The Concert

Andreï Filipov was a prodigy – the celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra, the greatest orchestra in Russia. Today, aged 50, he still works at the Bolshoi, but as a cleaner. During the communist era, he was fired at the height of his fame for refusing to get rid of all his Jewish players, – ‘Zionists and enemies of the People’ – including his best friend Sacha Grossman. Andreï sank into booze and depression. The Director of the Bolshoi, an old apparatchik, has been promising forever to return Andreï’s orchestra to him “soon”, but he’s mocking him, humiliating him sadistically. For him, Andreï’s a has-been, and he’s doing him a big favour by keeping him on as a cleaner. Then Andreï finds a fax inviting the orchestra to play at Pleyel, in Paris, in two weeks’ time, as a last minute replacement for the indisposed San Francisco Philharmonic. Andreï conceives of a crazy notion: he’ll round up his old musician buddies, a motley bunch now scraping a living in Moscow as cab drivers, removal men, flea market traders, suppliers of porno film sound effects… They’ll go to Paris as the Bolshoi. They’ll defy destiny and take their revenge! Will they make it?