10 years ago, music producer and conservatory graduate Leyla Fattakhova created the unique piano trio Bel Suono in Russia. In December 2020, when most Russian artists were out of work, the group gave two big concerts on the stage of Crocus City Hall. One of them had been postponed four times since April. And the audience endured the postponements and didn't return their tickets.
The trio's producer spoke about whether it's possible to make money with modern interpretations of Vivaldi and Grieg and tour the world with three grand pianos; how organizers' unprofessionalism forced her to do everything herself; how much composers' heirs demand for reworking their ancestors' music; and what became of the first members who left the project.
I had a long-time dream to create an instrumental project, meaning one without borders and understandable in all countries. Hence the name of the group, understandable not only in Russia but also beyond its borders. Bel Suono translates from Italian as "Beautiful Sound."
I remember the director of the "New Wave" competition, Alexander Revzin, said: "Your music is great. But the name is impossible to pronounce." Now I understand that the name, of course, matters. But if the material isn't interesting, no matter what you name your yacht, it won't sail.
Many ask me: "Why three grand pianos, not one or two?" There are plenty of solo pianists in all genres. From 1963 to 1986, there was a wonderful Polish piano duo, "Marek and Vacek." Sometimes we are compared, and it's said these musicians are the progenitors of Bel Suono, and that's nice! But piano duos in classical music are also common. That wasn't very interesting to me. I wanted to do something that didn't exist, and, honestly, to move away from classical music, because in it you either have to be an outstanding performer like Denis Matsuev, Boris Berezovsky, and the like, or surprise with something new! So we weren't aiming to conquer the classical Olympuses.
Initially, it seemed to me that just giving classics a fresh, modern sound would be cool, understandable to everyone, and should appeal to everybody. But finding that very sound turned out to be not at all simple! We recorded Piazzolla's Libertango — a piece everyone loves and knows. Colleagues in show business to whom I played the recording all said in unison: "Sounds cool!" But then, I remember Alla Dukhova (Todes ballet) told me: "We tour with costumes, lights, and sets. And every time we go crazy, and you're planning to drag three grand pianos around the country. Forget it."
In the geography of our tours, there are only a few cities with halls that have three acoustic grand pianos — Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Tbilisi, Yerevan... And we found a solution: we bought three digital grand pianos, weighing about 100 kg each. And we started moving everywhere with them, even to Sakhalin. Their legs unscrew, making transportation possible. Once, though, one broke during a flight. We barely managed to reassemble it. Digital pianos also allow us to give classical music a modern color.
For the first 4 years of the group's existence, I was like a fish battering itself against ice. No breakthrough happened. It was frustrating, despair set in, I thought: maybe no one needs this except me. But in 2016, a miracle happened! All tickets for the concert at the International House of Music were sold. I sat in the hall, watching the audience's enthusiastic reaction, and wanted to pinch myself — was I dreaming? The next day, I got a call offering to do a concert at the Grand Hall of the Conservatory in a month. Tickets sold out instantly.
But we didn't know how to set up the sound in such an acoustically complex hall. Our sound engineer turned out to be irresponsible. For a month, I insisted: "Go to the hall, check everything." As a result, a few hours before the concert, he started panicking. And, realizing he wasn't ready for the concert, he grabbed his backpack and fled. And the concert was in three hours! I called all the sound engineers I knew; one of them, fortunately for me, was in Moscow and free. Within half an hour, he arrived at the Conservatory and did everything necessary: they brought us equipment, miked the pianos. Everyone's nerves were shot. But it was one of the best concerts! The guys were called back for encores three times. Now, concerts at the Grand Hall of the Conservatory have become a tradition. By that time, we had been invited several times to prestigious programs like "Evening Urgant" and "What? Where? When?" And I finally believed in myself, the guys, and the project as such.
