Christina McEwan
CATCHING up with pianist Natalia Lavrova before she left New York to embark on her tour of South Africa was challenging – she is so busy that connecting on Skype barely worked.
Lavrova will be here to play the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Cape Town Philharmonic at The City Hall on November 5. She will also be playing for the Cape Town Concert Series on Saturday with her duo partner, pianist Vassily Primakov.
One of the reasons for her busy life is her Music School of New York City. Because she is driven by teaching and says, “it feels great to be a direct influence on the future”, she started the school in New York city in 2010 mainly for children from five upwards.
Not that teaching was new, she had her first pupil when she was 12, just 18 months after she left Moscow with her family, and the same year she was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music for pre-college students in New York.
She later graduated there with a BMus and MMus, and established herself as a concert pianist around the work, and prize winner at several competitions, like the Senigallia International Piano Competitions, and in 1996, at the age of 15, was the youngest performer to reach the Leeds International Piano Competition quarterfinal round that year. She is now a Yamaha Artist in Education.
“Being around children has been a huge part of my life and my musical journey. Although teaching can be intimidating, bewildering, scary and uncertain, it is immensely rewarding, enlightening and uplifting. On top of that kids have so much energy that it’s impossible not to catch the enthusiasm virus! I always knew that I would want to be involved in pedagogy on one level or another and after working at many different schools, both as a teacher and administrator, I noticed that in order to provide students with consistent lessons, most schools hired more educators then performers. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, so I really wanted to prove that it’s possible to have both, a performing musician who is a great educator.”
“Children really pick up on the extra dedication performers put in and get inspired and motivated in a way that produces better results. As performers, we have to constantly fight for ourselves, since we all know it’s not an easy profession. And I think that make us more hungry, more tenacious, more enthusiastic. Kids feel all those things. That’s not to say that educators who are not performers don’t do a good job – that’s just my perspective, based on my own experiences. Of course, performing musicians move around – my current tour is a perfect example and over the three weeks I will give 12 performances, but we figure out ways to ensure our students are taken care of!
“My faculty of nine teachers and growing is the heart and soul of my school. As a society, unless we are doing something to build knowledge of what we love and want to preserve in the future generations, I don’t think we get the right to complain. I like to think that I have a small part in making sure there are audiences attending concerts and supporting the arts in the future generations.”
At the moment there are 40 students and she hopes to reach 50 soon. Already her track record is impressive, her students have been accepted to specialized music schools in New York and to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Another very young student performs at Carnegie Hall every season. She is also getting the school involved in more community events and street fairs, so that she can start creating more performing opportunities.
Lavrova has also established, with Primakov, a record label, LP Classics. But this busy schedule still allows her to perform often, though mainly in the US for practical reasons.
“Vassily and I are known for crazy feats of travel. Recently we played an evening concert two hours outside of NYC in one direction, then came back home the same night and hit the road at 5am the following morning to perform an afternoon concert five hours outside of NYC in a completely different direction.
The following morning, we were heading home at 6am, so that Vassily could make it to judge a competition in NYC in the afternoon and I had students later that day. We tell ourselves each time that we will never do it again, and yet – we always do !
I love playing solo, but I enjoy performing with Vassily even more so! I think it's important to be solo artists, in order to continue to grow together as a duo, so I will never want to take that away from myself entirely, but I am as happy playing with him as I am on my own! “
Although neither of Lavrova’s parents are musicians, her mother in particular loves music from the time she took piano lessons for four years as a child and to this day she attends every performance of her daughter’s she can from her home in Manhattan.
“She enrolled me into a choir when I was four, and the next year started me on piano lessons. At the age of five I was accepted into the Moscow Conservatory Preparatory School.
My mother then spent countless hours, sitting in on my lessons and helping me practice, until I got older and became an annoying and rebellious child who didn’t want her mom as involved.
At first, there was a lot of fighting over practicing (back then with my mom, now with myself), but through it all, my mom recognized that I loved music and made sure I didn’t quit. I think I was about 12 or 13 when it became pretty obvious to me that this is what I wanted to do.”
That Lavrova is passionate about music is clear: “Music’s capacity to remove me from everything worldly in a good way is so important to me. Every time I hear a piece or performance that takes my breath away, I am reminded of just how incredibly lucky I am to be a musician.”
Lavrova and Primakov perform for the Cape Town Concert Series on Saturday. Tickets are R150. Her concert with the CPO takes place on November 5 at The City Hall under the direction of Bernhard Gueller. On the programme also are Haydn Symphony no 83 in G minor, La poule, and Pini di Roma and Fontane di Roma by Respighi.
l Tickets: R90 to R230, 021 421 7695, 0861 915 8000. For more information: cpo.org.za, ctconcerts.co.za