"A violin is a lonely voice. The word lonely evokes a great deal in human life, because a man is always left on his own, even when he is surrounded by people."
"As a young man one sees even the most terrible things in a different light. After the age of 40 a man becomes sadder; because he becomes wiser."
"I often prepare for rehearsals on board of aircrafts – I find I work better in a sealed space. There is no one to distract me and no mobile phones to ring. There is more silence. I sit there with the score and I think about what it will be like. I imagine how the music will sound, which tempo marking I will choose and how to make sure that the details do not blot out the whole, how to grasp the entire structure. I dig deep into the score, take my cue from the period when it was written, from the composer's style, from my own meager experience. Once experience is always meager – it has limits in time. It is given to us, and then we need it anew: interpretations go out of fashion, new people appear with whom one is to perform."
"A rehearsal is a meeting of people who are brooding on something. This is not something definitive, this is a search. A lot of work is required before anything appears that could commonly be described as inspiration. Work should erase the traces of work. Pushkin, I think summed up inspiration in "The Stone Guest" when he had Laura say "Yes, today my every movement, my every word came right. I willingly gave myself up to inspiration. The words flowed, as though they were born not of slavish memory but from my heart…." I think that is an astonishing way of putting it."
"I like to rehearse for performances of all sorts of different pieces at the same time. I also read several books simultaneously – it doesn't slow me down, on the contrary, it keeps my interest alive. Of course, there is a big difference between how I rehearse programs for solo recitals and for performances with an orchestra. When I am preparing on for a solo performance, I run up against my own lack of perfection. I have to work to polish various individual passages. You have to explain to an orchestra how to play something, the things to which they should pay special attention, what is principal and what is of secondary importance, and to fill the music with inner meaning. Mahler said, "After Beethoven there is no such thing as music without its own program."
An actor who goes on stage without any understanding of what an internal monologue is will hardly get very far. So it is here – sometimes I tell stories to the orchestra, sometimes I merely drop hints, which are often to be found in composers' memoirs and their correspondence. For example we would have never found out what Rachmaninov thought about his Etudes-Tableaux if the composer Ottarino Respighi had not decided to orchestra them. And it was then that Rachmaninov told him, "This here is singing in church whereas this here is a bleak shower of rain."
"My profession is that of a soldier going off to war. The most wearing time are the last 10 to 15 minutes before a concert, they are almost unbearable. You can no longer put anything right. The hall has not burned down, the public has arrived, everyone is expectant. One makes one's name and one has to take responsibility for it, To have to bear responsibility for it every time is a burden, a cross to bear. Just before the concert I feel like I am a traveler in a desert who is carrying a drop of precious water and is afraid of spilling it or losing it. A concert is a human life which elapses within the space of two hours: birth development, all the passions of which life is full, all its joys and disappointments. It is that of a fighter and a victim. Between those two fiery points there is a man in search of harmony. And the coda, the inevitable finish is in sight. If a concert has gone well, then there is a chance that it will be remembered for nine days. If it has gone very well, then it will be remembered for 40 days. If it has turned out to be unforgettable – something which happens extremely rarely – then it remains in men's memories for a long time thereby extending its own life."
"Janacek wrote a quartet entitled "Intimate Letters". That is a description that could be used for many pieces of chamber music. They are the most refined, subtle works that great composers have given us. Geniuses never produce anything insubstantial. They are great even in small scale miniatures. Performing – as well as listening – to chamber music is like re-reading correspondence with one's friends in rainy autumnal weather."
"Concerts of symphonic music are like epic paintings of battles. And every bit as fateful. Every composer is different and you need a separate key to decode each one. You need to understand his era, his style and to love him. Notes are more than just black dots on the stave. You must know everything about a composer – who his friends were, whom he loved, what was happening at the same time in the arts, which books he read. For example, editions of Shakespeare were found in Beethoven's library with annotations in his own hand. Each piece is a mystery which we strive to penetrate, yet never completely so. Every time it is something new some sort of discovery. I like to buy brand new copies of sheet music even of works I have played at some time or another in order to take a fresh look at them, as if I did not know what had gone before. I rehearse the piece as though I was doing so for the first time ever."
"Music is a universal human language"
"Everyone has something from which one can learn"
"The applause seems like an unfamiliar noise."
