Louise Fryer presents the BBC SSO in music by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth and Glanert. 
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Vladimir Ashkenazy
copyright Decca/Sasha Gusov
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Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy is one of the world's best known musicians. He talks to Norman Lebrecht about his Russian heritage, about the importance of his mother in his life, and about what he calls his ‘accidental’ exile to the West. He recalls crowds gathering in silence around huge loudspeakers at a Black Sea resort listening to the announcement of the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 and he talks of fleeing to the Urals, Central Asia, and ending up in Tashkent.
On the day Stalin died he remembers the scenes in the centre of Moscow and the wailing of the public, yet in her house on that day, his piano teacher whispered to him that things would now be better.
He describes being recruited by the KGB as he started touring the world as a pianist, only to be dropped by them because of what was deemed un-Soviet behaviour on his first visit to the United States. -
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In recent years, arthritis has misshapen his fingers and prevents him from playing live, yet he still records and conducts. He says he didn't realise what a tremendous responsibility live performance was - now he doesn't understand how he managed to play live for 50 years and survive the nerves, anxieties and insecurities. He still has an unfulfilled dream - he says he'd like to try his hand at conducting opera, and he knows which one it would be. He knows Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades virtually by memory!
In a bright, humorous and optimistic interview, he describes himself as one of the luckiest people in the world.
Broadcasts
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BBC Radio 3Mon 10 Aug 2009 22:00 BBC Radio 3
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BBC Radio 3Sun 25 Apr 2010 21:30 BBC Radio 3
Podcast
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The Lebrecht Interview
In-depth, biographical portraits of pre-eminent classical musicians and artists interviewed by...
