Pianist Valentina Lisitsa Biography

The lady before and after Major, the lady before and after Major, the pianist Valentina Lisitsa - about concerts in Donetsk: it is clear why the pianist Valentina Lisitsa was worth living, who experienced the “abolition of culture” on herself. I recorded a concert with a London Symphony Orchestra in one of the oldest British studios "Abby Road". Google chose its performance for the first broadcast in HD, but her name in Russia really sounded in the year, when she, a Kiev woman who emigrated in the United States at the beginning of X, suddenly “went crazy”: acquaintances, people are intelligent and creative, if they were not welcomed, then prudently silent about the Maidan State Contractor in Ukraine.

She did not be silent or rejoice either. And she would not have stopped - but she went to Donetsk and performed with a concert right in the city center. By the standards of the Western, a step is reckless. And honest, in Russian. So the pianist Valentina Lisitsa turned out to be the first to experience the “abolition of culture”. Today she lives in Moscow, along with the Donetsk Symphony Orchestra.

Sergei Prokofieva twice drove throughout the country with the program "Orchestra of the Unconquered." Recently they played a concert in the Rachmaninsky hall of the capital's Philharmonic. Why? Isn't the art more calmer away from the vain? What is a civilian feeling for a musician? The pianist and I are talking about this in one of the metropolitan parks, sitting on benches by the pond, and Moshkar is not a hindrance to us.

Valentina, I want to ask right away: why are you so especially addicted to Rachmaninov and his music - as if something connects with this composer? Valentina Lisitsa: Love! The first international master classes named after Rachmaninov took place there, and several pianists of the Kyiv conservatory were sent there. True, we found a common language not during rehearsals, but while playing chess, they say you dreamed of becoming a great chess player Valentina Lisitsa: and played a lot of chess.

But Rachmaninov eventually influenced both his personal life and career. This is the only greatest composer and pianist who himself recorded his works. And I studied on these records, I worked a lot to comprehend its complex performance style today. This is especially felt. The excitement that his music conveys - and almost all of it is written before the First World War - only intensifies.

Therefore, no attempts by the “abolition culture” will prevent Rachmaninov in all countries from listening. They check with him, they are looking for answers. And they are also looking for love - they always go to Russian geniuses for love. You mentioned Ivanovka, this is the Tambov region. And in the United States there are places where dust dust from the places where the genius’s foot stepped is also blown away?

Valentina Lisitsa: Knoxville Gorodok, Tennessee, will not immediately be found on the map, but he went down in history by the fact that Sergey Rakhmaninov played his last concert. It was in the year, after that he could no longer play. The Local Park has a sculpture "Last concert", and in this outback with trepidation they relate to the fact that the Russian composer here completed his pianist career.

By the way, it would be interesting to connect Ivanovka and Knoxville with some Russian-American cultural project, a cross festival, for example. I hope it will ever become possible again. You compared your career in the United States with the American slides: either the lull, then the take -off, and after that the curve of success went down. The reason is in the civil position of Valentina Lisitsa: and everything happened unexpectedly for me.

I began to notice that information about what was happening in Ukraine in the American media and the comments of the authorities diverges from the one I hear by phone from our relatives with my husband. These discrepancies with the reality of the Maidan were surprisingly obvious. A banal example: a girl in the square reads poems that directly praise Nazism - and here everyone tells that these are poems about the "tragedy of the Holodomor".

I just began to translate from the Ukrainian everything that sounded on the Maidan and around it, honestly believing that I would help the Americans, including reporters, to figure out what is really happening in Ukraine, which they had not heard and have not heard about before. At first, some American publications even referred to me - but then they suddenly stopped sharply.

You really did not suspect that such "help" - to figure out who is who really is - you will be worth your career in the USA? The United States seemed to be a country of freedom, where they appreciate the truth. If you do not go into politics, but I never did this, indeed, you can believe it for a long time. And I believed in everything that they spoke there about Iraq, even in the "humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia" believed.

And only with Ukraine began to see: they brazenly lie to us. At the same time, they asked me: why don't you give a concert in Kyiv? I asked: do you understand exactly what is happening there? In response to me: you yourself do not understand anything, you yourself are lying. And therefore. I found a braid on a stone. Then I still could not think that it would affect my career.

Thunder among the clear sky was the abolition of a concert in Toronto.We wrote about this cancellation of the concert - and then they just learned about you in Russia and the Donbass Valentina Lisitsa: it turned out that my concerts began to be canceled by a letter from the office of Hillary Clinton. High -ranking Republicans stood up for me, some political games began around my name, all the interest in me yes, and before all this in Russia they almost did not know me, I calmly played music, touched my son, paid the mortgage well, so you lived in Kyiv - and what, you or your relatives came across what Ukrainian nationalism turned around today?

Valentina Lisitsa: My father in the passport is recorded as a Ukrainian, and my mother is Russian. All that we came across once seemed to be small things, annoying, but seemingly non-intelligible. I’m going to get a passport, the well -wishers tell - sign up with a Ukrainian: it will be easier to enter the university or the story with my mother. She was Stakhanovka, worked in a spinning factory, portraits in newspapers, a board of honor.

They put forward their mother along the trade union line to deputies, and then suddenly they call: no, comrade Lisitsa, we thought that you were a Ukrainian, and you are Russian, by quota, you didn’t go to the deputies: we wanted to invite Rakhmaninov as Ukrainian, in support of Ukraine against the Russians. The quota did not go. I replied that it insults not even the abolition of the concert, but the fact: it is not the music of the great Russian composer that is important to them, not the way I fulfill it.

They only wonder - I am for or against the Russians of such revived shadows of the past. By the way, you want recognition: when I lived in Kyiv, I was leaning for the Moscow Spartak. On the twenty -second of the year of the year, you and the Symphony Orchestra of the Donetsk Philharmonic performed in the Park of the Lenin Komsomol, and all this on the air you deliberately went to it, knew what was waiting for you - and still went.

Not reckless? Valentina Lisitsa: After the cancellation of the Canadian concert, the director of the Donetsk Philharmonic Alexander Paretsky wrote to me: “Valentina, you don’t want to come to play? They immediately agreed on the repertoire. No one thought that this would cause such interest to the Donetsk people. The people walked and walked, no one was afraid of shelling.

This concert was caused by cultural shock. с неграмотными алкоголиками-шахтерами - а тут классическая музыка, тысячи интеллигентных лиц, красивые дети. Кому-то это открыло на многое глаза, и мы с музыкантами, понимая, что сделали, долго обнимались и плакали. Могли поставить галочку и больше не приезжать - как минимум опасно. Но стали в Донбассе частой гостьей. Валентина Лисица: Все поменялось с того момента.

И даже отношение к профессии. Как I grew up a musician in a commerce, entertained people for money in the West, say, from a football team: some go to a restaurant or to the stadium, others - you come to the Donbass and you suddenly understand: you are not entertaining here. For people who can die at any moment, music means something more. They touch eternity. They convey the emotion of the Donbass.

"Why did it also be important for your colleagues? Valentina Lisitsa:" The unconquered orchestra "are not just beautiful words. They didn’t go anywhere, unlike the Shakhtar football team, which everyone loved in the Donbass. The musicians did not make a shock. The fact that they remained and continued to play for me a real feat.