Category: Music

“Fortune is like a bird in a wood. If we know how to whistle to her she will come to us.” —from pianist Ashley Wass’s biography on X, unattributed 

I: The Amateur  

About two years ago, a renowned European musician received a call from his agency with an offer for an unusual gig. A Dubai concert promoter named Classical Music Development Initiative (CMDI) wanted to pay him a fee on par with what he earns performing concertos with top orchestras, plus business class flights and a four-night stay in a five-star hotel, to perform a work for soloist and orchestra by a composer the musician had never heard of. The composer was named Alexey Shor. 

The piece was a rudimentary tonal work, and it reminded the performer of the classical music one might hear in a dentist’s waiting room: a toothless pastiche of Beethoven, Brahms, and Grieg. 

The musician, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions, had no artistic interest in this composition. But like many freelance musicians at the time, he was still feeling the financial anxiety of the pandemic closures. Despite his reservations, he took the gig. 

Many aspects of the concert felt slapdash. “It was clear that the focus wasn’t on putting on an excellent concert,” he said. Looking back, he felt ambivalent about the experience. On the one hand, he worried about compromising his artistic principles, and said that if he hadn’t been available for the Shor concert, he “wouldn’t have spent a second regretting it.” Still, he had seen online that many famous musicians, including Steven Isserlis, Maxim Vengerov, Ray Chen, Denis Kozhukhin, Gautier Capuçon, Mikhail Pletnev, Daniel Lozakovich, James Ehnes, Behzod Abduraimov, Evgeny Kissin, and more, were not just performing the composer’s music, but praising it enthusiastically. 

“If the saints allow themselves to be bought,” he thought to himself, “then so can I.” 

The composer had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Now he was engaging the world’s best soloists to perform his music—compositions that some musicians and critics found amateurish at best and soulless at worst. 

So who was Alexey Shor? 

Articles online gave a basic outline of Shor’s biography. He was born in 1970 in Belaya Tserkov outside Kyiv, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. A mathematician with a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University, he had studied at Moscow State University before moving to Israel in 1991, immediately followed by the United States. He began composing as an adult. 

But that was the barest sketch of the story. In an investigation for the Times of Malta, the journalist Jacob Borg learned that Shor’s real name was Alexey Vladimorovitch Kononenko. (VAN confirmed this independently.) Kononenko wasn’t just a mathematician—he was a brilliant mathematician. And he was spectacularly wealthy.    

After receiving his doctorate, Kononenko initially pursued a career in academia. Between 1996 and 1998, he was a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. But afterward, as Gregory Zuckerman outlines in his book The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, Kononenko wanted a tenure track offer from Princeton, Harvard or the University of Chicago. “He had achieved an awful lot, but he could have had more perspective and patience,” an academic peer told Zuckerman. Kononenko changed tack, and in 1999, he was hired as a quantitative researcher at Renaissance Technologies, or RenTech, the Long Island hedge fund founded by the mathematician Jim Simons in 1982. The firm filled its ranks with mathematicians and scientists, and used data modeling and analysis, rather than hustle and intuition, to guide its trades. Among hedge funds, its reputation is closer to that of a high-end research institute than a typical profit vehicle. 

“Simons created the greatest moneymaking machine in financial history,” Zuckerman writes. By 2019, the fund’s flagship fund Medallion, the most profitable fund in the organization—that only allows company employees to invest—had accrued over $100 billion in trading gains. Dubbed “the blackest box in all of finance” by Bloomberg in 2016, Medallion has long courted mystery—employees sign stringent NDAs—especially as its performance has seemed impervious to international trends. As other funds faltered during the financial crash of 2008, the Medallion fund soared 82%. Two years later, while competitors were recovering slowly, Medallion was managing $10 billion of investment, with returns hitting 65%. 

And as RenTech got rich, so too did its employees. In 2008 alone, Simons made personal profits of over $2 billion. Kononenko was also rising in seniority through the company, and, in 2003, he became co-head of the fund’s equities research group. He stayed with RenTech until 2016, when he could reflect on his role in one of the most remarkable runs in financial history. 

Publicly available New York property records give some idea of the wealth Kononenko accrued while at RenTech. Initially buying under his own name, before operating through a company named Sento Gosho LLC—a Japanese theme found in other Kononenko-linked companies like Taiko Asset Management LLC and Yoshiwara Properties—in 2008 and 2010, Kononenko bought two condos on the 44th floor of 151 East 58th Street in New York for a combined total of over $30 million, alongside another downtown Manhattan condo purchased for $2 million in 2009. In 2017, a fellow owner of a condo on the 44th floor sold up. This turned out to be Beyoncé Knowles. 

