«VAN GOGH. LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER»

Van Gogh. Letters to His Brother is a literary and musical composition based on the biography of the great Dutch painter. It is, however, not an ordinary account of life events but a musical confession. People’s Artist of Russia Evgeny Mironov recites Vincent Van Gogh’s letters of different years, which are a unique written testimony. On hundreds of pages, the dying artist conducts a desperate dialogue with the addressee, with himself, with God, and with the whole world.

Van Gogh had only one person to whom he could write with complete sincerity, his younger brother Theodorus (Theo). An art company employee of modest means, Theo took care for ten years of his brother, who was unemployed, unrecognized, art-obsessed, and devastated by illness.

Evgeny Mironov: «This is the story of an artist who wanted to live and work despite the circumstances till the last. Not thinking himself a great painter, he yet strove to leave something behind that would somehow justify his unbearably difficult life.».

The great artist’s feelings reflected in his letters determined the choice of the musical accompaniment. Performed by the Moscow Soloists chamber ensemble under the baton of People’s Artist of the USSR Yuri Bashmet, the production features works by Johannes Brahms, Alfred Schnittke, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Mahler, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

“The truth is, we cannot speak other thank by our paintings. But still, my dear brother, there is this that I have always told you, and I repeat it once more with all the earnestness that can be imparted by an effort of mind diligently fixed on trying to so as well as one can – I tell you again that I shall always consider that you are something other than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my meditation you have your part in the actual production of the same canvases, which even in the cataclysm retain their calm.
For this is what we have got to, and this is all or at least the chief thing that I can have to tell you at a moment of comparative crisis. At a moment when things are very strained between dealers in paintings by dead artists, and living artists.
Well, my work to me, I risk my life on it, and my reason has half foundered – all right – but you are not one of those dealers in men, as far as I know, and you can take sides, I find, truly acting with humanity, but what is the use?”

Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo found on the artist’s body on the day of his death, July 29, 1890