Explosive side of Russia's new revolution

By WILLIAM DART

When I first met Yuri Bashmet more than a decade ago I didn't know he was a Beatles fan. The serious Russian violist seemed like a Dostoyevskian hero out of his time.

Then, just a few years ago, I caught a South Bank television special in which the same Yuri Bashmet was at a piano, picking away at the Beatles' Michelle in the middle of a freewheeling Russian party.

He shrugs when I mention it. Sure, he had been a Beatles fan in his early teenage years, with his own pop group.

"I played guitar for myself but, to please my mama, studied violin at music school."

The change to viola came because a friend had told him you didn't have to practise so many hours as a violinist, and he would have more time for his guitar.

Thirty years later, Bashmet is one of the world's top violists, having made his mark in 1976 when he won first prize at the Munich International Viola Competition.

He is a celebrated conductor, too, forming the Moscow Soloists in 1992, and, for the past two years he has been at the helm of the Symphony Orchestra of New Russia.

Tomorrow night, Aucklanders will be able to enjoy his prowess in both fields when he appears with the Auckland Philharmonia, offering three solo turns.

The oldest of the three pieces, Telemann's G major concerto, would not have been possible if Russia had not been opened up to authentic playing styles from the West, which he admits were "kind of surprising" when he heard them first.

Bashmet remembers the uproar when he presented Moscow with its first back-to-Baroque performance of the Bach Suites.

"It was an explosion, and the audiences just weren't ready for such a new aesthetic."

One senses he is happier to talk about Hindemith's Trauermusik and, though he admits Hindemith's music is often "intellectual and fairly difficult for audiences", this piece has the advantages of being "short, with a beautiful melody and in a romantic style".

Audiences are important for Bashmet, and it seems that Russian audiences can't get enough music.

"It's an exciting country to be in, with a completely fresh cultural life. There's been a huge explosion of energy in the theatres and concert halls, and we are always having new things which would have been forbidden before."

There is also a young enthusiastic audience, spurred on, as Bashmet quaintly puts it, "by the mamas and papas".


"Both of President Putin's daughters are learning music and last year he announced a big financial help to the two conservatories, which means a professor's salary has been increased by 600 per cent."

Despite his recent successes with concertos by Gubaidulina and Kancheli, the CD of which was nominated for a Grammy Award last year, Bashmet is most happy to be drawn out on the late Alfred Schnittke who wrote three works for the violist.

Schnittke was "a clever man with a great sense of humour", Bashmet reveals, "but because he was so anti-Soviet, he had almost as difficult a life as Shostakovich".

This was the lead I wanted. I was in the company of a Moscow-residing Russian, and couldn't resist asking where he stood on the contentious issue of Shostakovich's Testimony, the memoirs some feel were concocted by Solomon Volkov.

"They are very strange," Bashmet admits, after a pause, "nobody knows if they are true."

He has stronger opinions on Bruno Monsaingeon's 1998 film of Richter: The Enigma, which was "absolutely not the real Sviatoslav Richter".

"Richter was so changeable in his opinions, he might write down one opinion and then three days later put down the opposite. The director took just the one and constructed a movie from that."

Talking films brings out another aspect of the man. Bashmet is a film buff and, if he were in Moscow now, he'd be enjoying the Moscow Film Festival with his friend, actor Nikita Mihailov.

What movies would he search out? A pause and then, with a burst, the emphatic answer, "Dramas, and all the better if they are the story of some famous writer, artist or composer."