Asked why he was calling himself Shor, Kononenko told the Times of Malta, “My actual last name is quite a mouthful. It’s much easier to say and remember Shor as opposed to Kononenko.” 

So far, Kononenko’s story was an archetypal American one. Despite a modest upbringing, he had parlayed his intelligence into a high-level position with one of the world’s most prestigious private financial institutions—and he was making a killing. He also listened to classical music avidly.  

In 2010, he began composing. But composing has an extraordinarily high barrier to entry. It requires detailed knowledge of music theory, instrumental technique, score reading, and the repertoire. Starting out in his early 40s, Kononenko was the same age as many trained composers are when they write their first mature works. 

There was a lot of ground to cover. “I didn’t play any instruments as a kid, as I was very busy with math and science,” Kononenko told VAN. “I did attend concerts and listened to music whenever I had a free moment, but I never played an instrument. Now, I can play the piano a little, but not very well.” He decided to focus on composition. 

In 2012, Kononenko celebrated the first public performances of his works under the name Alexey Shor. He described his entry into the classical music scene to Classical Explorer: David Aaron Carpenter, an American violist who is the founder and artistic director of the Salomé Chamber Orchestra, and who runs Carpenter Fine Violins and Collectibles with his siblings, discovered Shor’s scores lying around his apartment. Carpenter played through them, asking Shor, “This is really good music, who wrote it?” 

In an email, Carpenter described Shor as “a visionary composer who has tirelessly advocated for the viola’s solo potential,” adding that the audience’s reaction to the premiere of Shor’s debut composition “Murka from Odessa: Symphonic Adventure,” a collaboration with the Israeli composer and arranger Oran Eldor, was “nothing short of breathtaking.” 

Though some musicians who have spoken to VAN have expressed skepticism, Shor’s music has found many admirers, especially among professional musicians. “In the midst of the world of conflict and destruction that we find ourselves in,” the Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich has written, “the music of Alexey Shor is a source of light.” Steven Isserlis told The Strad that Shor’s “Musical Pilgrimage” for cello and orchestra, which he performed in 2022, is “a very warm-hearted work and I like challenges.” Guy Braunstein, the former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, played Shor’s “Flight of the Falcon” in 2018. He told VAN that Shor’s music reminded him of Stravinsky and Arvo Pärt’s approaches to  reexamining the tradition. “It’s on the surface very simplistic, but there are of course many twists,” he said. “Alexey has found his own direction. The basis of the harmonic language is very simple and very old, but of course he made it his own.” 

When Shor has been reviewed by independent critics, he’s found less admiration. Geoff Brown, writing for the Times of London in 2020, described Shor’s works as “cloying banalities”: “would-be melodious 19th-century pastiches lacking all guts and spine.” In a review for New York Classical Review of Shor’s “Travel Notebook” for piano and orchestra, VAN contributor George Grella used a similar phrase, saying the piece included  “the most obvious banalities of sentiment and place.” 

“The rhythmic and melodic flavors for Barcelona, Rome, et al were all ersatz,” Grella continued. “Occasionally the music showed a flash of personality, but in the main it was without a distinctive style and anonymous.”

Some of Shor’s pieces, like “Musical Pilgrimage” or “Flight of the Falcon,” are harmonically simple (containing, for long stretches, no chord more complex than a dominant seventh); rhythmically corseted, hewing closely the beat and to clichéd patterns; and orchestrated in a blunt, blocky manner. Other pieces, like “Carpe Diem” for violin and orchestra or “Travel Notebook,” may be better constructed, but lack compositional development and dramaturgy. 

What makes a Shor work identifiable? According to some musicians, it is the mismatch between the rudimentary craftsmanship of the compositions and the skill with which those same compositions have been performed. 

Andrew Trovato, an American composer who uses elements of tonality in his works, said that “the high level of playing masks the compositional faults” in Shor’s music, adding that the musical resources available to Shor are ones that most composers can only dream of. The pieces put together a series of pretty individual moments that together “lack a fluid train of thought and development,” Trovato said. Multiple musicians pointed out that Shor’s work reminds them of music composed by artificial intelligence. 

As a composer, sources described Shor as perhaps musically naive, but honorable and generous. That characterization was markedly different from his reputation at RenTech, where he was considered brilliant yet combative. In musical circles, he was humble—at least before his career took off. 

