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MY PIANO SCHOOL GENEALOGY (chapter three) |
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Professor Maria GAMBARYAN (b.1.X.1925), my teacher at the Gnessins Academy of Music in 1995-1999 (the picture was taken at her apartment back in 1995, she wore one of her usual concert dresses). I remember that at the moment when I enetered the Gnessins Academy, all of her pupils received that same kind of picture directly from her.
A brilliant pianist, she had a very specific kind of piano playing. She claimed herself belonging to the piano school of Constantin Igumnow (see below), but in fact she was a self-made personality like many other great pianists. She studied and discovered new things for her entire life and developed a highly personal specific and incomparable style. My teacher Eric Larsen was absolutely right saying that her playing is interesting but very specific. Not everyone can accept it. |
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From Igumnov she picked up a dictatorial approach in her teaching methods "DO IT THE WAY I SAY AND DON'T ASK ANY QUESTIONS OR CONTRADICT ME". It's easy to imagine that very soon I found myself in a deep depression. |
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Constantin Igumnov (1873-1948) in his early years. My piano schoool grandfather, a close friend and adept of both Scriabin and Rachmaninov. GAMBARYAN WAS DESTINED TO BE HIS VERY LAST STUDENT (1943-1948) (along with Oleg Boshnyakovich and Naum Shtarkman). HE STARTED HIS STUDIES TOGETHER WITH RACHMANINOV AND SCRIABIN WITH NIKOLAI ZVEREV, THEN PAUL PABST AND, FINALLY WITH FRANZ LISZT'S (below) PUPIL RACHMANINOV'S COUSIN ALEXANDER SILOTI (1863-1945) (second from the left on the picture with other Liszt's students) His style sometimes plain and simple could suddenly be filled with freaks and mannerisms. As a concert pianist he was a very unstable person. He could play the first half of the concert "like an old fishr-woman"(Mengelberg), and the second would just be gorgeous and perfect. Sometimes he also could fail the whole concert program, but there would be several episodes in his playing which would compensate of his possible and impossible failures. Same thing he felt towards the students. During the exams even if the student was quite awful but there was in his performance, which moved Igumnov's heart, he would defend him for a good grade up to the impossible. |
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ANYWAY, IT WAS A VERY NICE EXPERIENCE FOR ME TO INHERIT SOME OF THE TRADITIONS OF THE SCHOOL I'M NOT PARTICULARLY ADDICTED TO...
Every time I listened to Gambaryan's playing and used to say: Damn! I wish she could teach us to play the way she does it herself. But some of the stuff she showed me simply didn't work in my case because there was around one feet difference in our height... I wonder, how could a six-feet tall guy be able to repeat all the freaky movements of the old lady's hands? |
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