Maksim Barbash

Part 2 of my crazy finger flexibility exercise is here — and yes, I made it harder. Enjoy the challenge 😉

Images in music don’t always appear, and they aren’t always fitting — but in this excerpt of one of my most beloved works, Bloch’s Rhapsody, I see King Solomon grieving over the fragility, injustice, and cruelty of this world. The suffering that comes to everyone, yet strikes each person differently. And all the hustle around — like those ants, busy with their affairs without a glance backward. But there is always room for hope. And this cry of the cello, soaring over a scorched field after battle — that is the image I live through together with Bloch’s music.

Imagine a cyberpunk future where iron and steel merge with flesh and blood. Chips pulse alongside our neurons. And in this perfectly functioning, robotised world, the question haunting every individual is the same: «What is a soul — and do I have one?»

Gordon’s Industry for solo cello, in our Anima Mechanica program, embodies that mechanical body — forged from steel and iron, soulless, incapable of self-reflection, pushing the limits of what a humanoid can endure.