Classical music could not exist without the patronage of the wealthy, and, like Kononenko, those patrons were often active participants in music-making. Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia, offered the flute virtuoso Johann Joachim Quantz an 800% salary increase from his existing position at Dresden if he taught him at court; the monarch composed 121 of his own solo sonatas, as well as concertos and other pieces for the instrument. Paul Sacher was a modestly successful conductor before he married into the F. Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceuticals fortune; after taking a seat on the conglomerate’s board of directors, he spent lavishly on new music commissions, opened an archive for musical manuscripts in Basel, and continued to conduct. Recently, the composer Gordon Getty and his wife Ann sold some $200 million worth of art in order to donate money to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, and other institutions. Getty’s works have been conducted by Kent Nagano, among many other leading artists. 

Unlike these men, Kononenko made his own fortune. But besides that crucial difference, at the beginning of his musical career he seemed to fit easily into the archetype of the gentleman composer: a wealthy man with modest talent and a passionate love for music. That is, until he encountered Konstantin Ishkhanov, a businessman and philanthropist with numerous apparent links to the Russian state.  

II: The Island

In March 2013, Joseph Muscat, leader of Malta’s center-left Labour Party, returned his party to power after 15 years in opposition. But his tenure did little to ease the corruption that afflicts the country. In 2017, the fearsome investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed there. When judges eventually concluded an inquiry into her death in 2021, they described Malta “moving towards a situation which could be qualified as a mafia state.”

In September 2013, Muscat introduced the Citizenship by Investment in Malta Program, commonly referred to as the “Golden Passport” scheme, allowing wealthy people from around the world to acquire citizenship for large sums of money, but with few other strings attached. (A month later, Muscat introduced legislation requiring “Golden Passport” applicants to buy or lease property on the island, leading to a boom time for estate agents and property developers.) Malta, already a haven for financial services, was now a gateway to residency in any of the European Union’s 27 member states. The Times of Malta reported that over half of applications in the scheme’s first year came from Russian nationals. The scheme was closed to Russians following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in the spring of 2022, but not before the two countries had become inextricably linked: financially, diplomatically, and culturally.

One of the beneficiaries of the passport scheme was Kononenko. Already a citizen of Israel, the United States, and the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, he decided to apply for Maltese citizenship too. (“While United States citizenship is considered a gold standard, it is not always safe to travel and remain as an American in many parts of the world, particularly as an American Jew,” he explained to the Times of Malta. “Similarly, Israeli citizenship presents its own set of challenges in many parts of the world.”) 

According to documents revealed by the Passport Papers leak, Kononenko began his application for Maltese citizenship in 2014, quickly organizing a long-term property lease, a Maltese bank account, and the requisite substantial payments. His application documents state a special interest in establishing musical ties to Malta. “One of my main hobbies is music, specifically composition, and I look forward to attending the music festivals in Malta,” he wrote, citing the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra as an organization he would seek to join. (Kononenko declined to comment on the process of acquiring Maltese citizenship.)  

“Would it be helpful for a successful citizenship application if Alexey arranged for his compositions to be played by musicians at a Malta music festival?” asked an employee of Henley & Partners, the law firm that handled all Golden Passport applications. 

It would be. But somebody would need to arrange for those performances of Shor’s compositions. That person was Konstantin Ishkhanov. 

Like Kononenko, Ishkhanov arrived late to the cultural sphere. Also like Kononenko, most of the information available online about Ishkhanov is light on biographical detail. Musicians who interacted with Ishkhanov told VAN that he didn’t discuss his past with them. But at the same time Kononenko was trying his hand at composition, Ishkhanov was finding a path for himself as a cultural philanthropist. Bald, tanned, and solidly built, a photo that accompanies several early articles about him shows Ishkhanov at a large wooden desk, wearing a blue suit and looking like a titan of industry.  

According to a PowerPoint presentation created to promote his philanthropic work, Ishkhanov had been interested in classical music “since childhood, when musicians and artists would frequent the family home due to his mother’s piano performances and other artistic activities.” Meanwhile, his career was in oil engineering. Born in Baku in 1970—the same year as Kononenko—Ishkhanov entered the Azerbaijan Institute of Oil and Chemistry in 1987, after leaving secondary school. He moved to Moscow’s Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in 1993, where he specialized in “information-measuring and computing equipment.” (The Armenian investigative outlet Hetq reported that Ishkhanov also studied at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.) 

Having qualified as an engineer, Ishkhanov spent 14 years in the Russian oil and gas sector, as a director at RANKO (Russian-American Oil and Gas Company) and later as a leader of the Electroservice and Promtehelektro groups of companies. 