"I am like a splinter of wood being carried along by the current. Sometimes my life does not depend on me. There are rehearsals, there is the orchestra, there is the House of Music, the Foundation that helps gifted children. I have to find a spare moment to play my violin, to rehearse, to audition a male or female singer with whom I have to perform in a year's time. The phone is ringing all the time with calls from all over the world – there are plans to make and agree on, interviews to give. The ancient Greeks once came up with the maxim "you can never step into the same river twice". For a long time no one challenged it – it was regarded as a truism. Then the Georgian philosopher Mamardashvili asked the question, "Why, in actual fact, can you not step into it twice? And he came up with the answer: "Because we are in that river."
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Essentially perfect happiness is not something we can ever know. A minimum of suffering is already happiness.
What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
The work of my charitable foundation and the fact that I have carried on playing.
What do you regard as your chief characteristics?
If I am to be honest rather than modest – kindness.
Which object do you value most of all?
My violin, of course.
With which historical figure do you identify the most?
I think Pascal was right when he said that mankind is one man who lives eternally.
What is your favorite journey?
A boat trip down a river.
Which virtue do you regard as most overrated?
Any one that is used as a foil for vices.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My nose. When I read Gogol's short story "The Nose" as a child I was frightened that the same thing would happen to me that happens to Major Kovalyov.
Which living person do you most despise?
On the whole, the hate of other people is an alien feeling for me, but hate can be provoked by human action.
What do you most regret?
The loss of loved ones and friends, the fact that time passes so quickly.
Whom or what do you love most?
Music and my family.
When and where are you happiest?
I am always happy when I can rehearse in peace.
Where would you like to live?
Where I live now.
If you could change something about your family, what would it be?
I would at least double the number of people in it.
What do you regard as the greatest disgrace and humiliation?
Betrayal is a disgrace and enforced penury is a humiliation.
What do you most dislike?
Indifference, cynicism and human ignorance. All of that increases evil.
What do you most enjoy doing?
My own thing.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Father Alexander Myen (noted Orthodox priest and theologian murdered in 1990).
Which are your favorite names?
I like names that are connected with my nearest and dearest. There are lots of them, so I shall name the names of my children: Alexander, Yekaterina, Tatyana, Anna.
How would you like to die?
In my sleep and in good health.
If you could come back after death in the form of any person or object, what would it be?
A clean sheet of music paper.
What is your motto?
"Dum spiro, spero" (While I live, I hope)
Do you sleep on an airplane?
No, I work, when I am in a sealed off space – particular kinds of thoughts come through my head.
What happens in your nightmares?
I've trodden on my violin, or sat on it, or else it's been stolen, or I have left it in a taxi, it has exploded in my hands and all the strings have snapped.
When you have time to read which authors do you choose?
Proust, Borges, Leskov, Kundera, Hesse, Nabokov, Solovyov, Florensky, Kierkegaard, Merab Mamrdishvili. I love poetry, Rachmaninov used to say that "poetry is the sister of music".
What about popluar fiction?
Boris Akunin
Why do you involve yourself so little with musical theatre?
Music is also a kind of theatre with its own scene-setting, internal monologue and higher aim. In music the idea of attaining full dramatic identification on the basis of what one experiences is very important.
What is always essential for an artist to have?
Solitude. Music is also a kind of defense against public activity.
What is your favorite food?
Black bread, pelmen with vinegar and mustard, sauerkraut with sunflower oil, borscht.
Many musicians are superstitious, what about you?
Sometimes just before a concert I try not to step on cracks between the paving stones, from time to time I knock on wood. I don't like walking under ladders. At the cloakroom at Lincoln Center I was handed a bad ticket numbered 666 – I would rather not have gone to the concert than have my coat hanging on a hook with that number.
What is your favorite season?
Each season has its own beauty.
Can you distinguish talented individuals from geniuses?
I can, of course. Although these days people tend only to regard as geniuses those who are no longer with us. I see geniuses in my contemporaries fairly often.
Do you do anything to further your career?
I have never thought about my career and have never done anything towards it. One has to have a different reason to live. Fame only comes in the wake of submission.
