Ilya Itin Plays Rachmaninoff

Ilya is on the faculty of the Golandsky Institute, an offshoot of the Taubman Institute. ocd

For me this video brings up many thoughts, many responses. Perhaps my first response will be to "answer one question with another question" - take a look at this: . I heard Ilya Itin play at the 1995 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and I liked what I heard very much. He came across as a fine musician, capable and dedicated and possessing a refinement of sound and expression that is not easy to achieve. It's truly aristocratic playing. There was also a certain undefinable reserve which I still detect in this more recent performance. It is really hard to put your finger on it. Everything seems to be fine. His technique looks excellent, he is doing all the hand arch stuff, etc etc, all the stuff I talk about in the film, and this shows in his really excellent sound. But somehow, although his physical connection to the keyboard appears to be really fine, it is not everything it in his sound too. His sound is really excellent, and yet... This is why I offer the video of Jorge Luis Prats as a response. What you see in Jorge's playing is exactly what's missing from Ilya's. Jorge just throws himself into the piano, and the sound is infinitely more this inner passion, it struggles to get out - it doesn't come out like a torrent. I hesitate to put this online, because these are difficult issues that we all struggle with as artists for our entire life. Kemal Gekich himself, who is good friends with both these artists, has told me that he finds certain aspects of his own personality the greatest stumbling blocks to his playing the way he would want to. And I would certainly say this is true for myself as well. So I hope you don't take this as a 'criticism' of Ilya so much as a sober evaluation from one colleague to another of where we stand in the mutual struggle that is both the lifeblood and the burden of every artist. Thanks for the post! AFF

... all in all there was a certain undefinable reserve which I still detect in this more recent performance. AFF Allan, Thanks for your response and for the link to Prat's video. The issues you raise are "above my pay grade" as I am currently focused on mechanics. I'll be very happy when I get to worry about "robustness". It might also be a bit of a matter taste: "Dyonysian vs. Apollonian" approaches to life/playing. For example, many people I know think of Pollini as cold, while he is one of my favorites. ocd

Well, in some way I talking about mechanics here, although it is difficult to put into words. I've been thinking about what I wrote, and worrying that it was too critical - I really do hold Ilya in very high esteem, and remember him, despite my reservations, leaving one of the most positive impressions of all the competitors in Warsaw in 1995. Let me put it this way: if, hypothetically, I had the chance to work with him I would not say anything about his playing. I would put him on my Feldenkrais table and give him a few Functional Integration lessons. I think if he sensed his own skeleton more from within, it would make a positive difference. It has nothing to do with any particular movement or position alignment, it's just a question of how deeply the neuromotor system senses the materia it works with... And all my stuff about the hand's arch etc only works really great when it is animated from within by this so-called robustness. A potent hand arch is a great vehicle for the musical transmission of one's inner personal energy, but there has to be something to transmit! I myself have many times fallen into the trap of cultivating that structure but paying so much attention to it that I was no longer animating it from the right place within. It's a vicious circle downwards: the more I focus on it because it's not going well, the worse it gets, because its generating principle is not suffusing it! As for Pollini! Many times I heard him live and was left cold - as one friend described it in rather cruel terms, like watching a really good vacuum cleaner repairman doing his job. Then once I heard him in Paris, the first of a complete Beethoven sonata cycle, and he played beautifully. It had soul, it sang, it spoke, it laughed and cried. So this was a great vindication for me, I was pleased that he showed that he really did have a musician's soul and not just fabulous technique. I do think, however, that his technique can ironically hamper his musicianship: he has been so well-trained to be perfectly clean in his playing that it sometimes becomes like a straitjacket. I don't think he is cold at all; I do think that sometimes his heat doesn't come out because of this strange technical quirk. AFF

Just to add one more note to this post - please see my more recent submission on Ilya's playing to read about a very pleasant development in his artistry...