In 2007, Ishkhanov moved to Malta. From this European base, he founded several cultural organizations with similar names. Those included the for-profit European Centre for Culture & Arts GmbH (ECCA), which was based in Cologne and presented concerts around Germany and emphasized Russian music performed by Russian artists. At the time, the firm put on events with Russisches Haus, a cultural outreach organization that public prosecutors in Berlin are currently investigating for alleged links to Rossotrudnichestvo, the cultural outreach department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

“Rossotrudnichestvo is not like the British Council,” Christopher Steele, a British intelligence officer, Russia expert, and director of Orbis Business Intelligence, told VAN. “It’s a state actor with a track record of influence operations.” The organization is currently led by Yevgeny Primakov Jr., grandson of Yevgeny Primakov, who served as Russian Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, and was director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from 1991 to 1996. (Rossotrudnichestvo is suspected of links to Russian intelligence and has been on the European Union sanctions list since July 2022. ) 

According to earlier versions of the website, ECCA GmbH received funding from the “government of Moscow, the Russian General Consulate,” and other, unnamed “European organizations.” (The website is now offline.) Other Ishkhanov-linked companies in Germany include the non-profit Europäischer Kulturförderverein (Club for the Support of European Culture) in Gräfelfing, founded in 2019 by Ishkhanov, his wife Tatyana Ishkhanova, and Regina Goldfarb. Goldfarb, who helps Ishkhanov organize concerts, is named in public records as the manager of another defunct four-letter, for-profit company: the Russian-German Culture Club UG (RGCC), also based in Cologne. It is not clear what activities the latter two companies organized. Reached by phone, Goldfarb declined to comment.  

In Malta, Ishkhanov was the head of the Maltese-Russian Friendship Foundation (MRFF), which published the Maltese Herald, a newsletter written in Russian and English. But Ishkhanov’s first cultural project to truly take off was the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC), a non-profit foundation that was registered in Malta in February 2015. The foundation presented a wider range of events than ECCA, but still emphasized Russian music and Russian artists, and was registered to the same address as the Maltese chapter of the Russian Cultural Centre in Valletta. 

Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, references to EUFSC’s links to the Russian government were scrubbed: In January 2022, the “About” section of the EUFSC’s website mentioned the Embassy of the Russian Federation, but by October of that year, that mention was missing. 

All governments use culture to promote their political interests; in the 20th century, the Central Intelligence Agency famously supported modern American artists as part of its effort to “propagate the virtues of Western democratic culture.” In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, classical music has served as a potent tool of influence, though a more subtle one than troll farms, election inference, and disinformation.  

In 2014, Putin signed a decree encouraging the use of music to strategically “encourage a positive image of Russia on the international level,” the musicologist Friedrich Geiger writes. At the same time, the Russian government warned against art opposed to “traditional values.” “No experiments with form can justify the substance that contradicts the values traditional for our society,” a Ministry of Culture statement from the time said. (Like many other musicians working today, Kononenko appears to compose tonal music out of a genuine preference for that style. “Generally, I don’t closely follow contemporary music,” he told VAN. “Occasionally, I come across something that piques my interest, but I usually attend concerts and listen at home to more traditional classical music.”) 

The Russian regime has employed classical music performances to represent moral superiority over enemies such as the Islamic State and to emotionally equate the invasion of Ukraine with the nation’s heroic efforts against Nazi Germany in World War II. It sees itself in a civilizational struggle with the West, and culture as an important weapon in that struggle. To that end, the Russian government has lavished funding and opportunities on classical music figures at home and abroad in an apparent attempt to secure loyal, long-term advocates for its worldview. 

One such figure is the German culture manager Hans-Joachim Frey. Frey had a high profile career in central Europe, serving as director of operations and director of opera at the Semperoper in Dresden (where, as director of the SemperOpernBall, he bestowed a medal on Putin), managing director of the Theater Bremen, and artistic director of the the Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria. In these roles, Frey featured some ferociously pro-government Russian artists, including Sergei Roldugin, the cellist alleged to be helping Putin disguise his personal fortune. According to Frey, Roldugin’s St. Petersburg Music House paid fees and travel costs for musicians such as Miroslav Kultyshev and Philipp Kopachevsky to perform in Linz. (Both have also performed Shor’s music.) 

A composition by Shor was also heard at an event put on by Roldugin’s foundation: the piano suite “Childhood Memories” was featured at a 2019 recital given by pianist Alexei Kuznetsov at Kyrgyz National Conservatory in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, titled “Embassy of Musical Mastery.” The concert was organized by St. Petersburg Music House “in cooperation with Rossotrudnichestvo.” ([I] don’t know anything about the concert you are mentioning,” Kononenko told VAN.) 

