By Olga Fyodorova
In the fall of 1999 there was a gray-haired man and a relatively young
lady sitting side by side on a Moscow-Novosibirsk flight. After having
examined her neighbor’s face for a whole hour, the woman said:
“Excuse me, sir, haven’t we met before? Anyways, your face looks so familiar
to me. You’re not a TV host, nor an athlete or a pop singer, are you?
Then who are you?”
“A violinist.”
“Violinist?! Never been to a violin concert in my whole life! And what’s
your name?”
“Vladimir Spivakov.”
“That’s exactly what I thought! You look different, Vladimir… You always
had your black hair neatly brushed back and now you have this crew cut
gray hair…”
“I decided to change my image. Stopped dying my hair, had it cut short,
that’s why people have stopped recognizing me…”
“But why did you do that?”
“It’s just that I got fed up looking young. I’m 55 now and I want to look
my age!”
“I guess the TV people have not yet been able to see through your new looks
and all but stopped inviting you to their programs… But there was a time
when Vladimir Spivakov was on all channels all at the same time giving
an interview here, answering questions there, hosting a celebrities club
here, playing a concert there… I can imagine how many fans you had!”
“Scores of them, and it often helped, really… Recognizing my face, people
eagerly rushed to help, carrying my baggage right to the plane, giving
me VIP treatment at stores, finding rare notes for me at libraries and
providing a special flower car after concerts…”
“And how did it all begin, by the way? I gather you picked up the violin
when you were still a toddler and have never since parted company with
your instrument?”
“It was all my mother’s idea because I really didn’t care much about the
violin preferring instead to play football and paint. I was really
serious about my painting and spent my spare time playing soccer with friends.
Mother, a professional musician, sent me to a music school, which put me
to a real test. I had a great teacher there but she was too kind
to me and kept singing me praises even when I was playing the fool and
just loafed around. During the springtime exams they gave me the
lowest mark they could think of and the director said they were going to
kick me out. Mother nearly fainted... Her friends suggested she take
me to Moscow and send me to the class of the famed and very no-nonsense
Conservatory Professor Yuri Yankelevich. That’s what she did and I take
off my hat to her for doing so. Because without him I would never have
become what I am now...”
“Experts say you have such a nice sound. Is it because you play a Stradivari
or a Gvarneri?”
“No, I have never had such instruments in my whole life. I still have a
very decent instrument I bought from Professor Yankelevich’s sister after
he died. Yankelevich once allowed me to play it during competitions because
back then I didn’t have a good instrument. Playing that violin I
won a medal at the Jacques Thibauld competition in Paris, the Tchaikovsky
competition in Moscow and then in Montreal. It is like a talisman to me…”
“I hear you spend much time helping young musicians. There is even the
famous Vladimir Spivakov Fund people talk so much about these days. One
day you are holding a concert of young musicians, another – sending
someone out to a master class in Europe or America, bringing a hard to
find medication or a wheelchair or giving away new instruments… Is it violins
you usually give away?”
“Not necessarily… My fund is helping pianists, cellists, flutists… Once
we gave out a pretty decent instrument to a 16 year-old clarinetist. It
was during a competition in France and this fellow, a Russian, had
such a terrible instrument, all cracked and sounding just awful! When I
gave him a new clarinet in a beautiful case, you should see how happy he
was, carefully taking it out and kissing it… He is a well-known musician
now and he still plays the clarinet I once gave him…”
“I know a young trumpet player whom you gave an absolutely fantastic instrument
you bought in America. He has since been playing it and can’t say
how grateful he is for what you did! His name is Sergei Nakoryakov. By
the way, I have one of the recordings he made with the Moscow Virtuosi
orchestra, conducted, as usual, by Vladimir Spivakov. Do you remember that
recording, maestro?
I’ve recently seen several TV programs hosted by Sati Spivakova. Is she
your wife?”
“Now, yes…”
“Now? Meaning that she’s not your first?”
“The third… My first wife was a onetime classmate. We had just turned 20
then. We were so madly in love… She was a pianist and we used to play together
when we were still at school. Then we had a baby boy. When he was only
three months old she decided to play in the Tchaikovsky competition. She
was great, like always, and won a prize there. We both played there and
became winners. It was there that Viktoria Postnikova, that’s her name,
met conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky and fell head over heels in love with
him. Shortly after she moved over to his place taking our son with her.
They got married and for many years I just couldn’t resign myself to what
had happened… I eventually married a woman many years my senior and who
looked much like my mother. One day I met Sati, then a student at an institute
of performing arts here in Moscow. It was love at first sight and our wedding
day was the happiest day in my life! We are a great family and have
three daughters. Sati is a wonderful wife, refined, sensitive and devoted.
She is Armenian. You’ve seen her on television, isn’t she a beauty? She
is my muse, my inspiration…”
“Some people say they adore your playing, but the snobs say you play for
the chosen few only… Does it hurt to hear that?”
“Not at all. I play all kinds of music, from sophisticated modern
music to popular evergreens. Not because I seek popularity but because
I want to accommodate the musical tastes of various sections of the
public. People are losing interest in classical music, so we’ve got to
do something about it. Some people call me a populist, while others understand
that catchy tunes often evoke people’s interest in classics and that’s
exactly what I’m trying do…”
“We’ll soon be landing at Novosibirsk and you haven’t yet told me about
your conducting, about your great Moscow Virtuosi orchestra…”
“When are you flying back to Moscow?”
