A classical music recital from two of Russia’s brightest young exports will be taking place this weekend at the Pepperdine University Center for the Arts as part of the Stotsenberg Recital Series.
Violinist Mikhail Simonyan and pianist Alexei Podkorytov will perform works by Alfred Schnittke, Edvard Grieg, Maurice Ravel and two violin sonatas by Prokofiev that, Simonyan said, are the “saddest music” he knows.
Both Simonyan and Podkorytov debuted for American audiences at young ages, performing with the American Russian Youth Orchestra at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York City. Simonyan was 13. In the succeeding 10 years he has performed with such internationally prestigious orchestras as the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Simonyan is from Novosibirsk, Siberia and started playing at age four.
“It is a part of Russian tradition that children go to music school,” Simonyan said in a phone interview with The Malibu Times from his home in Philadelphia. “But I first became aware of the violin when I heard someone playing it on a TV show my mother was watching in the kitchen. I told her, ‘I want that toy.'”
Simonyan mastered that “toy” to the extent that he was traveling and performing with world-renown symphonies at an age when most youth are mastering algebra. In 2005, he was received at the Kremlin by then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged his status as one of Russia’s most promising young musicians.
“Russia has always subsidized the arts,” Simonyan said, “but because of the political situation now, there are very limited opportunities for a career for Russian artists. Only a couple of symphonies are government supported, so an artist must look to sponsors and support elsewhere to move ahead.”
This type of support Simonyan has found in the United States including that of one patron who subsidized the purchase of his Giuseppe Gagliano violin that was made in Naples in 1769. But he credits the youth orchestra for early nurturing of his passion for music and heralds the example of Gustavo Dudamel, the newly appointed 28-year-old music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (beginning this fall), whose energetic leadership in forming youth orchestras has electrified classical musical audiences around the world.
“Dudamel made youth orchestras famous in Venezuela,” Simonyan said. “This kind of thing will renew the spirit of music. I very much look forward to working with him someday.”
Simonyan said his favorite music comes from the luminaries of Russian composing, like Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. He doesn’t think much of modern day composers, whom he likens to “cats walking on a keyboard.”
He has been playing for 10 years with pianist Podkorytov, who also hails from Novosibirsk and whose professional career has seen similar success to Simonyan’s.
The pair recently recorded the Prokofiev Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 for Delos Music with Grammy award-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse. Simonyan worked diligently on the project with his mentor, violinist Victor Danchenko, who was a student of David Oistrakh, for whom Prokofiev wrote the sonatas and who played them at Prokofiev’s funeral.
“It’s funny that though we are from the same city I didn’t get to be friends with Misha until I moved to New York,” Podkorytov said of Simonyan. “We have played together in many countries and there is a chemistry there. Maybe, as Russians, we just know how something should be played.”
Their friendship promotes certain ease between the two musicians, which shows in how Podkorytov handles the fact that, because of scheduling conflicts, Simonyan doesn’t arrive in Los Angeles on Sunday until two hours before their concert time. Podkorytov isn’t fazed.
“When we played Lincoln Center, we didn’t get to rehearse till the day of the performance,” Podkorytov said laughing.
Simonyan said that he doesn’t allow such minutia to distract him.
“My father taught me that the end of the line is not as important as the road to getting there,” he said.
Mikhail Simonyan’s and Alexei Podkorytov’s recital takes place this Sunday, 2 p.m., at Pepperdine University’s Raitt Recital Hall. Tickets can be purchased by calling 310.506.4522 or online at www.arts.pepperdine.edu