In September 2019, Frey, meanwhile the artistic director of the Sirius Talent and Success Educational Foundation in Sochi, was photographed at a ball with Aleksandra Mitiureva, an elegant woman who works with Ishkhanov. According to LinkedIn, Mitiureva was employed by the European Foundation for Support of Culture’s international department in Malta, and later at the Dubai concert promoter Classical Music Development Initiative.

“I have never been a Russian citizen… have never received any payments from any Russian sources; and don’t know any Russian diplomats or officials,” Kononenko said. “(Of course, it’s possible I met some in passing somewhere).” 

“I refrain from making political comments, as I believe music is the only topic on which it makes sense for anyone to care about my views,” Kononenko told VAN. “Privately, however, I detest Russian aggression, pray for Ukraine, and try to help my Ukrainian friends whenever I can. One fact that made it into open sources is that I helped the Kyiv Virtuosi orchestra escape the war and to live in Italy for two years.”

Following a detailed request for comment, VAN received an email from Kononenko’s German lawyer, Prof. Dr. Christian Schertz, saying that this request for comment contained false allegations; that it is not Kononenko’s task to refute those allegations; and that publishing the unspecified false allegations would lead him to take legal action against VAN using all the means at his disposal. Ishkhanov and Mitiureva did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

Several musicians and classical music industry figures contacted by VAN for this story said they suspected that Ishkhanov and his organizations—though not Kononenko—had links to the Russian government or private Russian wealth during their work with his organizations, but that politics didn’t come up at all during that work. Some told VAN that despite doubts about the source of the funding, they were happy to accept it, as long as it was being spent on classical music. 

Kononenko and Ishkhanov began appearing together in 2015, when Kononenko sponsored a series of concerts in Malta that included his music. After that, Ishkhanov’s philanthropic activities began heavily emphasizing Shor’s compositions in their programming. In fact, Shor’s works often seemed to be the only unifying factor in EUFSC activities, which featured concerts covering everything from Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Chopin programs to an event celebrating the 330th anniversary of the balalaika. And much more: Between 2014 and 2023, the foundation put on some 144 events in Malta, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Italy, Armenia, the United States, and Russia, from one-off concerts to festivals, competitions, masterclasses, galas, and an ice show. Nearly every one of these events included at least one work by Alexey Shor. A highlight of these activities was the September 2018 premiere of Shor’s “ballet with operatic elements,” titled “Crystal Palace,” at the Great Hall of the State Kremlin Palace.  

“Having your internationally renowned compositions at the concerts was a great privilege,” Ishkhanov and Alan Chircop, artistic director of the Malta International Music Festival, told Kononenko in an email following two concerts Kononenko sponsored in Malta in 2015. “Your financial support and personal involvement helped make these concerts a resounding success… We trust that with your active support and involvement, the music life and culture in Malta will be truly enriched.” (The email was included in Kononenko’s citizenship application, which was part of the Passport Papers leak.) 

At one concert in Malta, Kononenko was named as sponsor and A. Shor as composer. They were, of course, the same person. 

Ishkhanov also showed that, apparently by deploying Kononenko’s fortune, he could bring the former mathematician’s compositions to the world’s great concert halls, performed by some of the best instrumentalists alive. Today, the name Alexey Shor has graced programs at Berlin’s Philharmonie, the Barbican Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw and Wigmore Hall, and has been performed by many of the world’s best soloists. 

It’s unclear whether these musicians’ motives have been aesthetic, mercenary, or both. Isserlis, Vengerov, Chen, Kozukhin, Capuçon, Pletnev, Lozakovich, Ehnes, Abduraimov, and Kissin declined to discuss Shor’s music when contacted by VAN. “I know people who earned a one bedroom apartment,” said a performer, “or even a two bedroom apartment, just on Shor’s music.” 

As Shor’s status rose, the purported arrogant streak familiar from his days at RenTech began emerging in a musical context. He demanded, at times contractually, that leading musicians perform his works by heart—more a symbol of devotion than proof of interpretative quality—and he would only support concerts if they included his music. If composing had started as a hobby for him, he now seemed to be aiming for musical success and saturation. (Kononenko declined to comment on his pursuit of musical prestige.)  

A source who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation described Kononenko as a largely apolitical person, but keen for musical success. Kononenko is “incredibly ambitious as a tornado,” the source said.  

