Kissin, great Russian pianist: "We must send all the weapons that Ukraine requests now"

Yevgeny Kissin is at the BCN Clàssics cycle for the fourth consecutive year –on Friday the 17th, at the Palau de la Música Catalana– with a recital that he is presenting today in Madrid, as part of the Ibermúsica programme.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
13 February 2023 Monday 20:03
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Kissin, great Russian pianist: "We must send all the weapons that Ukraine requests now"

Yevgeny Kissin is at the BCN Clàssics cycle for the fourth consecutive year –on Friday the 17th, at the Palau de la Música Catalana– with a recital that he is presenting today in Madrid, as part of the Ibermúsica programme. Works by Bach, Mozart, Chopin and a whole second part by Rachmaninov. The Russian pianist revalidates his sold out in this appointment with the Barcelona public who, on this occasion, wants to be a tribute to Alicia de Larrocha on her centenary. “I met her briefly, we had a mutual friend, she struck me as a lovely short woman,” he says. Subscribers have a 15% discount on the La Vanguardia ticket website.

Living in Prague for six years after having lived in London and Paris, this Muscovite musician with an extraordinary sensitivity that leads critics to place him among the most brilliant keyboard players in the world, talks to this newspaper about the "need to send arms to Ukraine". “Putin's resources are limited. The West is stronger, ”he assures.

Can we talk about the program that brings...?

I don't like to talk about music because I think it expresses something that goes beyond words. When I read verbal descriptions they seem a bit vulgar to me, although I am aware that there are professions such as musicologist or critic that consist of that.

It opens with Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. He hasn't played Bach much in public. What do you think of the tendency to program it with the original key?

I have heard Bach both on modern piano and on the key, live and on record... but I am not a harpsichordist, I am a pianist, and they are different things. I have admired Glenn Gould since I was a teenager. I saw him in a video with the Goldberg Variations and for years I was amazed that no one could have improved on that. Later on I listened to Barenboim at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and saw that art has no end. The performance was totally different but equally magnificent.

Don't you feel indebted to the baroque atmosphere, then?

Bach has always been part of my life. At eleven months I began to sing by ear. And the first thing I sang was a theme from one of her fugues from the second book of the Well-Tempered Piano [sic] that my older sister was studying. I broached him a lot in school, I don't come to him all of a sudden.

How do you move emotionally from Debussy to Rachmaninov? [At the time of the interview, the advertised program included Debussy instead of Scherzo no. 2 by Chopin]

It's not a problem, the music carries me. It's just a matter of how one piece sits behind another. I have to think about it every time I devise a program. I haven't played this before in public yet, but I have a lot of experience and I know it's a possible combination.

In his last interview with La Vanguardia, before the war in Ukraine, he commented, in relation to composers who were accused of collaborating with Stalinism, that in a dictatorship people are judged by their actions, not by their words. How do you see Russia right now?

We see that every time the regime in Russia is becoming more like the Soviet Union. Things are prohibited by law. A few days ago they decided to put back in the school curriculum the classic books of Soviet literature that used to be there during the USSR and then they were eliminated. Soon after they decided to remove Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago as well. In fact, there are things in Russia that didn't even exist in the USSR, like the law that prohibits comparing Stalin's with Nazi Germany.

Does your Muscovite side think about going back there?

Not until the regime changes. I have made many statements throughout the year about the war and the Putin regime and if I went back they would put me in jail, but I don't want to go back either, it disgusts me. And I would like to say it one more time for the readers of this newspaper: civilians in Ukraine are dying every day, including children, and the only way to stop it is to send them all the weapons they ask for, and immediately. We're already late. And all sanctions against Russia must be reapplied. I want to make a call to the citizens of the West to demand it from their governments. I remember seeing in London in the eighties that there were non-stop demonstrations in front of the South African embassy against apartheid...

Do you think weapons will stop Russia?

Of course. It's the only way besides sanctions. The West is stronger than Putin. Your resources are limited. Iran and North Korea help him but the West is stronger than those three gangster countries.

And what about Putin's popularity?

We cannot expect people to tell the truth in a country where everyone is a traitor. We don't know what that popularity is.

Do you talk to people from Moscow?

I'm only friends with those who think like me. And we communicate, yes, luckily there is internet, whatsapp.

Do you have time to compose and write?

Only sporadically. Last year she composed a Trio for violin, cello and piano about the war in Ukraine that has been played in different countries. In the 1st movement I represent the invasion of Russia, in the 2nd, the tragedy of Ukraine and the Finale is about the Ukrainian victory.

Have you touched her?

Twice. In Weimar and in Prague with local musicians. And it has been performed in Holland, in Italy...

His facility for composition comes to him as a child...

I composed a lot as a child. Before going to school and beginning my musical studies, I had already been playing the piano by ear and also improvising my own music. And as soon as I learned to read music I started writing my own. A few years later there came a time when I felt like I stopped hearing my music in my head. I tried to write for different instruments and I didn't know what to do anymore. It was a time when my concert activity grew and grew. And I went back to composing when vital things happened in my personal life. I assumed that this was what opened something in me and showed me a potential that had been hidden. That was the time in which I also began to write prose and poetry.

Why have you decided not to record in the studio again?

I have always liked live recordings. They come out better and I feel more inspired playing for the public. I need it to give my best. It's been like that since I started doing concerts as a kid. Also, there are more important things than having a hundred percent technical perfection in a recording.