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Nina Kotova

Who or what inspired you to take up the ‘cello, and make it your career?

Listening to my father play double bass as a soloist made me consider becoming a musician. Cello as an instrument was chosen for me by my parents.

Who or what were the most important influences on your playing/composing?

Composing has come easily to me as the method of expression when I started reading music scores at age 7.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

It is a challenge to understand the laws of interaction and the conflict between the world of musicians and the world of classical music management.

Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?

Considering how much we value each performance, performances that were the most important were the ones that brought the sense of accomplishment.

The audience today is taught to be guided mostly by physical expressions during performance instead of detecting the hidden movements of a soul. It would be incorrect to be solely guided by the reaction of the audience.

What do you consider your most important achievement?

Although I consider premièring and recording my Cello Concerto ten years ago an achievement, I think that the most important achievements are in the future.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

Concert venues with the best acoustics are definitely preferred.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I have absolutely no favorites. To have favorites would mean to put artificially-created limitations on yourself. It is a powerful feeling to consider it all possible (even mastering less interesting works).

Who are your favourite musicians?

Musicians who are capable of giving their crystal clear souls away to the maximum are the musicians for whom I feel the most respect.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

The Red Square, Carnegie Hall, Berliner Philharmoniker.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Focusing on the inner expression in music and not the purely physical effect will eventually bring the art of performance into a more balanced state.

Creating your own creative world around yourself, learning and understanding how concerts venues and management work, meet people, establish relationships, create opportunities for yourself to perform.

Music says what a word is incapable of expressing. It uses the language of sound, pattern and form and masterful emotional input of the individuals involved .

Discussing the emotional charge as well as realizing what emotions music evokes in you is going to help you to appreciate classical music.

The most important thing is to cultivate the taste from the youngest age, develop curiosity to the arts and study.

What are you working on at the moment?

I often come back to the standard ‘cello repertoire, which is indispensable in putting recital programs together and performances with an orchestra as a soloist.

This season I am also premiering another newly completed concerto written by an American composer for ‘cello and orchestra.

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

I have received a very specialized type of education in the classical music – to keep unraveling my talents, achieving and fulfilling myself in other sectors of art.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Balance. A sense of accomplishment.

What is your most treasured possession?

My talent.

What do you enjoy doing most?

Being with my family.

What is your present state of mind?

Lev Tolstoy: ”But my life is now”

Russian-born cellist Nina Kotova has been hailed “passionate and inspiring”. According to Newsweek magazine, “she‘s a fantastically gifted cellist.” “Very expressive, imaginative, and she has a powerful stage presence.” Time magazine states: “She is a musician of high seriousness and real talent”.

Ms. Kotova studied at the Moscow Conservatory and Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany, giving her first performance as a soloist with orchestra at age 11. She made her Western debut in Prague with the Prague Radio Orchestra in 1986 after winning the Prague International Competition, and followed with debuts at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican Centre in London, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Ms. Kotova has since then performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras across the globe including the Czech Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the State Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the Royal Opera House orchestras, the BBC Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra in Lisbon, and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. She has performed on the Red Square in Moscow, for the Imperial family of Japan, and at Buckingham Palace. Upcoming highlights include performances in South America and the Al Bustan Festival.

Ms. Kotova has collaborated with musicians such as violinists Sarah Chang, Joshua Bell and Nikolaj Znaider, flautist Sir James Galway and pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Lang Lang and Hélène Grimaud, with Sting, and conductors Teodor Currentzis, Stephane Deneve, Vladimir Jurowski, Claus Peter Flor, Nicola Luisotti, Antonio Pappano, Libor Pesek and Tamas Vasary.

As a composer Nina Kotova has written numerous works for cello and orchestra. Her first Cello Concerto premiered in San Francisco in 2000. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that “Like Wolfgang Rihm in 1974, so Kotova in 2000 stands in defiance of both the emotional austerity of last century’s modernism and the new simplicity of so much recent music.”

Although perhaps most acclaimed for her performances and recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Ms. Kotova has a keen interest in expanding the repertoire available for cello. A composer herself and a champion of contemporary music, Ms. Kotova commissioned several leading composers to write a Cello Concerto for her, including another recent collaborator composer Christopher Theofanidis. In 2009 Ms. Kotova performed the world premiere of the Theofanidis Cello Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, following with the Asian premiere of the work in Singapore with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaap Van Zweden.

Ms. Kotova co-founded The Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona in Italy and Festival Del Sole in Napa Valley. She calls the Festivals “a mecca and meeting place for artists and admirers of the arts alike”.

Now performing with the instrument that Jacqueline du Pré made famous in the early 1960s and that Lynn Harrell played over the last two decades, she explains, “The cello is a unique instrument with the capability to reflect the most mysterious qualities of the human soul. As a solo instrument, the cello must have new works written for it that emphasize its virtuosity, powerful energy and lyrical impact.”

