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.