Moscow Notebook

Pablo Ganguli

6 June 2009

Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman.

Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman. What was I to do? This is not what I had in mind when I decided to bring a taste of Britain to Russia. I felt embarrassed. But stranger things have happened in my life. The reason behind my fear was my sudden ill health and an email from Nyman saying he wasn’t feeling his best due some kind of flu — apparently contracted in Mexico. Fortunately for us both and the rest of the British delegation to Russia, my health improved dramatically by the second day in the country. Mother Russia, so very caring.

Michael Nyman, Michael Portillo, Bella Freud and Hanif Kureishi were among the 150 enthusiastic guests who came to show their support at the London launch party of AngloMockBa, our British-Russian cultural relations festival. I founded this festival two years ago; the first was held in St Petersburg under the name ‘Jewel of Russia’. We later discovered that it wasn’t a clever choice of a name as there was a vodka brand operating under that name. And the last thing we wanted, apart from spreading swine flu, was to run a vodka festival that celebrated British-Russian links. In St Petersburg, the programme focused mainly on opera and classical music, thanks to the involvement of Mariinsky’s Valery Gergiev and Britain’s Thomas Ades. The festival itself had transformed into a legendary opera, thanks to its flamboyant participants Sir Norman Rosenthal and Jon Snow who boosted the programme with invaluable non-musical events.

This time, some might describe AngloMockBa as more like a cultural freak show than a respectable gathering of culture vultures. Among other things, we had a naked British female artist lying on the floor with eyes closed wanting people to put tape on her. Don’t ask me why. Michael Nyman complained that the antique-looking French piano was out of tune. One of the artists decided to hole up in another room rather than appear at their own event. And a Russian band sang English songs penned by a Jamaican in 1980s New York style while the Russian police barged into the party uninvited and took the host away. The festival’s British team didn’t speak a word of Russian and the local Russian team didn’t understand any English. Mobile phone communication between the two groups was not of much use.

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