Valentina-Igoshina (Official Website)

TCHAIKOVSKY PIANO CONCERTO N° 1

My favourite piano concerto? Impossible to say. But there is one, i think, I was born with Tchaikovsky in b-flat minor . Even after playing it lots of times, even after listening hundreds times in differents versions, this music never loose its sence, its freshness. Each time i listen the beginning, I feel tears coming to my eyes, and my heart beats full of  proudness for being russian and belonging to russian culture.

I never really loved (or probably understood!) Tchaikovsky’s piano music. I admire his symphonies and operas. And only by considering this concerto as a symphony, I can explain its special place in my heart.

I searched  a lot  the spirit of the  third moovement and never was satisfied. But once listening the final of the Fourth Symphony conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov I told - that’s it!!!!!!

The same with the introduction theme. I couldnt find a right way to express the emotion I felt unconsciously. The joy was too evident and the glory was empty. And only when I started to think that actually it is not an introduction, but the quintessence of the concerto, when I started to see this theme with ” background”  of   cadenca ( where all dramatic development reached the climax -the death),  this introduction theme got her right degree.

It became a hymne to Live. Not a human live. But Live as power of the Nature, as a “perpetum mobile”, as a unique and eternal process.

AFTER MY RECITAL IN VINCENNES (FRANCE)

People ask me often : how I start to learn piece, when I think it is ready to be played on the stage , why I play a lot the certain music in certain period and after I don’t play it at all?…

I answer: music is alive, and each interpretation has her own story, and I have different ”relationship” with different music.

I open the score and start to read it. I already have a general idea; I listen it inside of my mind, but for fingers it is a new piece and they don’t know their way.

After comes a moment of research. It’s a work for both- intellect and intuition. What I search?  The right ”words”, my own poeme, the story which I will tell after to the public.

The stage - is a real life for the interpretation, it brings new ideas, it let me discover new features. On stage I fall in love or get a conflict with my music. Here public is very important, as a part of the performance with whom I create each time a special world, a space where my music exist.

And there are some concerts  when I feel such a unity with a music,that I don’t know if it is me who  plays  or  she exists by her own.

It is a magic moment but I know that it is a time to let this music for a while , to return to her  later - but it will be already another story…..

IN SANTIAGO (CHILE)

Now I am in Chile. It’s a nice feeling to return to place where you already played. Ok, it’s’responsability also but it’s so nice atmosphere when you know the hall, know the conducter and I hope we will make nice music.
And lots of members of the orchestra are young Russian musicians.
Sometimes happens that you could be disapointed when you return somewhere you already performed but sure it’s not the case, here in Santiago.