Author: Nina Kavtaradze
Edition AGRAF
Can be purchased at OZON and LABIRINT
(Available in Russian language only)
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Review by Igor Berov
I highly recommend that you, ladies and gentlemen, read Nina Kavtaradze´s amazing book ”Sounds from Olympia”!
It is so interesting and exciting that I devoured it in one fell swoop last night (I read it until half past four in the morning). The wonderful and charming pianist Nina Kavtaradze talks about the amazing and outstanding personalities of the musical world that she encountered throughout her creative life. These are the ingenious violinist Philippe Hirschhorn, with whom she studied at the Central Music School, and violinists Liana Isakadze and Nana Yashvili, with whom she played in a chamber ensemble. These are wonderful portraits of pianists Alexei Lubimov, Santiago Rodriguez, conductor of the chamber orchestra of the Moscow Conservatory Mikhail Tarian (nicknamed ”Fantômas” :)), M. Jansons, K. Kondrashin, Yu. Aranovich, K. Sanderling, with whom she played at different times concerts of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Grieg, etc. With incredible love and respect, Nina talks in the book about the greatest musician, her teacher Lev Oborin. She writes in detail about how he worked with her, how he talked about music, about his great predecessors, teachers, his life, about his colleagues, and tours. And how interestingly she describes her friendship with pianist N. Petrov, how witty, aptly and vividly she depicts his character, that you can literally ”see” this character live and... die of laughter. Zoshchenko is resting! :) Nina also, of course, very interestingly describes that wonderful era, the atmosphere, in which her creative life and musical career were formed. And what musicians and personalities surrounded her, whom she also mentions with interest, one can simply envy: G. Neuhaus, S. Richter, V. Cliburn, M. Rostropovich, I. Andronnikov - it´s impossible to list them all, a real shower of stars The entire book is literally read in one breath. It is written in beautiful, very lively and witty language. And of course, it describes and tells about musicians a lot of things that you, ladies and gentlemen, will not read anywhere else! This is exactly what I love to read. This is our native musical world!