Text for Mozart Project

My name is Alexey Kokhanov. I am 31 years old. I was born in Moscow, Russia. When I was 22 years old I went to study singing at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg in Austria. When I arrived to Austria everything was new for me: people, language and also nature. And for first time I had the feeling of being alone. So I realised what nostalgy is. Soon I learned the german word „Sehnsucht“, which could possibly translated in russian as „toská“. This kind of deep emotion you can feel in russian folksongs. But I think it is quiet different than german „Sehnsucht“. There is something black inside and sometimes it can hurt. This emotional state also reflected in Anton Chekhov’s plays, as longing for a better world.

For the Mozart Project I brought a picture of my family. It was made in 1996 at an anniversary of my grandmother. She is on the picture to the right side. There are also my two brothers and my father. This picture I brought with me to Austria, and it was on my wall. My mother is not on this photo, because she died when I was 12 years old.

When I think about „Sehnsucht“ and what this word means to me, I like the sentences of C. S. Lewis, that Sehnsucht is a „inconcolable longing“ in the human heart for „we know not what“. I have two different points of view on that. First of all it is a depressiv feeling, which is actually not productive and very dangerous. I recognize it in Schubert Songs – as „Doppelgänger“ or „Winterreise“.  Another one – is a positive one – that brings me further, makes me want to do something. I like the image which Plato gives about beauty – it is what reminds the soul of the lost paradise, and that is the thing for which our soul is longing to. For me it is all about art and about singing, and I believe that it is this which keeps me doing it, on and on.