The European Foundation for Support of Culture rapidly established itself as a leading philanthropic organization in Malta’s classical music circles. According to reporting by Jacob Borg for the Times of Malta, the foundation was responsible for an especially abrupt rise in the Malta Philharmonic’s fortunes. The ensemble, which one source described as a “sleepy island orchestra,” quickly found itself with a demanding international touring schedule, including a tour with dates at Carnegie Hall and the Mariinsky Theater.

Citing confidential sources, Borg wrote that Ishkhanov had established “considerable” influence at the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2017, Ishkhanov’s son Dmitry, a pianist, performed with the ensemble in their season closing concert. (The Malta Philharmonic told the Times of Malta it received less than €10,000 from the foundation. The orchestra did not respond to a separate request for comment from VAN.) 

In a 2017 op-ed, Russian Ambassador to Malta Vladimir Malygin singled out Ishkhanov, Shor, and EUFSC for praise, saying the foundation has “been doing a remarkable job… bringing the best of Russian culture to Malta.” In 2014, Malygin had been expelled from Lithuania after the government accused him of spying under the cover of his title of Consul General. Malta was his next posting, and Malygin received the Order of Friendship by a Putin decree “for his significant contribution to the implementation of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation.” (Malygin left Malta in 2021. The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Malta did not respond to a request for comment.)    

In 2018, the foundation reached the peak of its influence. Malta’s capital, Valletta, was named European Capital of Culture; meanwhile, the European Foundation for the Support of Culture put on both the Malta International Music Festival (with 11 works by Shor and a starry international cast) and the Malta International Piano Competition (with 11 different qualifying competitions leading to a final in Malta and a first prize of €100,000). In 2018, Aleksandra Mitiureva, the EUFSC employee photographed with Hans-Joachim Frey, was shown in an Instagram post with the Maltese Ambassador to Russia, Pierre Clive Agius. “Successful negotiations with the Ambassador,” she wrote in the caption. “Sure we will do great things together.” 

In 2019, Konstantin Ishkhanov was honored by the Malta Arts Council for his “exceptional contribution” to cultural life” on the island. The same year, the Association for Support of Cultural Initiatives (APKI), a company founded by Mitiureva that represented the EUFSC in Russia, co-hosted a Maltese conference on liquified natural gas that was attended by international business interests including representatives for Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. 

A website for APKI, now offline, described its mission as putting on “events in the sphere of strengthening the spiritual values of Russian and world culture in the territory of the Russian Federation and abroad… A special place in the activities of the Association is the promotion of classical music in all its manifestations.” 

Mitiureva would do “everything necessary to develop cultural relations between Russia and Malta,” she told the magazine of Ishkhanov’s Maltese-Russian Friendship Foundation, the Maltese Herald. This included a collaboration between APKI, EUFSC and the Palace of the Kremlin to stage Shor’s ballet “Crystal Palace” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and Malta. (After APKI’s revenue rose from 3.17m Rubles in 2017 to 59.45m Rubles in a single year—an increase of 1775%—Mitiureva resigned from her post in 2019, and the company was liquidated in 2021. APKI’s website has been deleted, and Mitiureva has since changed her surname to Miteran.)

In 2020, the Maltese government concluded a due diligence report on the Malta Philharmonic’s relationship with donors, which gave the orchestra the all-clear to continue working with Ishkhanov. (It did not release the report, and the orchestra rejected Times of Malta freedom of information requests seeking its contracts with the European Foundation for Support of Culture. In April, the Maltese data protection commissioner ordered the Malta Philharmonic to comply with the newspaper’s request.) 

In July 2023, Sergei Smbatyan, who had been the orchestra’s principal conductor since January 2022, and whose father Armen, a trained musician who later served as the Armenian Ambassador to Russia, was briefly suspended from his post. Publicly petitioning in Sergei Symbatyan’s support was an unusual coalition of cultural figures including Russian pianist Alexander Romanovsky, the Royal College of Music professor suspended for playing outside a bombed-out Mariupol Theater; Mikhail Shvidkoy, the Special Envoy of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cultural Cooperation; and seven of Armenia’s finest Greco-Roman wrestlers. In October, Smbatyan was reinstated to his MPO position and, through a representative, said he will conduct at least five concerts as Principal Conductor of the Malta Philharmonic in the 2024–25 season, though he will not conduct any music by Shor there. (Smbatyan is scheduled to conduct Shor’s music in Armenia at the end of the month.).

As one source who has followed the classical music scene in Malta for the past decade told VAN, the island seemed like the perfect place to start an opaque music empire. But as early as June 2022, not long after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EUFSC roadshow in Malta had mostly departed. As quickly as the foundation had built a “Mediterranean hub for creativity, diversity and cultural activity,” it was gone. In April 2024, the Times of Malta reported that all ties between the Malta Philharmonic and EUFSC had been severed more than 18 months ago. Even the EUFSC itself seemed to shut down. Their last Facebook post was in November 2022, and entries on their website stopped around a similar time.

