The recital by Boris Petrushansky (10 April) and the concert with his pupils (11 April) will take place at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre as part of the International Piano Festival
– Boris Vsevolodovich, you left Russia in the early 1990s. What’s your life like abroad?
– Yes, I left in January 1991. First of all, living in Italy gave me the opportunity to have a concert career and record music. And, of course, abroad I had the chance to take on a hitherto unknown musical career as a teacher.
– But you taught before – at the Moscow Conservatoire...
– No, I couldn’t teach in the special piano department. In the 1970s I only taught the basic piano course to woodwind and string musicians. In 1989 I was asked by the Imola Academy (Bologna, Ed.), and my family moved to Italy.
– What sort of academy is it?
– As an academic institution it began in the autumn of 1990. Our piano academy is called Аccademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro. Previously each month we were visited by a great musician – Vladimir Ashkenazy, Nikita Magalov, Paul Badura-Skoda and Jörg Demus. For two and a half days they held master-classes and on the third day we had a concert. For their arrival maestro Franco Scala’s students prepared special programmes and presented them for luminaries to judge. Scala believed his training at the conservatoire to be insufficient and thought that his students should attest to their achievements by associating with a great artist, an expert in some specific field of the piano repertoire. Such was the case with Jörg Demus, who twice came and worked with his students on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
I believe that Franco Scala, freely leaving his pupils “at the mercy” of great performers, displayed great courage and disinterest. This always proved of inestimable use – in addition to the new and the often unexpected takes on a work that are different to the traditional the students were faced with a different outlook, the tasks they tackled were not just about performance and music but also about pure art and the stage. Students often lack this kind of stage experience with regard to music.
– What do you call “a stage relationship to the music”?
– It’s the sense that you’re performing not just for yourself, in the hermetically sealed classroom or exam hall. A performance should be a kind of ethical ambassador, a message for a huge number of different audiences, not just fellow musicians. The relationship with the stage is about being able to have a recital, self-control, the behaviour of the performer on a big stage, broad breath, the ability to perform together with an orchestra, listen to it, to establish psychological contact with the conductor and much more besides.
– How do you cope with “stage-fright” and what advice do you give to your students?
– I try to give the impression (as best as I can) that nothing is happening. Not to think too much about I have an important event, “what will the Queen think” sort of thing. That can knock your legs out from under you. A lot of people say that anxiety gives them a special kind of courage. But sometimes it’s the case that it’s best to focus on the fact that you’re going to play on a good instrument in a great venue and that you have the opportunity to convey to people the things you have dedicated a certain period of your life to. That the hall you’re performing in is a good, kind and welcoming house. Whereas if you think “Oh, those columns, those chandeliers, that velvet, the audience, who has performed here before you” then you won’t make it to the stage.
You have to try to share with a sense of joy the things that have inspired you with the audience, seeing the public without restrained hostility but with amicability and hospitableness.
– Returning to the Academy... How is the teaching process organised there? What are the details? What does a diploma result in?
– In Italy there is a widely-used points system. Someone who has taught at a music school, even temporarily, earns points as a teacher. Those who have studied at a conservatoire or academy (including our own one), given concerts or recorded discs gets points as a performer. All these points are summed up and taken into consideration when being interviewed for a job with a State institution – a conservatoire or university. It’s like musical training.
One particular feature of the Academy is that a student studying there can (as frequently happens) study with a different teacher. The five hours a month that they get can be spent with as many as three teachers!
I had a female student, the Chinese pianist Jin Ju (she teaches with us now) who came to Imola having won 3rd prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition. She took an hour with our director Franco Scala, two hours with Lazar Berman and two hours with me.
A student can study with one teacher for an entire year and the next year say “Thanks very much. Now I’m studying with someone else,” or it might be “I’m studying with another teacher at the same time as I’m studying with you.”
– Are there any faculties other than piano at the Academy?
– Our academy began with the piano, but over the course of time we have added violin classes which, God willing, will be taught next year by Zakhar Bron, and viola, flute and chamber music classes.
We have established a professional chamber orchestra, there are auditions to get into it. And over twenty-five years our pianists have taken about seventy 1st prizes at international competitions.
– How long does training last?
– For students over the age of twenty it’s a four-year course – a trial year and then another three. If a musician displays any particular talent and is in a stage of interesting creative development and doesn’t want to leave the Academy they can stay for an extra year.
Those under the age of twenty (apropos, students who have reached that age as well) can simultaneously study with us and at home, in other cities and at other schools. The course for younger students lasts one year, though it can be repeated. So sometimes they come to us at the age of twelve and finish their studies at the age of twenty-six. That happens. One of my students who will be performing in St Petersburg, Roman Lopatinsky, came to me from Kiev when he was about sixteen.
