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By Olga Fyodorova
The year is 1957... In Riga, which, back then was still the capital of
Soviet Latvia, parents send their 10-year-old son to bed and engage in
a hushed conversation.
“This boy is so lazy and just can’t sit still for a moment! But he’s got
talent, he really has... What a pity! Today you asked me to sit with him.
I tried hard to be patient, but a half hour later I was ready to tear him
apart! He’s got no sound, his violin is hissing! He can’t move his fingers,
the bow keeps getting stuck! The boy is daydreaming, pretending to be listening
to what I say or playing! He was driving me mad! And he started crying,
like he always does, you know… The next thing I saw was the granny running
in to defend her beloved grandson from a tyrant father, meaning me! That
was the end of it all and, a moment later I saw Gidon happily sneaking
out into the street…”
“Take it easy, he’s not an ordinary boy you know… He’s a fantasizer, don’t
you know that?”
“You bet! Once he spent hours on end watching every fire in town and dreaming
of someday putting on that steel helmet the firefighters wear. Then he
started playing basketball hoping to become a great player. And what is
he going to be now, I wonder?”
“A drummer. He wants to join a military band and march in squares banging
his drum.”
“Fantastic! And here I am nagging him with this stupid little violin!”
“I guess it’s all because we are so ambitious. Neither of us became a great
violinist and we just play in an orchestra now, like many others do…
That’s why we want our son to realize the dreams we never lived to bring
true! And my dad’s dream too. He never made it big either… And now we keep
pestering our little boy and all he wants is to run around with friends
and play ball!”
“I guess you’re really not aware how talented he is, darling! The passage
I once spent hours to understand he does in just a jiffy! If he overcomes
his laziness someday he’ll become a great player, mark my words!”
The violin became part and parcel of Gidon’s life early on. Starting off
playing just for fun, he eventually came to like the instrument treating
it like a good friend… Because his relatives were musicians all, Gidon
never had any second thoughts about his future profession. He went to the
city’s best music school reserved for musically endowed children only.
Finishing it with honors, he headed for Leningrad, now St. Petersburg,
where he entered the conservatory class of Professor Mikhail Vaiman.
A performing musician, Vaiman spent little time with his students, apparently
regarding teaching as a drag and his assistants being of little interest
to the aspiring young player. Moreover, Professor Vaiman endeavored to
change Gidon’s grip and fingering. That was more than Gidon could bear
and, four months later, he quit and moved down to Moscow.
In 1966 Gidon Kremer entered the Moscow Conservatory class of the world-famous
violinist and teacher David Oistrakh. Coming to Room 8 where Oistrakh usually
gave his classes, every greenhorn student immediately grasped the
very special atmosphere of creative inspiration that reigned there…
There was a violin that always lay on the table there and David Oistrakh
would pick it up to show how best to play this or that passage. Giving
advise to his students, Oistrakh rarely pressed on his idea. “I would never
play it the way you do, he would say, “but you are going your own way and
have every right to do that.” The democratic method led to amazing results,
which was exactly something Gidon Kremer always wanted… Latching onto Oistrakh’s
advanced method, he started making quick progress…
Students often take part in competitions and Gidon Kremer was certainly
not an exception. In 1967 he was third at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth
competition in Brussels. The following year he excelled at a National contest
and in 1970 made easy work of the competing pack at the Tchaikovsky International
Competition in Moscow.
That was a very special competition. Held during the centennial birthday
of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin, the 1970 event featured a formidable
team of Russian contestants which was a far cry from everyone else present
there… Quite predictably, the star-studded Soviet outfit swept all the
medals. Now, more than thirty years on, the winners are international superstars
all, including, of course Gidon Kremer, the gold winner of the 1970 Tchaikovsky
competition…
Acting on the strength of his competition wins, Gidon launched a busy concert
career.
Critics in the West were ecstatic about Kremer’s skill, some heaping praise
on his virtuosity, his phenomenal flash boggling everyone’s mind while
others appreciated his profundity grasping the very essence of everything
he played…
Meanwhile, Kremer was finding his life in the Soviet Union increasingly
difficult with the official frowning on him for taking up music by disfavored
avant-garde composers.
Gidon was now very much into modern music with leading Soviet composers
devoting many of their new works to him and his charming violin playing
wife and fellow Conservatory course-mate, Tatyana Grindenko…
Their glittering concert duo never broke up even after divorce and Gidon’s
emigration. Even though they were not meeting each other as often as they
once did, the former husband and wife still played off each other working
with clockwork precision…
Gidon Kremer has been living in the West since 1978 having played with
just about every top orchestra and conductor giving a staggering 150 concerts
a year and virtually living on trains and planes...
Besides solo work, Maestro Kremer has recently been spending much time
as a conductor too. In 1996 he founded a junior chamber orchestra made
up of young musicians from the Baltic republics he called Kremerata Baltika,
in a clear reference to his own name…
Kremerata Baltika has played many times in Moscow and Gidon Kremer has
been a frequent guest here since the late 1980s playing chamber concerts
and in the mid-Nineties he brought down an ensemble he specially set up
for playing music by Astor Piazzolla.
Gidon Kremer is already 55 now…
Only 55! He is still bubbling with new ideas realizing them in ever new
concert programs, in a festival he regularly holds in Lockenhous, Austria,
in the books he writes about music and himself coming out in many languages
and which are immensely popular with music lovers everywhere. Gidon Kremer
is a happy man, always surrounded by loving friends and fans, living with
a loving wife who is a real beauty, and keeping close contact with
his children from different marriages. He lives a fascinating and action-packed
life and, above all, he is always in demand...
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