Posts in category: News

Our very last trip was to Kosovo. From the very beginning I had an intention to go there instead of Serbia. But because Russian Federation does not accept this Republic as an independent country, we were told not to go there. Basically, the situation was the following: we had contacted the University of Prishtina during the summer. We had told them about the project and the idea, but it was clear that the problem was our Russian background, of course. So we did not get any answer from them nor from other people there. So, we contacted Russian Embassy, which was a mistake from one point of view but it gave us the opportunity to make other contacts in Kosovo and finally get there.

This country, Kosovo, is divided into two parts: Serbian and Albanian. All the northern part is Serbian, the South is Albanian. One could say that the situation is dangerous, but people are so used to it, it is a normal thing for them at the moment, they can’t imagine living in a different way, without the hatred, fear, readiness to attack or to seek shelter, they have forgotten what it feels like going anywhere they want and not getting killed. We went to Kosovska Mitrovica – the Serbian town in Kosovo, where they all hate American and European peacemakers and love Russians. I did not conceal the fact that I have an American passport despite being Russian. The reaction to my citizenship was really strong: suspicious glances, a storm of feelings and emotions from every person who heard it, when they were trying to understand how that girl (myself) could be an enemy. But I am not an enemy, I am a pianist, so finally they started ignoring that unpleasant fact, and my Russian nationality rescued me. It seemed that they felt sorry for me and could not help me. All these people have been living in the state of emergency for at least 13 years now. In that town, Kosovska Mitrovica, they have a bridge, a bridge with barricades (which are huge stacks of stones, sand, scrap metal, etc.) and no Serbian people can go on this bridge or enter the Albanian area, no Albanian can go to the Serbian part. They have different, separate schools, shops, medicine, institutes, even currency. So it is like two different countries – and the main argument is that Serbians want to be Serbia, and Albanians want to be Kosovo, and both want to have independence. Last December they had a new fight because of the customs at the border where Albanian people wanted to get the rule of law. When something like that is happening, Serbian people were telling us, we are using other roads: in the mountains, inside the forest. All the people know these roads, but they also know that they are so dangerous, that it is quite easy to die there. But they understand that it is better to die in the car accident than to be killed by your “neighbor”, enemy or “shipter,” as they call them, which is the rude way of calling an Albanian. They never use the word Albanian, they use only shipter, which is a curse.
On the other hand, I have some Albanian acquaintances who say absolutely the same about Serbians: that they, Serbians, have caused Albanian genocide, that they started the war (Serbians say the complete opposite, as you can imagine), etc.

It is impossible to find the right solutions, to seek reconciliation at the moment. They really hate each other and to the question if it is possible at least to try to find some solution, they all reply that it is impossible. Religious, ethnic problems do not help them either. Orthodox and Muslim, the eternal argument about who is right and who is more important, who has the bigger church or mosque, where it is – on the central avenue, the main square or in a remote place… All that matters.
The fact is that some years ago (around 50 years ago, maybe) there were 300,000 Serbian people in Prishtine, now there are only 40. Not thousands, but forty. All Serbian people are living in enclaves in the South now.

03/04/2012
We had a long car journey from Belgrade (around 6 hours). Quite tiring one, given that it was a hilly terrain. So, we arrived around 2pm and had a recital at 7pm. We played in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pristina. Before it was Pristine`s Uni, they had an area of 400,000m, lots of rooms, classes, grand pianos, organs, lots of other instruments, spaces for architects, sculptures, materials for them and artists, etc. Most of the teachers were Serbian and they left Pristina for the Serbian area and now they don’t have any space, of course. They have a small house with 2 floors, no instruments, nothing. They have a Gallery, where we played, where they have finals, exhibitions, and installations. But that Gallery is like a medium-size hall in a small flat. I mean for the University that has 10,000 students, it is next to nothing.

We played our Duo program first, and a really nice thing was that there were lots of people, full house, they were standing in that small gallery as they had no place to sit and still they were listening as if it was the last time in their lives. So attentive, so grateful they were! And with such a joy they absorbed everything we were offering them.

That was quite a surprise. I can’t say that they were easy people, they all are a bit hard-hearted, they all know what hatred is and that somebody is hating them. Why? The common sense can’t give any answer to this question. We all inside us are small children who deserve to have unconditional love and when we are living in the atmosphere of the constant hatred we can’t accept it, understand it, we can’t answer many questions. We have to blame either somebody or ourselves, but we are searching for a way-out.
Music is a gift. It can drive us to another world, it can help us forget, forgive, feel, be free of fear, be ourselves, relax, look at the sky, think about nature. It has this power. And I felt the same as those people whose life is terrible, who have problems with electricity, water, who don’t have any beauty in their lives – we were happy. It was important for them to put on their best clothes and come to the concert of classical music. It was a real treat for them.

