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (the class of Professor Alexey Seleznev), during his assistantship-internship he attended chamber music classes of Professor Alexander Rudin. He completed his master’s degree at the Amsterdam Conservatory in the class of Pieter Wispelwey, the specialist in the field of Historically Informed Performance. He is a prize-winner of international competitions, such as the International Johannes Brahms competition (Austria), the International Serge Koussevitzky Competition (Russia), and others.

Rabbani regularly performs at the world’s best venues as an artist of musicAeterna, as well as in solo programmes.

He has performed on such stages as the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, in the Great and Small Halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonia, in the Moscow Philharmonic, the Wiener Musikverein, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Berliner Philharmonie, in the concert halls of Lucerne, Salzburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Baden-Baden, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Osaka, New York and others. As a soloist, he collaborated with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pavel Kogan, where he also was a solo-cellist and the cello group concertmaster, the Moscovia chamber orchestra (Artistic Director — Eduard Grach), the Kremlin chamber orchestra, and others. He performs chamber music in the Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra Soloist Ensemble,
Île Thélème Ensemble, musicAeterna soloist ensembles, the Hermitage Soloist Ensemble, and others.

IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE, WHICH INSTRUMENT WOULD YOU CHOOSE INSTEAD OF THE CELLO?

In a parallel reality, I would choose an entire orchestra or a violin as an instrument. I have always admired the great violinists: Paganini, Ysaÿe, Wieniawski, and the violinists of the 20th century. Lately I've been listening to recordings that seem brilliant to me, and I'm trying to imagine the feelings of the performers in these moments, to feel the magic of these takes. I feel the same in musicAeterna: we know how to reach such heights of perfection, we are doing it, and feel it when we really succeed. I also admire electronic music. I think that in music and visual art, human fantasy has gone the furthest, and in these areas we are already far ahead of the real, tangible world.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE WORKS IN THE CELLO REPERTOIRE?

There are plenty: mostly baroque and romantic compositions, which are perfectly mixed with the music of the 20th century and contemporary music. I fall in love with every piece I work on. At a certain period of my life, something inside and around me tells me what needs to be recorded right now, what needs to be performed. It happens that you don't want to hear and play a piece, and then you fall in love again. Now I really want to revise the cello sonatas of Grieg, Beethoven and Strauss, to learn Bloch's "Shlomo". Last year there were a lot of ideas about Gabrielli's Ricercari and Caprices by Dall’Abaco, the year before that — about the music of Sollima and Chopin. I dream of performing and recording almost the entire cello repertoire. There are plenty of ideas with my own unusual "know-how" — I hope one day I'll manage to bring them all to life.

WHICH LOCATIONS IN ST. PETERSBURG AND OTHER CITIES DO YOU LIKE THE MOST?

There are places in different cities that stuck in my memory, which have their own special energy. In Moscow those would be Krasnaya Presnya Park, Tverskaya Street and White Square. In St. Petersburg, those would be Yelagin Island and the 300th Anniversary Park – everything that is north of Nevsky Prospekt. There are favourite places in Arnhem, where I lived for a while, Baden-Baden, Amsterdam. In Astana, this is a slope overlooking the river near the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation.

WHAT IS THE PERFECT WAY TO REST FOR YOU?

For me, the perfect way to rest is to sleep, to commune with nature, and to spend time with the loved ones. Sometimes I do spiritual practices.