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By Olga Fyodorova
December, 1998. The Shameyevs’ apartment in Moscow.
“Mom, here is a letter from Britain. It’s for you… It’s postmarked in Cambridge.
Maybe they are inviting you to play there, what do you think?”
“Or to sit on the jury of a harpists competition… Wait a minute, there
is something different here… Where are my new glasses?”
“Let me read it for you… Well… They ask you to send in your bio for the
Who’s Who in Music encyclopedia…”
“Who is it?”
“The International Biographies Center. That’s what it says… I guess it’s
great to find oneself in the company of the greatest musicians around!
What are you waiting for? Just do what they ask you, let everyone out there
know that Natalya Shameyeva is the best harpist in Russia, the planet,
the whole galaxy!”
“Come on, cool off, won’t you? See maybe they want some recordings too?”
“No, just the bio. Recordings? What recordings?! You are the best and they
know it!”
Natalya Shameyeva was 8 years old when her parents first brought her to
a school for musically endowed children. “Why so late, - the teachers wondered
- We usually take in five and six year olds here…” However, after
a brief auditioning they immediately took the talented girl on board sending
her to the harp class they had just opened there…
There was only one harp there the girls took turns practicing – just about
an hour a day each. Natalya’s first harp that she played at home was leased
from a nearby rentals store. It was terrible but the girl was happy notwithstanding…
Natalya bought her first professional instrument much later using for the
purpose the money she won playing at an international competition in Israel.
She still plays that harp…
Natalya was lucky to study with the world-famous master-harpist Vera Dulova.
Impressed by the girl’s talent and obsession with music, Dulova practiced
with her almost every day and in summer she even took her along to the
seaside where they kept working on and on and on…
The results of that gargantuan effort spoke for themselves – Natalya Shameyeva
won the second prize at a national competition, the third prize in Israel
and, finally, the first award at a competition in the United States.
Just like Dulova’s other students, Natalya wowed the jury with her inimitably
rich and free-flowing sound. One juryman even came out on stage to see
whether there was some amplifier hidden inside Natalya’s harp only to find
out that it was all in the player’s unconventional fingering...
In the United States, Vera Dulova saw four of her students bowing out with
the competition’s top awards. “The Russians swept all the top awards at
Hartford,” gasped the local newspapers, “And the Muscovites rolled all
over the rest here…”
Vera Dulova then brought her best-loved student to the Bolshoi where she
had worked all her life. A brilliant lead player knowing by heart just
about every opera and ballet ever written, Dulova was now handing her vast
experience over to Natalya who quickly mastered all the best-kept secrets
of harp playing where one has to concentrate and give all she’s got in
a matter of just a few short moments…
Dulova introduced her to the closely-knit international community of harp
players.
Before long Natalya was a highlight of the many harp symposiums, festivals
and competitions sitting on star-studded juries and organizing committees
and already taking her own students out to Europe and America. Simultaneously,
she carried on as a performing musician wowing audiences everywhere she
went…
Classical and modern music peacefully cohabitate in her program and she
keeps expanding her repertory with her own arrangements of piano
pieces and commissioning composers to write for her. Moscow-based
composer Valery Kikta writes expressly for Shameyeva and some of his works
eventually made their way in to the mandatory program of a national and
then Moscow international harpists’ competition.
A quick look at a harpist’s calluse-covered fingertips can make a layman
wonder but without such calluses she would have her fingers blooded by
the metal strings. Which means that the harder the calluses you have worked
up, the more hardworking you really are. That’s exactly what Natalya is.
This seemingly fragile woman practices long hours every day and loves it
because it keeps her in perfect form and one of the best harp players in
the world.
Now it’s clear why her name has made it into the Who’s Who In Music catalog
published by the International Biographies Center.
A year after the catalog came out, Natalya Shameyeva received one more
letter from Britain signed by the Center’s director Nicholas Law.
He informed her that an authoritative international panel had named her
the International Woman of the Year 1999 for outstanding achievements in
music and for her selfless harp teaching and popularization effort…
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