And for us, it was equally special to play for that kind of audience.

04/04/2012
We had a master-class in the morning followed by the recital. The piano was not great, as one can imagine. The students study at the University and some still don’t know how to use the pedal. Or if they do, their teacher doesn’t allow them to do it till they learn piece by heart. And it takes ages, as they work on the first couple of pages for months and don’t go through the whole piece, not even a movement. So the first girl played Liszt Etude in D minor and she was very keen to do it well, to know how to play it, but she wasn’t allowed to use the pedal till she knew the piece well. And that particular etude needs pedal like nothing else. It helps to feel the harmony, keep the base and create a tune out of the base line. Without it, it is just a sequence of ascending and descending notes. So, we worked on using the pedal with the right balance in between hands, so it didn’t get muddy. And she was very excited about how beautiful she could play, and how beautiful the music was.
The next one was the girl with the Mozart sonata in A minor, and she did not play it to the end: only the first four pages. Absolutely dreadful, without any understanding of the tempo it should be played in, how to play grace notes in classical music, where to change the character and where not to do it, etc.
Then Vitaly had two students: saxophonist and clarinetist, and they were really good. A very talented clarinetist with a rare ability to catch the attention of the audience, a real musician, who listened to himself, who had a beautiful sound and knew what he was doing and a good saxophonist as well with a good school of playing, taught very well.

So it does not matter where one studies, but it is all about the teacher. You might find some genius, who will have the fire to inspire you, or you can have a bored one in the good place. So, everyone should look for a teacher who will suit them, who will have one and the same language with them, who will be interested in music more than in anything else.

After that we had a Flautist with the Franck Sonata, originally written for violin and piano which we played together as well, so we spoke about our interpretation, how to shape the thing up, add sense and atmosphere. As this Violin Sonata has an agenda of its own (it was a present for Franck`s friend wedding) it is not difficult to understand the character, but one just has to make it clear.

After that we gave a recital including both solo music and duet, and it was the same concentrated attention from the audience as the day before. I can’t say why we felt the audience`s reaction so well – whether it was so much of noises and whispering, along with so much applause and so much coughing, or whether it was actually something that we can’t express in words. But definitely we feel it every time we are on stage. We know exactly all the moods that people are experiencing. We know if they like it or not, we feel if they are attentive or bored, when they are inside the music and when they are just watching a show. This time the attention was great, and people were drawn to another world. The world of Music.

Our next destination was Israel. It is a country with the incredible history, a real melting pot of cultures and nationalities, and one with never-ending disputes. It seems that no problem there can be solved. Jews, as well as Muslims and Christians are making out that this corner of the world is rightfully theirs, and they don’t want to find any compromises. That land has been under so many governments, has seen so many different religious confessions, and all of them have left something really meaningful and important for their religion and culture. Jews were the first to live there; then came Arabs and ruled there; Christianity started there – so everyone has a claim on that land. They all are living together, in a very small territory, none of them really like each other because of the sufferings their nations have caused and are still causing others, and still they are there. Still they are learning each day how to deal with each other, their children quite often go to the same schools, they have to walk the same streets, and yet everyone tries to avoid sorting out that mixture.

Israel was the most difficult place for us in regard of organization. We started our attempts to organize our concerts and master-classes during the summer and had no success at all. We got either no reply, or the suggestion to ask someone else. Sometimes we would hear that the project seemed very interesting, but their students had the opportunity to perform for the top-stars, and we are far too young to give master-classes. Everyone in the world has a keen interest in this country and it seems to be overwhelming people there. As a result, nobody needs anything, they are just fed up.

So we tried 10 to 15 different places: schools, colleges, conservatoires, universities, etc., and we got a refusal everywhere. We were almost in despair and I did not know which door to knock at when finally we contacted a director in a musical school in a small place called Qiriyat Bialik, and she was the first person who was absolutely happy to help us. She organized two master-classes and recitals (for saxophone and for the piano) in an other town called Qiriyat Mozkin and one piano master-class and concert in her own town, where she has not got a saxophone class unfortunately. We also contacted the Russian Cultural Centre in Tel-Aviv and they were absolutely delighted to have us as performers for one night. Finally we arranged quite a busy schedule for our Israeli trip and it all went really well and was quite interesting.

17/03/2012
We came to Tel-Aviv first to rehearse at the Russian Cultural Centre. A great piano, very friendly administration, a nice concert hall were waiting for us there. We had a couple of hours for work as we were trying to check the acoustic, and I tried to get used to the piano as it was quite new and stiff at first sight; and we tried to find the right pulse and tempis together with Vitaly. We proposed solo piano works for the first half of the concert and the duet as the second half.