We started planning the first tour runs. And for the first time, I encountered well-known promoters who would beat their chests and say, "We're cool, we'll do everything to the highest standard." They probably thought they'd make a ton of money on our tours without any effort. A tour of 10 cities was arranged, and suddenly concerts started getting canceled one after another. Out of, say, the planned ones, maybe one and a half remained: one was a full house, another half-full, a third a quarter full. The promoter started telling me he couldn't pay the fee we'd initially agreed upon because tickets weren't selling, the group wasn't popular, and the instrumental genre wasn't needed in our country. Only chanson and pop were needed.
Only faith and the absolute conviction that this wasn't true kept me from giving up. I didn't know then how our philharmonic societies worked. Only after diving into it did I understand the scheme: they either invite groups they can buy cheaply and sell tickets just as cheaply, or they simply rent out the hall to promoters who bring in famous artists: Mikhail Shufutinsky, Stas Mikhailov, Lolita, etc.
I encountered the fact that promoters' work most often ends after signing the contract with the hall. They put up three posters on a central pole in the city and consider their job done, often not even knowing what kind of music we play... None of them want to work transparently. Everyone starts hiding markups. You invest in music, videos, promotion. And in the end, everyone except you makes money off your group. That's why artists work themselves to the bone, doing 15-20 concerts a month, just to earn something.
In 2017, I decided on a desperate step: to do a concert at a prestigious 6,000-seat venue — Crocus City Hall. Experienced people — artists, colleagues, radio station directors — tried to dissuade me. "You'll go into debt, won't sell tickets, and will be paying it off for a long time. There aren't that many listeners for this kind of music in our country," everyone said. I myself know many stories of people losing money and then selling apartments to cover debts.
I approached Sergey Lavrov, an experienced organizer with a long track record: "Let you run the concert at Crocus, I trust you." "Do it yourself, you'll succeed," he told me. "I'll advise you, guide you." I'm still grateful to him for giving me the confidence that I could do it. And thank you to everyone who once refused to do our concerts. I went through such a school!
I was lucky to have the right team come together. We didn't spend much on outdoor advertising, as not many people knew our faces, but they were supposed to know and love our music, so we invested the main funds in social media advertising. A month before the concert, more than half the hall was sold, and a few days before the performance, I realized we had a full house at Crocus — the limit of my dreams at that time! I invited friends to participate — Valeriya, A-studio, the Todes ballet. The joint numbers certainly livened up the concert and added a different color. But from a commercial point of view, it didn't make sense, as I initially thought. In the end, we abandoned this practice — we don't invite any stars to our concert. Firstly, our program is so packed that, God willing, we have time to play everything. Secondly, we understood from audience feedback that we are loved just as we are. True, this year we will have our 10th anniversary, either at Megasport or at the VTB Arena. And we will definitely invite artist friends there and do joint numbers, solely for the creative component of the concert!
Today, with venues like Crocus, the Kremlin, and the BKD "Oktyabrsky" in St. Petersburg behind me as an organizer, I understand that you can, of course, buy up all the lights in the city, cover the stage with screens, put on a light and dance show, and still fail. But often behind such razzle-dazzle hides a lack of musical material. Everything must be balanced. Effects should not interfere with the music but complement it. And it often happens with us — you go to a show and can't understand where, actually, is the artist, where is the music? At our concerts, the most important thing is perfect sound. I've been to concerts of artists working, like us, in the crossover genre: Il Divo, 2Cellos, David Garrett. Everyone has excellent sound, but there is no show as such. It's not required.
When I look for a soloist for the group, first of all I listen to how they play and look at what diploma they have. If they graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, I'll continue talking to them. Gnesinka is also good, but Moscow Conservatory is better. The person must have perfect command of the instrument and possess potential for writing music. Equally important is how they look. With almost everyone, there were stories like — lose weight, get a haircut, change clothes, change your image. There's a rule in the group — you have to try to look like an artist everywhere, even off stage.
The first three years were a test for me. Each departure and change in lineup seemed like a catastrophe. Now I take everything calmly. Today, there is not a single soloist from the first lineup in Bel Suono. I don't blame anyone for anything. Each of the guys contributed their part. The main reason for leaving was lack of money. In the early years, everything we earned was invested in material and the group's development. You always have to think about what will happen tomorrow.
