A Conversation with Yuri Mazurkevich
Having a conversation with Yuri Mazurkevich is not unlike hearing him play. One is immediately aware of his passions, of his zest for experiencing life. He describes himself as “a bit of a loner”, with many solitary pursuits, but his life has been well spent in sharing those passions, sharing who he is, with people he has never met. This union with audiences in 35 countries during what has been a career of over forty years has provided this Ukrainian violinist with a joy and a sense of completeness he feels he cannot describe in words.
We spoke with Yuri on March 7, a week before he performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the BCO. During that conversation, he told us of inspirational teachers and colleagues and of a varied musical career, which includes his wife, violinist Dana Pamerants, with whom he has toured four continents as a violin duo. He shared his love for reading (philosophy, “the sentimental”, adventure, and nature are favorite topics), for swimming (even in mid-October) and long walks and summer barbecues at his Cape Cod get-away home. He is a generous man, so, inevitably, what he really shared was Yuri Mazurkevich. Here are some excerpts from that conversation.
“My father was arrested by the KGB at the beginning of World War II. So, it was my mother who started my musical education; my father never heard me play. Both my parents were amateur musicians, good enough to sing in a professional choir in Lviv (also known as Lvov) in the Ukraine, where I was raised. It is a beautiful, European city. When I was seven, my mother took me to a school for gifted musicians. All the cities in the Soviet Union had many music schools, but usually one was for “gifted” musicians. They gave me a singing test, which I passed, and I was accepted as a music student. Then they handed me a violin and assigned me an excellent teacher, who made me very interested in my studies. By the time I was 10 or 11 years old, I had played some concerts. My teacher left the school, and between 12 and 15 I played very little violin; I was more interested in playing soccer and being with my friends in the street. At 15 1/2 I began to study again, and, suddenly, there was a huge interest in music again for me. Fritz Kreisler became my hero.
“I worked hard, and, at age 18, I entered Moscow Conservatory of Music. That is where I met David Oistrakh, who took me into his class. Of course, Oistrakh was world famous at the time, but he was also very highly respected as a teacher. He had 17 or 18 students. They were international, coming from Germany, Iceland, Cuba, all over. One of the other students was my wife, Dana, whom I met and married while a student there.
“Oistrakh was an inspiring teacher, who had the advantage of being able to give you on-the-spot musical examples that were out of this world. He was incredibly sensitive to the styles of different composers, the differences between Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. It was very tempting to try to imitate him, but he always insisted that you find your own solutions, even with technical matters. That was very unusual. The Soviet system was highly regimented – students did not have electives in school – and many teachers insisted on just one particular way of playing. Oistrakh’s students were completely different players from one another. Gidon Kremer’s playing had nothing to do with Victor Pikaizen’s or Igor Oistrakh’s (David Oistrakh’s son).
“I stayed with Oistrakh for seven years, including my time at grad school at the Kiev Conservatory, which is one of the best in the country. While I was in Kiev, I prepared for the Montreal Competition, so I commuted to Moscow as often as possible.
“He was a beautiful man, of great integrity and humanity. An incredibly kind man. He never charged me anything. Soviet musicians had severe travel limitations, and Oistrakh wrote letters and did other things for me so I could travel to other countries to play. He could be demanding, of course, and challenging, but that was his job. I will cherish that relationship to the last days of my life.
“I won the Helsinki Competition (1962) and the Munich Competition (1966) and the Montreal Competition (1969) and then stopped all that at age 28 to concentrate on my career. Except at the Moscow Conservatory, I never played in orchestras. At that time in Russia, players went into an orchestra only if they could not succeed as a soloist, so playing in an orchestra for a career never even occurred to me. Of course, all that is very different now for students.
“Most concerts were arranged by a central agency, which favored certain soloists, often musicians who would bring back presents from the West for agency members. I learned that some orchestras outside of Russia had requested me to play, and they were told that I was unavailable or ill. Another problem was that it was Soviet policy for Dana and me never to travel together. One of us was always a hostage.
“In 1973 Dana and I looked into leaving the Soviet Union. We wanted to play more and see the world and to talk to our colleagues in other countries. That time was the beginning of special arrangements made to allow some Soviet Jews to move to Israel. Dana is Jewish, so we were able to take advantage of that. I had won the Montreal Competition and had played concerts in Canada, so, instead of moving to Israel, we went to Toronto.
“From day one we were welcomed by many communities in Toronto. We were being helped on a daily basis by fellow Ukrainians or Jews or just music lovers. The Ukrainians in Toronto organized my first concert there; they paid for the hall and invited the critic from The Globe and Mail. They did everything. Many Soviet musicians had trouble adapting to life in the West, but that was never the case with us.
“Both Dana and I got teaching jobs at the University of Western Ontario and stayed in Canada for almost ten years. We played together and toured Europe, the Far East, South America, and the U. S. I joined Quartet Canada. It was a very active period in our lives. But life was too comfortable, and we wanted challenges. I was on sabbatical at the University of Illinois at Urbana, when I was contacted by a clarinetist I knew, Ethan Sloane, who was at that time the head of the Boston University music department. I accepted a full-time position there in 1985, and a year later Dana took a position there, too. Our international touring continued.
“Later I was approached to be the first violinist of the Leontovich String Quartet, and I played with them from 1990 to 2000. They had started in Kiev, but I did not know them there; when they contacted me, they had all moved to the United States. At first I was doubtful because being a soloist was very satisfying for me, and joining the Leontovich would not be like playing with Quartet Canada, which was a piano quartet. A string quartet like Leontovich requires much more intense rehearsal to properly balance four string instruments. But joining them turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.
“Coming to Boston was a great decision, too. I have wonderful colleagues here, who all have a spark in their playing and in who they are. Last May I traveled to Korea with (cellist) Leslie Parnas, and we gave workshops and played together and in a trio there. And there is (violist) Raphael Hillyer, who is turning 96 in April and (violinist) Roman Totenberg, who just turned 99. And (cellist) George Neikrug. There are many such good examples around me. They all give me hope!
“I love teaching at this stage of my life and giving my experience to a new generation of musicians. When I audition a student, I listen for musicality. I listen for character in the student’s expressions, because you often hear students who are very good technically, but their playing has a dead zone. It is sometimes better to have that spark in your sound than to be technically perfect.
“I need a variety of musical expressions and experiences. I would never be happy playing just the Tchaikovsky or the Beethoven concertos. Theodore Antoniou, who taught at B. U. for many years and is now back in Greece, wrote his Concerto for Two Violins for Dana and me. I need that kind of experience.
“But, of course, Tchaikovsky is in the soul of Russians. His music is so “Russian” in its melodic structure. It is often sentimental, but it can be dangerous to pay too much attention to that because he could sound vulgar. A musician has to have a good sense of musical measure to express himself in a sincere and natural way, without exaggerating musical effects. I love the Tchaikovsky concerto for its simplicity and because it is so challenging. But one can’t abuse that simplicity and beauty, or the music gets overdone. Like a cook must be careful not to overcook his food.
“I am very happy in my life. I never pushed for just a soloist’s career or even for just a life in music because I enjoy all aspects of life, not just playing on a stage. I have gotten to know two worlds. I was a young man in the Soviet Union and educated there. Now I am here in the West, which is a completely different experience. I have felt a wholeness of life.”