18/03/2012
We had to travel to Qiriyat Mozkin, which is a small place near Haifa, where Vitaly gave his master-class and we played a duo recital after it. There were 7 saxophonists, around 8-9-10 years old, from one teacher. He teaches both clarinet and saxophone. I can`t say that the level was great there. Not at all. They hardly knew what music is about and all had difficulties with the sound and techniques. It was not called a school, but they call it “conservatoire” and children study there for 10 years and can go to music college afterwards. But the whole environment was rather sad in this place. We found ragged and tacky walls, a very old piano in the hall, constant rebuilding of the corridors and some rooms.

There were not many people in the audience during the concert, around 20 all in all. People are not used to going to concerts at all, especially not in such small places. There are lots of wonderful concerts going on in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, but tickets are really expensive. We were told the cheapest one is around $70-100 so not a lot of people could afford it. The other reason for the small audience is that all the concerts are quite late: around 9pm (I think because of the climate: most of the time it is too hot to play during the day or early evening) so children are sleeping at this time. As it is possible to imagine, children who are studying music at schools have no idea what being at the concert is like.

It was not easy to play on that old Yamaha for me: the sound of the piano was really uneven, it was loud and disorderly. We did as much as we could and we had some success as we could see from the following events.

19/03/2012
We had to go back to Tel-Aviv to play a concert at the Russian Cultural Centre there. During the rehearsal I thought about NLP, I tried to imagine how I will start the Theme in Symphonic Etudes by Schumann. That Theme is one of the most difficult bits in the whole piano repertoire. How to find the equilibrium, the right tempo, how to play with a great deep sound but as someone would sing it, how to form a structure. All kind of difficulties are in that Theme. So, it needs a very special concentration before you go on stage. The conditions around helped a lot: we had two hours for the rehearsal and the first one I spent on my solo piece, which came out very successful during the performance. People were saying that they were really moved by it, which was a great compliment as it is almost a 30-minute composition with a complicated structure. After that Vitaly played solo one movement from the Bach Violin sonata, and then we played together François Born “Concert Fantasy on the Themes of Carmen”, Vocalize by Rachmaninov and Devil`s Rag by Jean Matitia.

It was a very successful performance. Full house, where there were Russian-Jewish musicians, intelligentsia, who immigrated from the Soviet Union years ago. Some of them did it because of anti-Semitism in the USSR, which hasn’t really stopped even now, some of them were keen to move away from the country where the quality of life is one of the lowest in the world. We felt great responsibility about that performance. All those people are missing their home land despite the fact that life is better than anywhere else, but all of them have some memories from their youth. So, we really wanted to give some pleasure to those people. Immigration is not an easy experience for anyone. Despite the fact that we enjoy being out of Russia, we always feel that we differ greatly from the indigenous people of the new country to which we move. We are always foreigners, people with different mentality, habits and background. Every immigrant has difficult stages at first, and if they survive they are much stronger than those who have not moved. So the energetic response, with gratitude, delight and joy was in the air. All those Jewish grannies, who used to go to conservatories in Moscow, Kiev, or wherever to listen to Richter, Gilels, Oistrakh, they were all there in the audience. The main word after the concert was “gift” as they were thankful for that present that we gave them by playing the concert.

20/03/2012
The last two days we spent near Haifa again. My master-class and the solo recital were planned for that day in Qiriyat Mozkin, at the same conservatoire where Vitaly did it the day before. I had two students, one hour each, and then played a concert. The first girl was with Haydn Sonata. While playing she had difficulties with memory, she sounded as if she was a little cat who is afraid of everything. I immediately told her about three problems – pulse, sound and understanding what we are doing. So I said all notes and right fingering is the last thing of what we have to worry about on the stage. Finally she started to play really well and I was really surprised with it.

I got a letter from her some days later:

Dear and honorable Maria Nemtsova,
I am sorry to bother you, but you gave me a master class today (in Motzkin) and I did not have the chance to properly thank you…
What you told me about Haydn’s sonata (in D major) opened my mind to wonderful new things, and I just know that it will help me improve my playing so much!
Also the way you play and the way you treat the piano – it is noticeable from the first second you touch it… It affected me greatly! And your concert at the end was definitely the most wonderful playing I have ever heard…!
I know all the words I will write will not be enough… so I will simply say again THANK YOU!
In admiration,
Michal.

And her Mother sent me an e-mail as well with these words:

Dear Maria,
Thank you very much for the great master class you gave today to Michal (The Haydn Sonata in D major). She said she will never forget it or whatever you taught her.

