The need to recycle in order to save a planet suffocating under waste is a cultural challenge that can also be tackled creatively. For composer, pianist and environmental activist Pavel Andreev, it is a genuine mission: armed with his inseparable grand piano and a camera, he travelled to the largest landfill site in his city, Saint Petersburg, to give a symbolic concert and deliver a direct message through a video.

The pianist's mournful notes on the rubbish

With the help of seven "accomplices" for the exceptional task of transporting the instrument, Andreev managed to stage a provocative performance entitled Breath of the Planet. Royal on garbage (the grand piano in Russian is called "Рояль", or "Royal"), which opens with the cry "Your choice today determines your future" to motivate as many people as possible to confront the problem of waste pollution.

Dressed as elegantly as for a theatre première, in stark contrast to the unsettling and very real setting of one of Russia's largest expanses of rubbish, the musician plays beneath the menacing shadow of an excavator, surrounded by the stench of waste and the discordant noise of seagulls — his only audience on this occasion.

The need to recycle

Regarding the composition, which required six hours spent at the landfill site, Pavel says he glimpsed an enormous resource beneath his feet:

When will we finally have the cutting-edge technologies to recycle rubbish and produce energy, electricity and recycled goods?

In Russia, the issue of waste disposal has become a burning topic in recent months, as the lack of a recycling plan and the stench from landfill sites in the Moscow region sparked a wave of protests among the local population. Pavel Andreev, like many of his fellow citizens, hopes to raise awareness of waste reuse as a resource that could be transformed into clean energy and other recyclable materials.

A piano for freedom

Together with his wife and fellow artist Oksana Andreeva, the pianist has launched the project Royal on Freedom, through which he composes and performs music on the grand piano in contact with nature. He has already played on a floating platform among the marble mountains of Ruskeala (Royal in canyon), returned there for a nocturnal performance (Royal in canyon. Return), and performed on the snow-covered peaks of the Russian Republic of Karelia (Royal on mountain) — this last performance calling to mind Ludovico Einaudi playing among the ice of the North Pole in 2016.