On Jan 7, 2022, with the hymn “Adeste fideles”, the concert “Christmas Music for Voice, Organ, and Flute”, the first in a row in different places in Siberia, started in the Catholic Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Novosibirsk, with Olesia Zhuravkina (mezzo soprano), Natalia Baginskaya (organ) and the Chilean, Moscow-based Jesuit Sebastián Prieto Silva (flute).

Such concerts have been taking place for six years, predominantly in the Novosibirsk Cathedral. They are organized by the Jesuit cultural centre “Inigo”, led by Fr. Janez Sever. Fr. Sever himself is also the one who takes pictures of the concerts.

From year to year the audience grows. Ever more people want to listen to the organ. After the concerts, some of them address the organizers and ask diverse questions concerning the music, the interior of the church, the Catholic faith and rites. Some acknowledge that before, when coming across the church, they would not enter it, but finally, for the concert, they did. Likewise, during the concerts, children love contemplating the Stations of the Cross.

Increasing Popularity

Every year, the Christmas concerts are particularly popular. People buy tickets early on to listen to beautiful music in the festive atmosphere of the church. This year, given the limitations due to the pandemic, we had to add more concerts, so that everybody might have the chance to join. Thus, on Jan 7, there were two concerts instead of one, with around 100 participants each.

Besides Novosibirsk, this concert also took place in Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk. In these smaller churches, there were around 70 participants in Kemerovo and 140 in Novokuznetsk. That is a lot if we keep in mind that the church in Novokuznetsk is far away from the centre and people have to go there by bus for more than an hour.

The contribution of Fr. Prieto

Whenever Fr. Sebastián Prieto can come from Moscow in order to take part, concerts are specific. In them, more Catholics join, whereas usually Catholics rarely come to listen to the concerts.

The second specific moment is the program of the Christmas concert, which is not easy to plan. It is important to explain to the musicians that these concerts are not just about beautiful Winter music or music from movies like “Home Alone” but music that illustrates the evangelical history of Christ’s birth. When Fr. Prieto takes part, there is no such difficulty. He directs the other musicians the right way, which leads to a wonderful concert that strongly impresses the audience.

Close interaction with the audience

During the concert, the musicians talked to the audience about the pieces they were about to play. Thus, Fr. Prieto presented the song “Dolce sentire” from Franco Zeffirelli’s film “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” about St. Francis of Assisi. “Dolce sentire” means “Sweet feeling”. It is played when the film shows St. Francis sitting under a tree and contemplating nature. Enjoying the vision of flowers, butterflies, and the sky, he feels a great love. Then he understands that this love comes not from himself but from God. He feels God’s love through nature and understands that we, humans, are similar to the other creatures, in a certain manner we exist like trees, the sun or the moon. Nature, trees, water, fire, the sky, the sun, the moon – all this exists for the sake of us, humans, but we also exist for their sake. These are profound and beautiful relations between the human kind and nature.

When talking about “Gabriel’s Oboe” by Ennio Morricone, which was written for Roland Joffé’s movie “The Mission”, Fr. Prieto shared that this is a movie “about us, Jesuits”. He started from the story of the Jesuit who was crucified by aborigines and thrown into the river. Consequently, his superior decided to go up into the jungle and to start the mission from zero by playing the oboe in order to come into contact with the people.

When Fr. Prieto finished this story, suddenly, a lady asked him, but the Jesuit whom they crucified, did he survive? That shows how strongly Fr. Prieto’s way of telling the story touched the audience.

His simple and beautiful words deeply touch the listeners. They always look forward to his participation, since they value him as both a musician and a human being. One of the participants shared her impression that the concert was truly a Christmas one, since it somehow was a continuation of the parish priest’s Christmas homily.

We can be confident that people left this concert full of hope for the joy which is proclaimed by its final song, Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night”.

Lina Gorodetskaya