That was such a great surprise! Not because of the sweet words, but because it is possible to change a student`s attitude to what they are doing. After the shaking hands, lots of mistakes and nerves this girl started playing in a very decent way. Of course it needs a lot of concentration on the teacher`s part and the wish to learn from the student, but it is more than possible.
The next boy played Chopin’s Valse and had no such great musicality. But still I tried to draw some pictures about Chopin`s character, time, environment, etc to make him play more elegantly, care about each note and turn of the melody, listen to the accompaniment that should be supportive and not disturbing.
The solo recital went really well. The piano was horrible, the same quality as it was the other day during Vitaly`s concert, but I tried not to think about it. The strange thing is – when we have in mind the exact sound that we need and want from that particular place in music, we can do it with any bad instrument. I mean I am not bothered by the quality of the instrument as much as pianists usually are. After the concert one woman wrote to me:
The Piano is awful. So we said that you made it sound for the first time in its history as if it was a great piano. I think that one can more than appreciate your playing.

I was really grateful to receive that message as it is another proof that it is possible to play on any instrument and still impress the audience. That time there were many more people in the audience as there had been rumors after our concert with Vitaly.

21/03/2012

The next day I had a master-class and a concert solo+duo in Qiriyat Bialik, the next town to the previous one. The level of that conservatoire was completely different. All the students were highly professional, all of them played with great technique and understanding. The director of that school cares a lot about the teacher`s level and education. And it works. I had 5 students with List’s Consolation and Rhapsody, Chopin’s Scherzo, Debussy’s Bergamasque Suite, Medtner’s Improvisation, and Beethoven’s sonata. It was a very interesting and productive master-class, where there were some challenges for me as well, where I had to think about the interpretation, how to improve the artistry of some students, etc, etc.

After that I played the first part of the concert solo and we played together. They don’t have a saxophone class in that school, so we were hoping to encourage them to open it. Almost a full house and lots of good musicians in the audience did not give us a chance to lose concentration or relax.

Such was our last concert in Israel.

The next one was Serbia. How did it happen that we went there instead of Kosovo? I had a contact in Kosovo but I had not received any answer to my questions. So Vitaly called the Russian Embassy in Serbia (as Kosovo doesn’t have one) and asked to help us with organizing that trip in Kosovo. As Russian Federation doesn’t accept Kosovo as an independent republic, we were told that it was really dangerous to go there and that we were bound to get killed there. So, through our political ignorance we believed them and decided to go to Serbia. My father lives in the United States and so I have an American passport. In general, it expands my ability to travel as I don’t need a visa to most countries. But American passport doesn’t give one any advantages in Serbia. They hate Americans and people from the other European countries that bombed them. And it is understandable; we all can imagine that feeling after their tragic experience. But to me as an artist, the feeling that something was wrong with me because I had the wrong passport was rather unpleasant. My Russian background doesn’t help me to feel patriotic about my homeland. I disapprove of the current regime in Russia, I hate to think that one of the cleverest and most intelligent men, Khodorkovsky, has been in prison for so many years and it seems that he will be in prison forever, I can’t stand that people who try to say something against the regime keep disappearing, I disapprove of the improper election procedures and of the meetings in some educational institutions, where the administration tells the students to vote for Putin and to bring 10 fake voters for each of them (as they had an access to vote blanks and there was the programme 1+10), otherwise they would be expelled; I don’t like how people from the provinces believe in the brainwashing TV provides and they don’t have any other source to find out what is going on. I simply don’t like the KGB system. My grandmother was a political prisoner for 8 years in the Soviet Union, and our family knows what it means. That dull force at power doesn’t care about anything, that force knows that we should not be thinking, that we should be animals who will work for the government. It is absolutely like in 1984 by George Orwell.

So there was a woman in charge of us who was with us every minute. It was absolutely dreadful. We were under her control all the time, every minute. We were presented as Russian Culture and Russian Federation ambassadors, and there was not one word about our Project, nothing about our idea to show that link between the art and human`s soul is tight and that they have to think about the indisputable truth and not about the nationality . And her emphasis was that we are Russians that is why we are so special. This is not true. We are musicians and could work with the musicians from other countries as the musical language is the same for everyone. We were not there to promote Russian school or anything like that, our message was that we were trying to show that music could help us to be humane, music could help us to express ourselves, it could bring us to the world where hatred or any forgery do not exist.

So that was what happened on our Serbian trip. I felt that I belonged to the Soviet Union and that I was a spy with the American Passport.

Talking about our professional business it was not worse than in other places. All four concerts had full houses, master-classes were followed with the good feedback and there were happy people listening to the music. It was incredibly cold there – from -25 to -30 every day. They are not used to it at all there, so in the halls there was no heating at all and some hotels were very cold as well. Children did not go to schools, and so we were surprised and especially happy to see full houses even in those conditions.
We were in Belgrade, Despotovec, Krushevec, Parechen and Chachak – five cities. In Parechen Vitaly had a marvelous master-class where he taught 10 saxophonists and chose the great 17-year-old to be invited to Moscow. I had a master-class for six hours in Krushevec, where the level of students was great, the school was fantastic, and it was a great pleasure to work there. We had a few master-classes and concerts in Chachak and in Belgrade as well. In Despotovec we played a concert in the library on the upright piano where some of the keys were not working. They have the grand piano in the Cultural Centre, but there was no heating there. And they found only one pianist in this village and no saxophonists.
So, on balance we had many controversial feelings during that trip.

