As part of the Science Week activity programme in Santiago de Compostela, CESGA invites you to discover and enjoy the reflections and music of Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (Almatý, Kazakhstan, 1999), composer, concert pianist, music theorist, researcher and Doctor of Philosophy.
Abdyssagin will be in Santiago for three days (26, 27 and 28 November) on his first visit to Galicia, during which time he has three activities planned for the research community and the general public.
Abdyssagin’s schedule in Santiago de Compostela
Wednesday, 26 November: Abdyssagin visits CESGA to give a specialised seminar and learn about the Centre’s facilities and capabilities.
Thursday, 27 November: ‘Quantum Mechanics and Avant-Garde Music: Shadows of the Void’, a presentation for the general public on his book of the same name, published in 2024 by the prestigious scientific publisher Springer. 7:00 p.m. | CGAC Auditorium | Free admission until full capacity is reached.
Friday, 28 November: Piano recital. 8:00 p.m. | CGAC Auditorium | Free admission until full capacity is reached.
Concert programme:
◦ Frédéric François Chopin, Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. posth. 66, WN 46
◦ Johann Sebastian Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 846.
◦ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Fantasia in D minor, KV 397/385g.
◦ Ludwig van Beethoven, Für Elise Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, WoO 59, Bia 515.
◦ Frédéric François Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23.
◦ Frédéric François Chopin, Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. posth.
◦ Frédéric François Chopin, Waltz in E minor.
◦ Franz Liszt, Years of Pilgrimage. First Year: Switzerland. S.160, Orage.
◦ Alexander Scriabin, Étude in D-sharp minor, Op. 8, No. 12.
◦ Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin, Rondine Piangente (2012)
About Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin
Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin, known as “the Kazakh Mozart”, has been composing music since the age of nine. He is the author of the operas The Sunlit Path (2019), The Mysterious Lady (2019) and The Bruce (2023), and more than 150 musical compositions, ranging from chamber pieces to symphonies, including The Will to Live, God’s Dwelling, Beyond the Darkness, Time Run’, Tears of Silence, A Drop of Eternity, The Sacred Universe of Particles, Phantom Reflections, Shadows of the Void, Serenade of Invisible Stars, Ghosts of Immortality, Qubylys, Quantum Reality, I Raggi Dice Dante, Chaos and Order, etc. His scores are published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin (Germany).
Rakhat-Bi’s music is performed in prestigious concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Festival Hall in London, etc. At the age of 19, he gave a solo recital on Tchaikovsky’s historic piano at his house-museum in Klin (Russia). In 2024, his cathedral opera The Bruce premiered worldwide in Glasgow Cathedral, St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, St Andrews Cathedral and Dunfermline Abbey.
At the age of 13, Rakhat-Bi became a university student at the Kazakh National Conservatory Kurmangazy. At 18, he completed an internship at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow and brilliantly defended his master’s thesis at the National University of Arts of Kazakhstan. At the age of 20, she completed three postgraduate degrees (equivalent to a doctorate) at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, the Pollini Conservatory in Padua and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Between 2022 and 2024, she completed her doctorate at the University of St Andrews and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Abdyssagin’s scientific production and outreach activities
He participated in the Impuls Academies in Graz and other festivals. Since the age of 13, he has been giving lectures internationally. He is the author of academic articles and manuals. At the age of 12, he published a collection of his musical compositions entitled Facets of Harmony. At the age of 14, he published a unique work entitled Mathematics and Contemporary Music. Rakhat-Bi was also a visiting professor at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL.
In 2024, Springer Nature, a prestigious scientific publisher known for launching the revolutionary works of Einstein, Planck, Pauli and Heisenberg, published the Kazakh composer’s book ‘Quantum Mechanics and Avant-Guarde Music: Shadows of the Void’, which he will present in Santiago de Compostela as part of the activities of his firs visit to Galicia capital.
About Quantum Mechanics and Avant-Garde Music: Shadows of the Void
The presentation will cover the different connections between quantum physics and contemporary music, from interrelationships in chronological perspective to metaphorical correlations between fundamental phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Pauli’s exclusion principle and quantum entanglement; and their reflection in the structure of selected musical compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Arnold Schönberg and others, as well as in specific performance techniques.
Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin will also discuss the place classical music occupied in the lives and work of great scientists such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and others. Finally, there will be room for reflection, addressing the more philosophical aspects of quantum theory and relativity.