– Did he come to Italy from Kiev specially to take lessons from you?
– Yes. He still lives in Kiev and studies at the conservatoire. He came to us on the bus, almost stage-coach style... It wasn’t easy. Of course, initially he came with his parents.
– Which pianists’ concerts do you try not to miss?
– I wouldn’t put musicians into any class, but one musician I always find interesting is Grigory Sokolov. He reveals such interesting facets of works we all know, and his amazing pianism is such that it has an aesthetic quality all of its own. He creates a surprising sense of triumph of the musical idea and emotions. Recently I was at his concert where he performed seven mazurkas by Chopin... It was an incredible revelation! It was such a surprising spiritual work for its depth, sincerity, tension, poeticism and boldness. Staggering! Not to mention the fact that he performs incredibly diverse music – Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rameau, Beethoven, whatever comes along. I think he is one of the most interesting and thoughtful pianists.
– Which piano competitions do you consider the most interesting and important?
– The Tchaikovsky Competition first and foremost. In recent years it has acquired a totally new significance and new life which I am delighted about. The Chopin Competition (Warsaw). The Leeds Competition at which I had the honour of being a jury member this year. The Van Cliburn Competition in Texas and the Competition in Brussels, the Santander Competition, which was always renowned albeit for the fact that it had dozens if not hundreds of concerts by its prize-winners, and the Hamamatsu Competition in Japan, from which I’ve recently returned after a recital and master-classes. There will be another competition there in November.
– They say that the Japanese audience is an interesting one...
– The Japanese are very hospitable but due to their sense of politeness they never applaud very long. They don’t stay in the auditorium like they do in Italy. I twice saw the Italians would not let Kisin leave the stage. Apropos, he’s another musician I really admire. I remember his recent performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No 32, Op. 111, which staggered me with its crystal purity and the kind of lofty light-bearing sense and embodiment. In Italy Kisin gave sixteen encores! I was there! The audience didn’t leave until they started to shut the theatre. In Japan that’s not possible. The Japanese react passionately, they applaud, I’ve even heard cries of “bravo!” But the applause always suddenly stops, as if it’s been switched off.
– But they probably don’t clap between the movements of one piece?
– Between the movements they don’t even breathe! As I see it they are ready to die, but never to cough or sneeze.
– But with regard to applause between movements I became relaxed after my wife and I heard Mahler’s Seventh Symphony at the Musikverein in Vienna and after the first movement the audience applauded. In Vienna! My father said to me “Don’t ever get annoyed, perhaps it’s the first time these people have been at a concert.”
– Which company made the instrument you have at home?
– At home I have an old Steinway. And when our Academy was established it was supported by Yamaha.
– You have a huge discography. Which of your recordings please you the most?
The ones I haven’t done yet.
– And yet... What can we recommend to our audiences?
I’ve recorded all of Shostakovich. In the preludes and fugues I had questions relating to the composer’s directions. I think you have to approach them carefully, not always following the letter of the law but rather its spirit. And the Second Sonata is a work that I have lived with most of my life.
I’m quite proud of my recordings of Brahms’ music. Although, as they say, it’s “music in a can” and, of course, it was recorded twenty years ago, and today I would perform it differently. From time to time I listen in horror at some of my recordings and think “Did I really do that?” and then I listen agin and think “No, it’s passable.”
The last recording released was Tchaikovsky’s Seasons and Children’s Album. I think it turned out rather well.
There are recordings that wouldn’t make a good “memorial plaque” and there are recordings that I would delete from my discography. I had a case like that. In London I recorded a Chopin disc and didn’t permit it to be released – I really did not like what I did with it.
– How did you choose the programme for your recital – preludes by Chopin and Scriabin?
– I last performed Chopin’s Preludes twenty-five years ago and I wanted to revive them together with Scriabin’s eleventh opus. My father used to perform that work. As I wrote in my book, my teacher Professor Naumov played them remarkably well. And I decided to make a personal tribute to my father.
I hadn’t played that work by Scriabin and I didn’t know what to combine it with. But then I had the idea of having two cycles. It’s a work that appears banal, even school-like: in terms of structure, in terms of their arrangement, in terms of the circle of fifths with parallel tonalities Scriabin’s preludes exactly replicate Chopin’s principles, and the early Scriabin came totally from Chopin – that is all well known. But the combination of these two cycles in one concert is rare for some reason. So I decided to unite into one large chain these forty-eight different conditions of the human soul, mind, mood and relations. We’ll see how it turns out.
Speaking with Svetlana Nikitina
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