06/02/2012
Master-class and Recital in the Russian Cultural Centre in Belgrade.
I have got 4 students with Bach Prelude, Haydn Sonata in B Flat Major, Mozart Sonata in F Major, Chopin two Valses, Scherzo op.20, Debussy Prelude from the “Bergamasque suite”, Dubois Scherzetto.
The level wasn’t that great. Some of them can play reasonably fast; but in general they don’t used to listening themselves, can`t control each sound they producing and seeing any sense of what they are doing is something absolutely unusual for them. My aim was to explain why Haydn should not be fast as the meteor, how to make a special sound for it and to enjoy listening to it, what all the melodic lines mean in Mozart`s music, as he was more like a vocal, opera composer, how to make a beautiful colours in Debussy`s music, to make it full of the magic a bit oriental atmosphere, full of light and softness.
As I can see now, the biggest problem with lots of children all over the world is that they don’t know how to practice at home. It is not enough to sit near the instrument for some hours, it is necessary to be absolutely aware of what you want to achieve, what is your aim, and how you will get on with difficulties both technical and musical. The girl with the Chopin Scherzo had the great desire to play it well, but after some months of wrong practicing it is much more tricky to get it right, with all the technical stuff which particularly in Chopin`s music should support the meaning of the piece, should express feelings and not to be just difficult passages. But without technical quality we can`t do a lot, we can`t be completely free and create, we have to struggle and fight with fingers. The main task for every teacher is to show how to fix, how to reach the result, how to find where the problem lies out, how to divide different layers and how to work at home. The sign of a good teacher is if the student doesn’t need a teacher and can work on the piece alone. Of course it is not easy to do when you are a child, but when you are at the age of 13 or 14 and older you should at least ask questions to yourself: what do I see in that music, what was the composer`s intention, what was the epoch when he lived, how am I going to achieve it?
After the master-class we have got a nice feedback even from non-musicians, that the music changed completely during the lesson, which was the good prove of getting into the right direction.

The recital was given after the 30 min break. Looking at it today I can say that it was an interesting and very difficult experience regard to the public`s response. It was that rare occasion, where we did not feel any energetic response from the audience. I think it is because the house was full of Russian officials and it was their debt to come to the concert. I felt a big freedom though as I understood immediately that they don’t understand a lot what is going on on stage and I decided to make a pleasure for myself. At the end of the concert we broke the wall with Piazzolla which was a little victory for us.

07/02/2012
Recital in Despotovec.
We did not give any master-classes there because of two reasons: they don’t have any saxophonists at all and they do have two pianists for the town, but they did not dare to play. And it was so incredibly cold that no one establishment has been working. The only warm place was in the library where they got the upright piano called “Ukraine” and they decided to have a recital there. It is a very nice room for 50-60 people and it was the only place during the whole trip where it was warm. But the piano almost did not work… It was not well in tune (as the tuner comes once a year from Belgrade, they don’t have their own one there and they did not have a chance to ask him before our arrival), some keys were not responding (simply did not make any sound) and the pedal was not working and the sound in general was like you put mute mode on it. I had to play Schumann Symphonic Etudes first and then the second half together with Vitaly. When you can`t do a lot because of the instrument and you have to play a recital and people want to hear your playing you are seriously frustrated. My aim was to put as much intensity and feeling into the playing to get it a bit clearer than the piano allowed me. I was seating backwards to Vitaly so could not see him. But it was really nice that we did not have any problem with playing together and felt each other`s intentions immediately.

The public was absolutely happy after the concert and appreciated our efforts.

08/02/2012
Master-class in Krushevec for piano
It was a huge master-class for 5 hours without breaks. It was -27 degrees and the school was full of children, the teachers were listening as well. Beethoven and Mozart Sonatas, Liszt etudes, Schubert, Grieg and other pieces were played on a very good level on that day. I think after Georgia it was the best level of students. Everyone played correctly; they were very well taught and got the music seriously.

Master-class in Parechen for saxophone
Vitaly run his lessons in another town, where is a great school for saxophone. He had 10 students and chosen the 17-years old boy who was invited to play in Moscow with the orchestra. He was really happy about this talent.

Recital in Krushevec
After a short break and Vitaly`s arrival we went to the beautiful hall to give a recital. There was no heating at all, quite a good piano Petroff and full house which was really nice in this weather. We played really well despite the cold and public understood and was happy after our performance.

