The Horseman and the Philharmonic: Successful Synthesis that Settled into Bishkek

Chingiz Aitmatov, acclaimed Kyrgyz writer: “I envision a sculpture of the epic hero Manas, with whose name the past culture and history of the Kyrgyz people are bound up."

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Placing a monumental artwork in a city is full of unknowns. However carefully every element is planned, something unpredictable always remains: the surroundings start to shape the work once it's in place. This influence follows its own logic, not the artist's, and only shows itself after installation. It can't be fully planned for, because no one can calculate everything in art. This means the quality of the work itself isn't the deciding factor. A strong piece can be undermined or distorted by its setting, while a modest one can be lifted by it. The challenge grows much greater when the work is not a single monument but a whole ensemble. The unknowns pile up and can become a force of their own, steering the artist's original idea in directions they never intended. The Philharmonic is an exception. The ensemble is a rare Soviet case where artist, architect, and sculptor worked together from the very conception of the project.

A good example illustrating these reflections, and an unusual one at that, is the work by sculptor Turgunbai Sadykov and architect Alexei Pechyonkin (Pechenkin): the "Manas" complex, erected in Frunze (now Bishkek) in 1981–1982.

Manas: an epic among epics

A people that had no written language created the Manas, “an ocean of an epic." It exceeds every known epic in the world in length. Eleven versions of Manas exist, some of them over 700,000 rhymed lines long. Its leading theme is the people's struggle against foreign oppressors, glorifying the deeds of the legendary hero Manas, who united the scattered Kyrgyz tribes around himself. Besides grand battles and heroic scenes, Manas gives space to the most varied aspects of human life. There are lyrical and love themes, social and everyday themes, and moral and ethical themes. There is the ancient Kyrgyz people's knowledge of geography, medicine, architecture, astronomy, warfare, and more. The Manas epic was handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation.

Sculptural depictions of individual heroes of the epic give material form to the metaphor of the bond between eras, of a Manas that lives forever. The 1981 monumental complex in the centre of the capital of the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic comprises seven figures, set against the State Philharmonic completed the previous year. The ensemble includes a monumental sculpture of Manas, fountain pools and green lawns. The pool and the lush greenery all combine into a single emotional context, while the living jets of the fountain offer a decorative and acoustic accompaniment to the figures while providing cooling during the hot summers.

Artistically developed urban space was limited in Frunze in 1981, existing “only as a few islands within masses of ordinary development”. Another of Sadykov's ensembles, the Monument to the Fighters of the Revolution, on one of the central squares, led to landscaping of only a very limited area of the city, i.e. the sculpture and the surrounding memorial complex of plinth and grass. While this was largely determined from the outset, the monument is a self-contained work of art: a 17-meter-tall Soviet-era bronze and granite memorial.

A stage of marble and muqarnas

The ensemble by the Philharmonic is a phenomenon of a different order, tending towards an integrated solution not only of monumental-sculptural problems but also of urban-planning ones. The square is lined with buildings of varying heights, contrasting starkly with the imposing Philharmonic building. The hall consists mostly of reinforced concrete, giving a brutalist impression. However, the facade is clad with slabs made of domestic marble and other stones, masking its brutalist origins. The stalactite cornicing draws on muqarnas, a three-dimensional, honeycomb-like architectural ornamentation used in Islamic art and architecture to decorate vaults, domes, and arches. Interestingly, a similar example can be found at the Peoples’ Friendship Palace in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, which was completed just the following year in 1981.

Sadykov chose to fit the ensemble into Frunze quietly, letting its parts hold their own conversations with the city. The result was seen as a model of how modern monumental art could beautify urban space. Its landscaping was not just part of the artwork but culturally significant in its own right. At the time, critics expected the ensemble to "undoubtedly have a strong effect on the whole urban environment of the Kyrgyz capital". Monumental art often works this way: while carrying an ideological message and organising space, it can shape the character of a whole city and even how people behave in it.

