Memoirs and Reflections by Evgeny Kissin

Author:Evgeny Kissin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of New England

Evgeny Svetlanov

The art of the great musician Evgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov, the chief features of which are emotionality and a creative nature, is very close to my heart. Unfortunately we did not manage to communicate as much as I should have liked, but each of our meetings, each time we played together is for me cherished and unforgettable.

I first saw Evgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov in the flesh when I was still a teenager in the middle of the 1980s, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. If memory does not deceive me, I was going down the performers’ staircase while he was coming up it, deep in thought. It was clear to me, as to any musician, that he was buried in thought not about himself but about the music that he was about to create. Anybody, even if they were far from music and did not know who was coming up the stairs, seeing Evgeny Fyodorovich at that moment would immediately realise that this was an exceptional man, not a ‘simple mortal’.

In November 1986 I took part in a gala concert for the State Orchestra in the Great Hall of the Conservatoire. At that time I played a mazurka and an étude by Scriabin, with success. Unfortunately, I was not able even to see Evgeny Fyodorovich, who was sitting on the platform far from the piano, but I shall never forget the words said to me after my short performance by one of the organisers of the gala: ‘Svetlanov was sitting as if under a spell!’ I could not have dreamed of such a thing: at that time Evgeny Svetlanov was for me simply something unattainable.

And a few years later, in 1990, our collaboration began. The most memorable of our first performances together was at a concert with the State Orchestra in Toulouse, when we played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. That was one of those evenings when, as musicians say, you hit the bull’s eye: everything worked, and there was some exceptional fusion both with the music and with each other. Evgeny Fyodorovich was very pleased and said that I reminded him of himself in his youth! After the interval Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony was performed. I recall that from childhood I had the stereotype in my head that the Third Symphony was, so to speak, ‘the least successful’ of all the symphonies of Pyotr Ilyich, and up to that evening in Toulouse my attitude to it corresponded to that stereotype. But Svetlanov conducted so colourfully and with such inspiration that I simply fell in love with that music – and love it to this day. As encores there were the Adagio from The Nutcracker and ‘The Dance of the Tumblers’ from The Snow Maiden: a real firework! From that concert came the feeling of pure joy.

A creative nature . . . Without comparing myself to anyone, from childhood I know from my own experience what it is, and it has always been especially dear and close to me in the art of performance, and not only in that.

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