09/02/2012
Master-class and Recital in Chachak
It was -30 that day and children were released from schools. So it was a short master-class with a incredibly talented 11-years old girl, who played Chopin Fantasy-Impromptu and it was absolutely fantastic: technical ease, nice sound, the great desire to make it better, etc. We worked on the sound projection and a Chopin`s sound: how pianists use different touch for different composers. She got everything immediately. One saxophonist played for Vitaly and another pianist played Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux, which was not bad at all. He just needed more differentiation of voices and showing important material better.

In the evening we played concert in the hall with no heating. Again. And again there was a full house, people were seating in coats, with hats and gloves, but listening very carefully and with the great appreciation.

In all those small towns we had a very good experience. The government was greeting us and was happy to host us. The only thing that troubled me is that nobody understood anything about the project`s idea. Nobody was interested why, how and what for I am doing it. And the feeling that I am in the wrong place in the wrong time could not leave me.

10/02/2012
Private lessons for the pianist and two saxophonists in Belgrade
Some students from our first master-class in Belgrade asked us for another private lesson. So we were happy to listen to them and it was nice one to one lessons, where we had a chance to look at everything with no rush, show how to practice, how it should be, practice together, find some solutions, etc.

11/02/2012
Departure

Our third point was Georgia. Russian people have a very strong connection with this country. Lots of Georgians have relatives and friends in Russia and lots of Russians have the same in Georgia. There was a deep exchange of culture, science and traditions between Russia and Georgia when the Soviet Union existed. Russians know and cook Georgian food, sing Georgian songs, watch Georgian movies and it works other way round as well. All Georgian people older than 20 years speak Russian. A big disappointment happened in 2008, when a war between two of us had started. Friends became enemies; both countries were trying to cut all the connections with each other. Common people have become victims of political games and they are suffering from these restrictions, as Georgian people cannot go to visit their friends and relatives, cannot visit places where some of them were grown up, or studied, or spent some good time.

The Russian army behaved terribly during this war. There was a lot of marauding, theft, and inhuman insulting behavior. Nobody told it on Russian TV, for example, that Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was bombed as well as Gori, where 70% of the population lost their houses and jobs. They are still living in temporary barracks in a huge field between Tbilisi and Gori and are not allowed to go to their own houses. The Russian army is still there and we even heard some shooting.

So, as you can imagine, the reaction to our Russian language was not very friendly at the very beginning. I felt a deep shame for my country and terribly sorry for the Georgian people. A couple of my friends are Georgian and they were there during the war. What they had told me had a strong impression on me and I wanted to go there and show to Georgians that we are not enemies, and that we still know and love their people, culture, cuisine, and jokes. I really wanted to break this ice which had happened after the war, as I believe that music has this power to kindle souls.

06/12/2011
On the first day I had a recital and a master-class in the Tbilisi Central Musical School. I played a recital first and then started to give lessons. It was a full house with lots of teachers and students. As you can understand, it was not easy, because I talked in Russian and I could feel a big tension between me and the audience.

The first was a little 9 year-old girl who played the Poulenc Improvisation. A piece with a complicated musical language, where you can`t do a lot to make it interesting apart from showing different colours and harmonies. And what a surprise it was when she did absolutely everything what I had told her!

The second boy played The Musical Moment by Rachmaninoff: a very virtuosic piece, with lots of semi-quavers. He played it absolutely in tempo and with a great ease but caring about it too much. I started to work with his imagery and asked him to create a sound of torrential flow during the spring. People in the audience started to smile and I was very happy that they liked my associations and the way of reaching the result with the students.

The third girl played Chopin’s Valse Brilliante. That was the best performance of any student in my life. What a wonderful sound, what a great understanding of style, of musical shape, of the brilliant character. What a great feeling, what nobleness. Everything was there. I thought – what can I tell her? What can I suggest to her? It is much easier to work with weak students. You know immediately which basic thing you have to tell them to fix some problem, or give a suggestion of how to work on some particular places. But when the student is at the same level with you it is much harder. Then you need to imagine the ever best performance in your head and think how to do it even better than it is now. I talked about the sonority in Chopin`s music. It is a very difficult field and not a lot of musicians have assiduity and strength to think of it. But those who have it get great benefits. What does it mean? Chopin`s music has brilliance and it is due to a harmonization layout. It is possible to play his music with a very flat sound, but while you think of sonority you know which tone is the most important in the chord, and you could create a wonderful flickering effect. That girl understood everything and did an amazing job. She was selected to go to Moscow to play with the orchestra. She is only 15 years old and will play Chopin’s Piano Concerto #2.