Synthesis from the start

According to the 2018 catalogue of Alexei (Aleksey) Kamensky, Kamensky was more pleased with his work for the Kyrgyz State Philharmonic than any other for one reason: he managed to create a real ensemble. Born in 1938, Kamensky was one of the generation of trained monumentalists who began working in Kyrgyzstan in the early 1960s. His work ranges from the Frunze Memorial Museum façade relief to mosaics, chiy panels and stained glass, and he has remained in Kyrgyzstan since moving there. Contrary to many other projects, he was involved from the start as an artist to solve architectural and monumental-decorative tasks together. Kamensky sought to preserve the natural warmth that the wood panelling gave off in the banquet hall. The walls were clad in wood the colour of bog oak, with tables of the same wood and a bar counter of interesting design.  He therefore turned to chiy: the traditional Kyrgyz screen or mat made of steppe-grass stems, each one wrapped in coloured wool to form a pattern. He created four panels in the buffet (in the technique of chiy) "Red Water," "Mountain Rhythms," "Plowed Mountains” , and "Mountain Lake" («Красная вода», «Горные ритмы», «Пахота в горах», «Горное озеро»). If you have pictures or documentation of these works, please don’t hesitate to share them.

Kamensky also designed the stained glass in the foyer and on the facades, the latter visible from outside. Like monumental sculpture, stained glass was a relatively new technique and material for Kyrgyz monumentalists. Initially, craftsmen from the Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, where glass expertise runs deep – carried out stained-glass commissions in Soviet-era Central Asia. Kamensky travelled to Armenia to craft the glass composition in a workshop of Armenia’s Art Fund. His composition calls on traditional Kyrgyz carpets, taking a festive tricolor palette of blue, green, and red. He used thick glass that blocks the burning Asian sun, acting as a sunscreen while providing an exceptionally beautiful glow and play of light.

He created two stained glass windows, "Sun of Kyrgyzstan" and "Kyrgyz Patterns," located in the foyer of the second floor as well as stained glass inserts around the perimeter of the building, cast iron grating gates, and smaller decorative details from the building’s interior.

In balance with the city

The complex strikes a balance between city and ensemble, with neither overpowering the other in space or scale. Because it is so open, there are no sharply divided zones. From the Philharmonic, along the axis of the pedestal, the square widens out between the roads. This horizontal spread keeps the apartment blocks on either side in the background, so they don't clash with the square's scale. The Philharmonic's top floor, its long horizontal line broken by narrow vertical windows, acts as a visual backdrop for the galloping Manas. The heavy mass of that upper storey steadies the dynamic, forward-thrusting lines of horse and rider.

At the back of the square, closer to the Philharmonic, stand his wife, Kanykei, and the elder Bakai, on low pedestals set into the pool. In the epic, Kanykei is the hero’s wise and capable wife, who sews his battle garment and, after his death, flees with their infant son Semetei to keep him safe. Bakai is the oldest of Manas’s companions, the counselor who tempers the hero’s impulses and guards his legacy once he is gone.

Lower still, among the flowerbeds, four granite busts portray the manaschi Sagynbay Orozbakov, Sayakbay Karalaev, Tynybek Zhapiev and Naymanbay Balykov, among the epic’s best-known reciters. These storytellers who continue to keep the epic alive. Inside, the large hall seats 1,108 people and a small organ hall seats 314; concerts of classical and Kyrgyz traditional music, popular works, and a variety of show programs continue to be held here, telling their own stories.

The Philharmonic complex gives physical form in the city to a whole layer of the people's culture that until then had limited visible presence in the republic's capital (e.g., a relief on the Frunze Drama Theatre) - though this has changed significantly by 2026. This form shows how monumental art developed as one way Soviet artists and architects enriched the cultural and historical built environment. In 2026, the fountains in front of the building were replaced. As Bishkek’s urban development, reconstruction, and new construction accelerate, including around the building, the surroundings will increasingly shape the Philharmonic’s position in the urban fabric and contribute to its unknowns. However, nearly half a century after its completion, it remains a unique example of synthesis in the country and broader region.

For more photos of the interior and exterior, check out 2GIS.

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Special thanks to Nazik from Shaar Story as well as Alex and Meerim from Artkana for their valuable contributions. Any errors are my own.