Probably, in the first years, our audience didn't care who played in the group. A soloist changed, and no one noticed. Now it's important to everyone: the audience, me, the guys themselves. Vasily Opalev and Kirill Gushchin have been working in the group for over 6 years. Anton Mosenkov came to us 2 years ago. Each of the guys is in their place. Everyone realizes what kind of halls we fill, how much the audience loves us. So everyone works with full dedication. I don't like the saying: "There are no irreplaceable people." There are irreplaceable people. There are unique and talented people you don't want to replace. It seems to me that the golden lineup in the group is right now.
Today, thanks to social networks, we have feedback from the audience. They often write: "I closed the lid of my piano after finishing music school and didn't touch the instrument for over 20 years. But after your concert, I realized that classical music is actually wonderful!" This is uplifting; inspiration appears and the desire to do more. People, thanks to our music, start to educate themselves and broaden their horizons.
Our audience is predominantly female, which is obvious... Men, as a rule, come to our concerts "along the way" — their women bring them. They come to sleep and please their wives. And then you read comments: "My husband didn't fall asleep once. He liked it so much!" These are like template messages. Many write about children who discover classical music. And you realize that we also have an educational mission. Many are pleasantly surprised when they come to our concert: what, classics can be like this too?! True, there is also a tiny percentage of snobs who write that we mock the classics, turning it into pop. And I think that this is precisely the charm of our time — there should be a lot of different music, and the audience will figure out for themselves whose concerts to go to!
Every artist should have the most popular piece that gives a boost to their career. For us, it was probably Vivaldi's "Summer." We made the video only 6 years after the composition was recorded. Then we shot a video for Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," then videos for original pieces. Our repertoire also includes Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody," and Bach's seemingly incompatible minor and major preludes. And many other things.
Of course, we mainly take things that are very popular in the classical world. Professionals will immediately say what piece we are playing; the majority of the audience doesn't always... They've heard something somewhere sometime. Many times we wanted to touch upon the legacy of Soviet composers or more recent contemporary authors alongside the classics. But there is always difficulty with copyright. Sometimes the author's heir asks for $5,000-10,000 for reworking a piece. We don't have the opportunity to pay such money, so we have to refuse. The more contemporary the piece, the less chance we have of playing it. Classics from the 18th-19th and early 20th centuries are not protected. So everyone uses them, and there are so many interpretations.
More and more, we are expanding our repertoire towards original music. A new album will be released soon, half of which will consist of the guys' original compositions. Such music makes me swell with pride.
Why am I sure that there should be original music in the group? For me, it's a kind of mark of quality. When you perform something by someone else — that's good. But when you can create something yourself, be a creator — that's a different story. This is the mission of a producer — to fully reveal the talent of their artist. The main thing is for talent to stay grounded, so that a sense of superiority and stardom doesn't appear... You have to remember that this is just your favorite job and you are lucky to share it with a huge number of people.
When you take on something new, it always seems like it's such a difficult thing, you won't be able to handle it. Producers — Igor Matvienko, Maxim Fadeev, Konstantin Meladze, etc. — seemed to me like a special caste of people. And when I started to succeed, I realized that any difficulty is surmountable. The main thing is to love your project, know the material inside and out, be able to keep the group together even in the hardest times, treat the group like your family, and be able to provide them with work.
In our country, there are masses of various nameless string quartets or trios. Everyone is sure that it's enough to lay Vivaldi's melody over a modern oom-pah rhythm, put on short skirts, and you can immediately start raking in money at corporate events. That doesn't happen. People, usually conservatory graduates, write to me privately: "Make us stars, help us get promoted." I honestly listen to everyone, watch, I'm interested, maybe I'll dig someone up. Haven't found anyone yet. Everything is very mediocre, there's no idea. And besides, I have so much work with Bel Suono. We still have the whole world to conquer.