After that I heard two Beethoven sonatas: No.7 and No.17. The last boy was wonderful as well: so eager for knowledge, so keen to receive something new, so active to do everything I told him. It was a great pleasure to work with him. His attitude to the sound has changed completely during the lesson, I told him about the context and images, about the care about every single sound, about the control of it, etc., etc. He was so inspired after the lesson that he asked for a private one on the next day when he played Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy. That was one of the most important teaching experiences in my life. I had never played this piece before, of course I heard it many times, but it is still very different whether you studied it properly or not. The student was 18 years old, his last year in High School with the intention to go to the conservatory. So his technical level was quite good. He was very musical as well and very correct in many ways. But of course it is not enough to make an interesting interpretation. I was worried if I could help him and suddenly some revelation came to me. I listened to his running through; thought of the structure, of what the story inside the piece was, what the difficulties were, and how to explain it to him. Finally we worked on the interpretation: on the Polonaise rhythm and features, on the personal “painful” motives, on the “choral” mood before the most intimate theme, on how to develop and unite it all together. My new step and understanding in the teaching process was to make up an ideal performance from my own head, and to try, without any excuses for the student, to “pull” him to this ideal picture in my head. It could take ages, but it is worth it. We spent more than two hours working on this Chopin`s piece but were absolutely happy after that.

07/12/2011
It was a master-class and a recital in Gori on the 7th of December. A small town, which is the closest to the Russian border and which was bombed more than others during the war in 2008.

The events were in the Musical College, and the level was incomparable with the School in Tbilisi. I had five students and all of them were aware of what Russians had done to their families: children who know the face and name of the enemy, teachers who cannot understand why they have to live in temporary barracks and why life has been so unfair to them. They had a settled life and suddenly within a couple of weeks it changed completely and now they had to suffer. I felt terribly sorry for them; I tried to put as much warmth as I could in my feeling towards these children. But they all were tense and really closed. You cannot do much with students when there is some personal negative feeling going on. It is really tough. They were all very musical; it was in their blood as everyone sings from the early age in this country. The teachers appreciated my work very much but I was ready to fall through the ground. What a shame to my country and what a pity for these innocent people…
I played a recital, a beautiful music, and again I thought only about the audience. I wanted to make it a great pleasure for them, I wanted to kindle them and show that I have the same feelings, same thoughts as they do. I played Rachmaninoff, Schubert-Liszt songs, and Scriabin. Most of it is a very touching music and I tried as much as I could to play it tenderly, intimately and with a deep feeling. It had a big success and some of the teachers came to me with tears asking: “Why are we enemies now? How did it happen?”

After that they made us a wonderful banquette and we were sitting all together, smiling and laughing at the same jokes, but pain about the war was in the air.

08/12/2011
Rustavi Musical School was on the next day. The biggest impression of it was the absence of water (even cold), and gas, and electricity from 11am to 7pm in the School, when, as you understand, classes were taking place. And despite that, this school has one of the best National Choirs in Georgia. The director is a wonderful, genius singer by herself, and she works with this choir 5 days a week. We were lucky to listen to the rehearsal of it after my master-class. And it impressed me greatly. What a joy, what a sense of each story they are singing about, what a quality. I was really shocked about how it was possible to create that treasure in such conditions.

09/12/2011
It was a master-class for the chamber music at Tbilisi`s conservatory. We had three ensembles and one pianist who had come to play Prokofiev’s Second Sonata for me. The professional level is absolutely astonishing there. Teachers are great, students are wonderful, and it was a great pleasure to work there. Luckily, we had some ensembles with the woodwind instruments, so Vitaly could work with them. As it is always the case, there is only one saxophone teacher in the whole Georgia, there is only one school outside Tbilisi where they have a saxophone class, and we could find only 5 students there who were supposed to come next day to have a lesson with him. But he worked with the clarinetist and gave him lots of wonderful suggestions, both as a musician and as a woodwind player.

I practiced my new way of teaching Prokofiev’s Sonata and it worked really well. My head was spinning with the ideas, images and creations, and the girl was again so grateful to get some fresh idea that it was really interesting for both of us.

10/12/2011
During that day I had a break and it was Vitaly`s turn to work. Quite a sad picture it was because of the absence of saxophonists in the country. Vitaly had a couple of beginners and a couple of clarinetists. Their teacher came as well and got a lesson from Vitaly. The instruments and all the equipment for it were dreadful, the knowledge of the basic technique was very weak, and Vitaly tried to give them as much as he could during the several hours.

Finally somebody came to us and asked if we could open the saxophone school in Georgia and if Vitaly could come once a month to teach there. It was a great reward for us. It was a great prove that we are doing the right thing, that through our experience we could inspire and help many people, and that they are really interested in what we are doing.