“A week from now…”
“Me too, I’m playing just a couple of concerts here and going back to Moscow.”
“What about seeing each other again on our way back and talk it all over?”
“Why not?..”
* * *
In the autumn of 1999 the well-known musician and the young journalist
were again sitting side by side on a Moscow-bound plane, which had just
taken off from Novosibirsk.
“It’s so great we arranged to fly back on the same flight, so we can pick
up where we left off... Well, maestro Spivakov, I already know how you
became a violinist, the competitions you won and the venues you’ve played.
Tell me, why, being so famous, did you suddenly move into conducting?”
“Because as a violinist, you really don’t have much to play. By the time
I turned 35 I had realized that I had nothing more to play and just had
to do something about it…”
“Have they stopped writing violin music at all these days?”
“Not exactly, but I just don’t see much worth playing, really…”
“That’s why you plunged yourself into the endless ocean of symphony music?”
“Exactly. I didn’t want to start something in Moscow, because every little
mistake I made would immediately become the talk of the whole town. That’s
why I headed down for Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, where they have a very
decent philharmonic orchestra set up by the excellent conductor Israel
Gusman. An old friend of mine, even though I’m much younger, he started
teaching me conducting and when I stood there in front of the orchestra
for the first time I was literally blown away by that wall of sound, so
powerful and intoxicating…”
“Well, maestro, that’s how you decided to set up an orchestra all your
own… And how did the name Virtuosos of Moscow actually come up? Was
it just for fun, a sort of a swipe at the famous Virtuosos of Rome chamber
orchestra?”
“When you are starting a new outfit you need a catchy name, don’t you?
We went for this one and have never regretted it. I also managed to bring
in real virtuosos, most of them my good friends…”
“When was your first concert?”
“In mid-December 1979, in Gorky. On December 30, right on New Year’s Eve,
we were playing in the Conservatory Big Hall in Moscow. Because of the
good publicity campaign we did, the place was all sold out…”
“The new orchestra created a big stir inspiring glowing reviews in the
press and being invited to play at the most prestigious venues they could
think of. During the Eighties the Virtuosos of Moscow was the most
popular such orchestra in Russia.”
“Yeah, but it’s often easier to become popular than stay popular, you know…
That’s why we were working flat out rehearsing new programs and inviting
top-flight performers.”
“Like the operatic superstars Yelena Obraztsova, Yevgeny Nesterenko, famous
pianists and cellists…”
“And many talented foreigners we unveiled to the Russian concert-going
public…”
“I remember the young and very young virtuosos you played with, including
the teenage pianist Yevgeny Kisin you introduced to the music community
here…”
“By the way, it was with the Virtuosos of Moscow that Kisin went on his
first foreign tour…”
“I hear the Virtuosos of Moscow orchestra was the centerpiece of the music
festival you organized at Colmar, France. Please say a few words about
how it all happened…”
“Late in the 1980s they asked me to organize a summer music festival there.
Naturally enough the Virtuosos of Moscow featured very prominently… The
festival was a resounding success with music lovers flocking in from all
across France, Germany and Switzerland. Because the first one was such
a great success, we decided to make it annual, each devoting to a particular
musician. We’ve since had Colmar festivals dedicated to the violinists
Yehudi Menukhin and David Oistrakh, pianist Arthur Rubistein, operatic
bass Fyodor Chaliapin and the Spanish guitar virtuoso Andres Segovia, each
one’s specialty determining the main program and the lineup of lead players.
And each time it happens, the Virtuosos of Moscow are there, like they
have always been since 1988…”
“In the late 1980s the Virtuosos settled down in Spain. Why?”
“Popular as we were, we still had nowhere to rehearse here. The Spanish
government then offered us a very lucrative contract. In Asturia we have
all we could ever dream of. We signed a long-term contract and moved down
south with our families. We thought we were going for just a few years,
but it so happened that many of us stayed there for good. They started
getting invited to play with the best Spanish orchestras for money we had
never been paid before and were signing off one by one. I found a
replacement for each one of them and of course we had to spend more time
rehearsing. But the audience never noticed the change…”
“You came to Russia several times each year and each your concert here
was a celebration…”
“The Virtuosos of Moscow also made sure to play outside Moscow and wherever
we went people packed the house and sometimes we even had to seat them
right on the stage and still there were many more who we just couldn’t
squeeze in no matter how hard we tried…”
“The Virtuosos of Moscow are often criticized for being too chamber-like.
Don’t you feel offended, maestro Spivakov?”
“Not at all. We’ve played lots of beautiful music that appeals to connoisseurs
and those who just like listening to good music. It’s something like bringing
the arts to the people and we like that very much…”
“A few years ago the Virtuosos of Moscow returned to Russia. The media
said they were back for keeps and mentioned those who had decided to stay
and work in Spain and elsewhere in Europe…”
“That’s right, meaning that I had to almost completely renew the lineup.
There are mostly young players here but they are virtuosos all and I really
love working with them. This is a whole new generation of players taking
up the 21st century music world. That’s why I never feel embarrassed seeing
the “Virtuosos of Moscow led by Vladimir Spivakov” on the billboards at
the best venues here in Russia and elsewhere in the world…”
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