Latest — Ignat Solzhenitsyn

Previews

Preview: Salt Bay Chamberfest Full of Star Power

Allann Kozinn writing about the Salt Bay Chamberfest, where I perform next week.

Driving through this small, attractive town and its scenic outskirts on the way to the opening concert of the Salt Bay Chamberfest at Darrows Barn on Tuesday evening, it’s clear what draws so many musicians from around the country to Maine every summer. Though the festivals these musicians have built around their summer idylls generally have impressive rosters, for sheer star power it’s hard to beat Salt Bay, now in its 22nd season.

Among the featured players this summer are the Brentano String Quartet, violinists Jennifer Koh and Jennifer Frautschi, cellist Peter Wiley – long a member of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Guarneri String Quartet – and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, an extraordinary pianist and conductor, and also the son of the Soviet dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhentisyn, about whom he will be giving a talk at the festival on Sunday.
— Allann Kozinn, Portland Press Herald

Preview: "Classical music page-turners turn the page into the modern era"

Peter Dobrin in the Philadelphia Inquirer with a piece on page-turning, in which I say that

Today, page-turning - and it is a role I have performed countless times myself! - is an unwelcome anachronism, putting the pianist constantly on the defensive against potential catastrophe, so that his mind is bent more toward the person to his left than the people to his right.

Mr. Dobrin also has a thought-provoking interview on this general subject with violinist Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo Quartet, and a very funny sidebar on his own recent page-turning adventure.

Interview: "Интервью с Игнатом Солженицыным"

В сегодняшнем интервью меня спрашивают, могут ли люди искусства влиять на политическую ситуацию в мире? Я отвечаю:

И да, и нет. Конечно искусство – самый великий дар человечеству от Господа Бога и большая сила, способная сделать многое. Но мне непонятно мнение коллег, приписывающих искусству магические качества. Магия в музыке, несомненно, есть, только она влияет на внутренний рост человека. А к мысли о том, что музыка в состоянии остановить войну или накормить голодных, я не могу относиться серьёзно.

Preview: "So far, so good, says Solzhenitsyn of Utah Symphony gig"

A preview of my concerts this week with the Utah Symphony.

He’s delighted to return in a collaboration with the Utah Symphony, conducting Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 and Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamporphosis”; he will conduct the Mozart from the keyboard. “We’re off to a very good start,” he reported after his first rehearsal with the orchestra on Wednesday. He said he was impressed with musicians’ intonation (“not always an orchestra’s strong point”) and their uniformly high level of playing.
— Catherine Reese Newton, The Salt Lake Tribune

Preview: "What's Russian for 'music to our ears'?"

The Philadelphia Daily News interviewed me in this past Sunday's edition and one of the questions led me to recall some memorable words of Schnabel:

The great pianist Arthur Schnabel, whose student Maria Curcio was one of my teachers, famously said that great music is better than it can ever be performed. Without that awesome sense of an unbridgeable impossible gulf between the possible and the ideal, why go into music to dream small dreams? Facing impossible challenges is what keeps us going.