Battleship Potemkin. A New Course

Sergei Eisenstein’s legendary film with a new soundtrack by Alexey Sysoev.

Programme

Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948)
Battleship Potemkin, 1925
Music by Alexey Sysoev, 2025 (world premiere)

In early 2025, to mark the centenary of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, the Union of Russian Composers, the Eisenstein Centre, and the Scientific and Creative Centre for Film Music at the Moscow Conservatory, supported by Russian Ministry of Culture, held a competition to create three new soundtracks for the classic film. The terms of the competition left composers free to choose whether they wrote a score for a solo instrument, chamber ensemble, or orchestra. A jury headed by the head of the Eisenstein Centre, the film historian Naum Kleiman, selected the winners, whose works will be performed live at screenings of Battleship Potemkin, to be held at the Illusion Cinema, the Zaryadye Concert Hall, and GES-2 House of Culture in Moscow in November this year.

Performed by

Yuri Favorin piano

Im SPIEGEL ensemble
Maria Magieva artistic director

Naum Kleiman, Sergei Uvarov project curators

Illustration: Alexandra Filippova

The screening of Eisenstein’s film at the GES-2 Playhouse will be accompanied by the premiere of music by Alexey Sysoev, written especially for pianist Yuri Favorin and the Im SPIEGEL ensemble.

Alexey Sysoev (b. 1972, Moscow) is a composer, performer, and improviser. He studied at the Moscow College of Improvisational Music and performs as a jazz pianist. In 2011, he completed a course of postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory. As an improviser, he has collaborated with musicians including Vladimir Tarasov, Toshimaru Nakamura, Boris Balchun, and others. Alexey Sysoev won the 2013 Golden Mask Award as Best Composer in Musical Theatre (for music to Philip Grigoryan’s production, Full Moon, 2012). He has also won prizes at the Sergei Kurekhin Grand Prix (2019) and the Russian Music 2.0 programme (2020).

Im SPIEGEL ensemble was created in 2023 by Maria Magieva, bringing together young Moscow musicians who are equally passionate about new academic music and the classic repertoire. Concerts by the ensemble enable works from different epochs to resonate and find their place in a contemporary context. The ensemble performs regularly at the Tchaikovsky Hall, the Zaryadye Concert Hall, and other leading venues in Moscow.

Yury Favorin (b. 1986, Moscow) is a pianist. He studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory, followed by a period of postgraduate study at the Conservatory under Mikhail Voskresensky and then at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg under Jacques Rouvier. In addition to his solo recitals, Favorin has performed with leading symphony and chamber orchestras in Russia, Europe, and Japan. He also explores free improvisational music in the Error 404 group, together with composer Alexey Sysoev and percussionist Dmitry Shchelkin.