The final entries on the EUFSC events page give hints as to the future—two tours of Eurasia of Maltese performers Joseph Calleja and Alan Chircop, music festivals in Latvia and Armenia, and a competition in Dubai. But it seems that Ishkhanov and Kononenko didn’t need Malta anymore. Now, they had their own world. 

III: Welcome to Shorworld 

Like a town built around a mine, an entire ecology has sprung up around the seemingly inexhaustible resources of Kononenko’s fortune and Ishkhanov’s energy as an organizer. That ecology is Shorworld: a labyrinthine network that intersects with the mainstream classical music industry while duplicating many of its structures. And though the organizations have left Malta, they seem to have found a suitable new base in Dubai, which has become a hub for Russian intelligence and business interests following the invasion of Ukraine.  

Shorworld encompasses celebrity musicians who have endorsed Shor and Ishkhanov (though sometimes in evasive terms). It includes orchestras, from the London Symphony Orchestra to the Tokyo Philharmonic, whose performances of his music Shor has collected with Pokemon-worthy completism. It has its own circuit of festivals where Shor is featured, and its own network of competitions where Shor is required repertoire. And it produces a steady stream of sponsored content in the classical music publications.

This includes VAN Magazine. In August 2021, an EUFSC representative named Aleksandra Ogneva booked sponsored articles on our website promoting the Classic Piano International Piano Competition in Dubai. VAN hosted two sponsored articles that ran over two weeks for a fee of €1,350. (The articles were clearly marked as advertisements, and VAN editors played no part in writing them.) According to her LinkedIn resumé, Ogneva served as a cultural attaché for the Russian Embassy in Germany between 2005 and 2012. She did not reply to a request for comment. 

In Dubai, Ishkhanov and his organizations replicated a structure familiar from their time in Malta: the large-scale, international music competition. Yet even by the cozy standards of classical music competitions, a striking number of generous prizes have been given from teachers to students or shared among colleagues in this ecosystem.  

The 2024 Classic Piano International Competition consisted of 14 qualifying rounds leading to a grand finale in Dubai. In the Vienna qualifier, all three winners were students of chief juror Pavel Gililov. (Gililov, a professor at the Mozarteum, teaches piano to Ishkhanov’s son Dmitry, whom the tabloid Bild once dubbed a “Mini-Mozart.” Reached by phone, Gililov declined to comment.) In Lyon, all three podium places were given to former or current students of jurors. In the UK qualifier, two of the three podium places were given to former or current students of jurors Gililov or Ashley Wass. In Warsaw, first and third place went to students of a juror. Analysis by VAN shows that over  €100,000 of prize money passed from teachers to former or current students at this round of the competition.

These are far from isolated incidents. At Classic Strings 2022, the winner, Israel Philharmonic concertmaster Dumitru Pocitari, won first prize and €100,000 in total, while the orchestra’s general manager sat on the jury. Two years later, Andrey Gugnin won the Classic Piano competition. Gugnin has been playing Shor’s music since at least 2017. 

Last month, Boris Brovtsyn, an established violin soloist and chamber musician, won the London round of the Classic Violin Olympus competition, receiving €20,000 in prize money. The jury included Pavel Vernikov, a colleague of Brovtsyn at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien and “one of the most sought-after teachers in the world right now,” as Brovtsyn put it. It also included Robin Wilson, another colleague of Brovtsyn from the violin department at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, England. (“One doesn’t choose their juries,” Brovtsyn said. Though he knew Vernikov would be on the jury, he felt “quite uneasy” when he realized Wilson would be adjudicating; Brovtsyn said his first proper interaction with Wilson was after the competition, when Brovtsyn apologized for the “awkward position” he had put Wilson in.) Brovtsyn will progress to the finals of the competition in Dubai in April 2025, where he will compete for a share of a total prize fund of €310,000. 

Even when artists win competitions without connections to Shor and Ishkhanov—Brovtsyn, who has previously performed Shor’s Fifth Violin Concerto, said he had only met the composer once—the prizes seem designed to bring them closer into the two mens’ orbit. In 2021, the pianist Miroslav Kultyshev won the InClassica “Classic Piano” International Piano Competition. He received €100,000, plus another €100,000 doled out over 20 concerts. Kultyshev has so far played 10 of those concerts, in Europe’s most prestigious venues, including the Musikverein in Vienna, the Rudolfinum in Prague, and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The contract states that he must play music by Shor on each of the 20 programs. 

