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Working Title: Wunderkind (2012)

Original title: Tööpealkiri: Imelaps

Prodigy Between the Notes

Documentary Duration 57:45

Huviinfo

Without a devoted parent, even Mozart woudn't succeed.

In 2010, aged only 17, Alexander graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory with 2 Master Degrees in Composition and in Conducting, both with Excellence. Since then he has gone on to regularly conduct leading orchestras, and as a composer has numerous large-scale works commissioned and performed by major Orchestras and Opera companies around the world.

From film.

Natalia Kasatkina
“Alex is very young and exceptionally gifted; he has spontaneity and an almost childish clarity and purity of perception blended with a certain mature wisdom, beyond his years. We talked about music and our “Mowgli” libretto and Alex warmed to the idea. Just a month later we received the first part of the musical score and our cooperative undertaking thus began, much to our joy.”

Work on the ballet is now in full swing. In the autumn of 2006 an excerpt from the “Jungle Book” was first shown at Kasatkina and Vasilyev’s anniversary performance given at the White House. Leading dancers of the theatre are engaged in the performance: Nickolay Chevychelov as Mowgli, Natalia Ogneva as Agni, Velina Savkina as Messia (mother), Polina Kyrova as the she-wolf Raksha, Alyona Podavalova as Bagira, Sergei Belorybkin as Tabaki the jackal, Aidar Akhmetov as Sherkhan, Artyom Khoroshilov and other artists.

Vladimir Vasilyev
“Alex is unlike any other composer, although his music bears the hallmarks of a classical basis and compositional skills. It has very interesting movements - not that easy for orientation and interpretation into the language of classical choreography. It helps one understand the thinking of a new-age young man.”

!PREMIERE! M O W G L I. The State Classic Ballet Theatre (Classical Ballet) - BolshoiMoscow.com, http://www.bolshoimoscow.com/?perfomance=1859&page=catalog (4.02.2014).

UK teen conducts Moscow ballet

A British teenager is conducting the premiere of his own ballet, based on Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, at Moscow's New Opera Theatre.

Alex Prior, 14, from London, the great-great grandson of actor and director Konstantin Stanislavsky, wrote the score to the ballet, called Mowgli.
The work will also be performed at the Kremlin and the Bolshoi theatre, before touring internationally.
Mowgli has been choreographed by two former Bolshoi Ballet stars.
'Exceptionally gifted'
Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyev asked Alex, who studies at St Petersburg Conservatoire, to write a score for them after he sent them the music for his first ballet.
As Alex was preparing for his final rehearsals, he said: "I had my first ballet - a one-act ballet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - which I sent to the choreographers on the recommendation of various composers in Petersburg who liked it.

"They said they enjoyed the music very much, but they'd always dreamed of putting on Mowgli, or the Jungle Book.
"It was going to be a one-act ballet at first, but it grew into a two-act ballet."  He added: "The inspiration came from my ideas and from the book. It really goes along with different images from different things, like the animals and their characters, to things like the end of the tragedy which Mowgli faces, choosing between two mothers."

Ms Kasatkina is quoted on Alex's website as saying: "Alex is very young and exceptionally gifted. He has spontaneity and an almost childish clarity and purity of perception blended with a certain mature wisdom beyond his years.
"We talked about music and our Mowgli libretto and Alex warmed to the idea. Just a month later we received the first part of the musical score and our cooperative undertaking thus began, much to our joy."

 BBC NEWS / Europe / UK teen conducts Moscow ballet, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6768991.stm (3.02.2014).

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