...the applause dies down. Out of the silence that has suddenly descended there can be heard a quiet voice with an unusual velvet timbre. And once again the music strikes up and the hall is lost in happy meditation. Then comes the final chord, applause breaks out again and the public is enraptured...
Anyone who has been to a concert by Vladimir Spivakov at least once will never forget the jubilant atmosphere at the final applause, which seizes everyone present in the hall. It makes no difference what the maestro is holding in his hands at that moment, be it his beloved Stradivarius or a conductor's baton. It makes no difference what sort of programme he is performing. He will never disappoint the audience's expectations and will give his entire being to the hall, along with his 'aural vision' of the music, be it Haydn's naïve effervescence, the presentiment of eternity of a Mozart or the radiant sadness of Shostakovich.
How often we walk out of a concert given by some outstanding musician which it has cost us much effort to attend with a sense of disappointment. There are performers who behave as though they were playing on their own at home, who care not a jot for the public and its entirely understandable desire to find a faithful guide through the incorporeal kingdom of sound. The are some whose enthusiasm for passages requiring technical prowess is such that they forget that music is something greater than clothing that has been cut with supreme precision, even when it is the work of haute couture composers.
In the modern philharmonic landscape, Vladimir Spivakov stands out as an exemplary musician who is absolutely honest with his public. He is always ready to strain himself to ensure that he gets through to each and every listener and to evoke in him that delightful torment, which, as E.T.A. Hoffman so neatly put it, «swallowing up, yet not destroying love, hope and joy, strives to fill our breast full of the perfect consonance of all the passions». And through this unlikely sense we «continue to live and become exalted visionaries».
It for these exalted visionaries that Spivakov fights, conquering us from time outside, so that we leave behind all that is bad when we cross the threshold of the concert hall and give ourselves up to the only thing that makes life worthwhile – the music that is being born here and now. And who at this moment thinks of the years of immensely hard work that each fleeting passage has cost the performer, the endless hours of rehearsals, the sleepless nights, the thought that goes into each piece of music? The results of all this work are extraordinary. Together with the maestro we descend into a completely different time, time that has been found anew. And there we find more than just pure harmony. A superidea is born from each note, a unique and captivating image. For that reason one can confidently describe Spivakov as one of the last Russian musical polymaths, for whom music is always more than just so many musical intervals, donkey work or a means of earning a living. Not for nothing does the public always looks forward to his performances, in the same way that it eagerly anticipates revelations from people who know more and have a finer sense of feeling than the rest of their fellow men - especially so when people such as this are so generous in sharing their knowledge and feelings with the listeners.
Generosity is one of principal virtues of both Spivakov the man and Spivakov the musician. I see him now at the end of yet another concert: weary after playing his heart out, he slowly drags on one cigarette after the other. (Only a smoker can know that sense of having been completely emptied out, when the grey strand of cigarette smoke seems to be the only thing that is still keeping you in touch with the world around you.) Or else with unconcealed joy and a gleam in his eyes he listens to the young wunderkinds, the beneficiaries of his charity foundation. (How many of them are there, the children and adults whom the maestro has helped and carries on helping his whole life through?) To live for others, sometimes at a cost to oneself and one's family – is this not the true meaning of life, towards which all of us can only strive? And yet that is just how Spivakov lives...
A Russian will recall the noun shchedrets. (It shares the same root as the word shchedry, meaning generous.) What a shame that it cannot be applied to a particular person. Once upon a time that is how New Year's Eve, when everyone would exchange presents, was known. In defiance of the rules of grammar, let us say honestly that he is a shchedrets, a one-man feast and on meeting him all of us become a little like children again and are frozen in anticipation of wonders and gifts. Over the course of these days, when the maestro us celebrating his 65th birthday, it becomes clear that he has no intention of hanging up his violin or his baton. The anniversary concert, the next Vladimir Spivakov invites... festival – all of this is only a brief stop along the way and beyond it lie dozens more concerts, festivals and new compositions. And that means that we shall hear him again more than once...
The applause dies down. Out of the silence that has suddenly descended there can be heard a quiet voice with an unusual velvet timbre. And once again the music strikes up and the hall is lost in happy meditation. Then comes the final chord, applause breaks out again and the public is enraptured...
All about Music:
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Essentially perfect happiness is not something we can ever know. A minimum of suffering is already happiness.