“Logic and harmony—this is all wonderful, but the most important thing is that I saw that this music was written by a good person,” Kultyshev said of Shor’s music. “It is very sincere and, I would say, it comes from the right place.”

The ecosystem is also diversifying. In October 2022, Shor was named the first ever Associate Composer of the Yehudi Menuhin School, a prestigious specialist music school for students aged 8 to 19. In the announcement, Music Director Ashley Wass said he was “immediately struck by the exceptional craftsmanship” of Shor/Pletnev’s Piano Sonata. “This is 21st Century music which is distinctive, communicative, and deeply moving, and I’m hugely excited at the prospect of our pupils having the opportunity to explore Alexey’s musical oeuvre.” 

It is unclear what the Associate Composer role entails, what the process of recruitment involved, or how much work Shor has done at the school so far. But since the appointment, Wass has completed a nine-date Classical Music Development Initiative-backed tour of the UK playing Shor’s music; was a jury member on two EUFSC/CMDI competitions; and led CMDI masterclasses in Austria and Italy. (Wass didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)

After the European Foundation for Support of Culture left Malta, Ishkhanov and his colleague, Aleksandra Mitiureva, founded two similar organizations in Dubai. Ishkhanov is named as the director of the Classical Music Development Initiative, while Mitiureva runs the associated SAMIT Event Group. The firm has presented  Shor’s ballet “A Thousand Tales” in Bahrain, among other projects, and hosts a concert series called VIP Classical. With a board consisting of Mitiureva and Erik Essiger, founder of financial services provider Emirates Capital and a previous member of the German-Russian Co-operation Council, VIP Classical caters primarily to diplomats and other luminaries under the banner “Music unites cultures.” 

Mitiureva has previous experience uniting business and diplomatic interests using classical music, though with more targeted aims, through her work at APKI. In April 2019, when APKI co-hosted the Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Congress, in Malta, APKI organized for delegates to attend a concert of the Malta International Music Festival, hosted by the EUFSC. VIP Classical hosts performers such as Pletnev, Wass, Clara-Jumi Kang and Sunwook Kim, and Denis Kozhukhin, whose recital was attended by ambassadors from Canada, Finland, Panama, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda and Moldova.

Works by Shor were on each of those artist’s programs. 

Immediately following the performance, the musician who played Shor in Dubai two years ago swore that he would never play the composer’s work again. “I did it once for the good money,” he said, “but in and of itself, it’s just too shitty.” 

Then he was asked to perform another handful of Shor concerts. The combination of high fees, low required practice time, passive peer pressure, and broad funding freezes for classical music performances meant that the musician felt unable to say no. He performed the work twice more, in Europe this time, for the same fee and with the same uncanny feeling: that reaching audiences with excellent performances wasn’t quite the point. Would he do it again in the future? “Hopefully,” he said, “that won’t be necessary.” ¶

Hartmut Welscher and Les Vynogradov contributed reporting.

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When La Scala reopens its doors tomorrow after the summer closure the audience will find tablets fitted in front of their seat. This means behind the seat in front, in most cases.

It is part of a series of improvements and enhancements coming twenty years after the theatre’s major refurbishment which concluded in 2004.

The mini-screens used until July could only show two languages, and spare parts to repair them were no longer available and so some remained dark. The new system will offer five languages – Italian, English, French, German and Spanish – with the possibility of arriving at eight languages in total. Chinese will be added for the titles broadcast by LaScalaTv in China.

The new system employs 8-inch touchscreen tablets. There will be 1,944 in the auditorium – 680 in the stalls, 784 in the boxes, 480 in the galleries, as well as 6 monitors for those in standing room in the second gallery. To avoid disturbing patrons nearby, the screens have a black background with a polarised filter to allow front vision while limiting side viewing. The new tablets will be able to be used before the show and during intervals to provide information for the public and with interactive features such as booking at the box office or ordering at the bar. In addition, as part of the theatre’s inclusion policy, there will be audio access for deaf spectators.

Work in the lower part of the theatre has been completed, but a ‘LED wall’ for subtitles has been suspended above the stage until the entire theatre has been fitted out.

La Scala has been undergoing much work to improve acoustics, to renovate the seats in the stalls and some parts of the foyers, with new seats in the theatre’s boxes. Work has also started on restoring the façade of the theatre which will last a year.

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Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan, aka ‘Gramilano’. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times. He wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on ‘Codice Carla’, 2023’s documentary on Carla Fracci.