11/12/2011
That was the final day of our Georgian trip, when we were supposed to play a Duo Recital in the Small Hall of the Conservatory. It is a wonderfully beautiful hall, with a great band-new Steinway piano, with a great acoustic and a grateful audience. It was one of our best performances together. We just could not play badly as everything around us was so perfect and friendly. We were really happy and content after the concert and the audience appreciated everything very much.

It happens sometime when you play a recital – you know no one note will be missed, no one sound will escape from the people`s attention and judgment. It was a huge responsibility and effort that was worth it: we could see how deeply they understood us, how grateful they were, and how happy both of us were after that dialogue.

The next place to go was Tunisia, a completely different country with its own old traditional culture, views, and atmosphere. It is an Arabic-speaking country where they use music for entertainment and for religious purposes as well. They have completely different traditional instruments, which are in different tune from the Western classical ones. They play and sing their music with the intention to reach a trance. They believe that in that condition it is possible to heal anything that troubles you and to become happy.
I had an engagement in Tunis 3 years ago: I played a recital in the Conservatoire de Musique. Somebody asked me to listen to one student and to give her a lesson. She played Bach-Busoni “The Chaconne” for me, and I will never forget it. It wasn’t the best performance, to be honest. She took one pedal for several lines or even for pages; she did not show any knowledge of rhythm, harmonization of themes, fingering or structure. Despite all that mess, she felt the general character and tried to create some picture. We spent two hours trying to put together the first couple of pages. And after that lesson she cried for two hours at my shoulder saying that nobody ever told her these things. I was very moved and upset after that and hoped to go back there and help more students.

Luckily life gave me a chance to do it.
Despite the fact that it was a conservatory where students get professional musical education, most of the teachers themselves have no idea what music is about . They have a very low professional level, and real talents have no chance to grow, as they don’t get the basic education. They all seem to have hunger for information and even if they really want to know and to study they don’t know where to get it from and how to do it.

It’s a North African country where people`s mentality is totally different from what we are used to. During the summer I had a conversation with the director of conservatory, and he was absolutely happy to accommodate us and provide students, hall and some advertisements. He did not need any information about us, any posters, biographies or anything for the moment. He just asked to call him one month before we were planning to come and confirm our arrival. But he did not need any information about us one month before either. We were worried that events were not going to happen at all and I called an acquaintance of mine there asking if it was ok. She told me not to worry, that as soon as we arrived they would organize everything the day before, and it would be fine.

As you know, there was a revolution in Tunisia in January 2011. People have chosen the Islamic Party after the first democratic elections. Most women began to wear Hijab, which they never had done before. Why did it happen? They were afraid their husbands would lose a job, they did not know what to do with the democracy, and they were happy to restrict themselves. It is all about lack of information and fear for material things.
We were invited to play in the Russian Cultural Centre in Tunis, where the concert was planned in advance for the 2nd of November. Tog ether with Vitaly, we played our chamber music program, and it went really well. Again, we heard how happy they were to attend the professional recital and how poor the cultural life was there.

03/11/2011
Today was Vitaly`s master-class, and the same situation as in Beslan happened: there were not a lot of saxophone players around there. Some of them came from Suss, which is 100km away from the capital. But there they have one of the most famous teachers. Some of the students were complete beginners with a great desire to play this instrument. They did not really know how to produce the sound, how to hold the instrument, etc, etc. The most valuable thing was that after the lessons they were so inspired that they came to Vitaly the next day too, and he taught them two days instead of one.

We played a duo recital that day, and oddly enough, in spite of the fact that they did not do any posters, it was a full house. They did not read any advertisement on walls, as we were told later. It was all verbal culture, and they perceived everything only that way.

04/11/2011
Now it was my turn to give a master-class and to play a solo recital. I had five students. Most of them played Chopin Nocturnes and Liszt rhapsodies. The first two were studying with the Head of Keyboard and… they did not know a thing. They did not know how to sit near the piano, what was the right hand posture, how to create the beautiful sound, who was Chopin, what the Nocturne genre was like, how to use the pedal, etc, etc. And the biggest problem was that they did not really understand that playing the instrument requires some effort, that it takes time to work on the piece, to achieve some decent result, that one needs a clear understanding of what you want to create in that music. They were used to doing a slapdash work and did not care about the quality. It was extremely difficult to explain to them that if they really wanted to play the piano they needed clear understanding of how it should sound in the ideal performance and pull themselves up to it.
The other three were studying with the Turkish teacher who had been taught in Germany for many years, and they were much better. They did want to know things, they were trying hard, and it was a great pleasure to work with them. It was possible to talk about characters, acoustic hearing, contrasts, and the structure of the piece.
As I understood later, the solo recital went very successful. But it was not easy to play there at all. Constant walking in the auditorium, whispering, talking, clapping between movements and other noises were really disturbing. It happened not because they were not interested, but because they did not know how to listen to the music.