Ms. Kotova has taught as a visiting artist at the University of Texas and has been the subject of numerous features in Time, Newsweek, Vogue, Elle and the Wall Street Journal, as well as being on the covers of Classic FM, Gramophone China, Il Venerdi Italia and Reader’s Digest and appearing on television on A&E “Breakfast with the Arts” and the “Charlie Rose Show”.

She is carrying on the tradition of not only her legendary father, Russian double-bassist Ivan Kotov (1950-1985), but her teachers and mentors, which include Igor Gavrysh, Valentin Feigin, Boris Pergamenschikov and Mstislav Rostropovich.

An internationally acclaimed and celebrated performer and composer, Ms. Kotova is well on her way to inspiring today’s musical community-classical and beyond. In addition to a CD release of her own Cello Concerto recorded with the Philharmonia of Russia conducted by Constantine Orbelian (Delos, 2002), other recordings include her chart topping, self-titled debut album (Philips Classics, 1999), a recent recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andrew Litton (Sony Classics, 2006) and inclusion on the compilation Masters of the Bow (Deutsche Grammophon, 2003), which pays homage to the greatest cellists of the last 50 years.

www.ninakotova.com

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bisphamHow long have you been playing the piano? 

I started when I was about six years old or thereabouts, but gave it up when I went off to study Physics at University. Coming back to music years later was tricky at first but I seemed to get the hang of it again. I doubt the same would be true if I ever went back to Physics.

What kind of repertoire do you enjoy playing, and listening to? 

It might sound shallow, but I like a tune you can whistle. I tend to stick to solo piano works and I’ve always particularly liked Liszt and Debussy. If I’m honest there’s a lot of the standard repertoire that does little for me, which is useful really as I haven’t the time to learn all of it! Away from piano music I love to listen to a good singing voice, but dislike the tendency I hear in some singers to embellish absolutely every note.

How do you make the time to practise? Do you enjoy practising? 

Normally I find time here and there when I can. If there’s something on the horizon my family help me find the time to practise more and I’m very grateful to them. I find short bursts of practice are great for polishing pieces but I need longer sessions when learning new repertoire in order to actually get anywhere. My piano is digital so I can practice at unsociable hours using headphones, although a former neighbour once mentioned the strange late-night clunking sound of the keys going down ‘silently’. I enjoy practising if I’m in the mood and not too tired. If I’m not enjoying it I do it anyway.

Have you participated in any masterclasses/piano courses/festivals? What have you gained from this experience? 

Plenty! Masterclasses have ranged in value from total wastes of everyone’s time right up to unforgettably inspiring experiences. On the high-quality end of the scale we have sessions with the late Yonty Solomon which were an absolute joy, and also Martin Roscoe, Noriko Ogawa and my present teacher Jeremy Siepmann.

I recommend the Chetham’s Summer School very highly. If you’ve ever wondered whether there are other people on the planet like you, there are and they all descend on Manchester once a year. Chetham’s has just opened a stunning new music building with a lovely footbridge leading to the old school. It looks like a spaceship has landed and lowered its gangplank.

If you are taking piano lessons what do you find a) most enjoyable and b) most challenging about your lessons? 

Jeremy makes me concentrate so very hard! It’s challenging, but in a good way. The most enjoyable part is invariably leaving his house with a headful of ideas. We both wish we could meet more frequently than we do.

Do you perform? What do you enjoy/dislike about performing? 

I try to enter amateur piano competitions from time to time as a means to get myself on a stage somewhere. There are so many of them now. I get emails about events in Warsaw, Boston, Vienna, Berlin etc but I could never enter them all.

I’ve been to the Paris competition a couple of times some years back and am returning this year (2013). Even turning up will be a major achievement as I’ve acted as an unofficial sponsor of theirs for the last few years by paying the application fee then not turning up. They should dedicate one of their piano keys to me… perhaps one of those that I missed when they last heard me.

The competition is imminent and if anyone wants to follow my progress I’m sure I’ll have the time to tweet while I’m there. Follow @peterbispham

If you could play one piece, what would it be? 

I try not to hold up any single piece as “the unattainable dream”. I find that if a piece is very technically demanding it also has to massively appeal to me as a piece of music or I get bored of it by the time it’s in my fingers. There are some very difficult pieces that I think are just not worth the effort, though perhaps I’d feel differently if I practised eight hours a day.

What advice would you give to other adults who are considering taking up the piano or resuming lessons? 

It’s never too late. That’s a phrase I use a lot about a number of things. If it’s what you want to do then set yourself a goal and go for it.

Jeremy and his wife bought me Alan Rusbridger’s book Play it Again for Christmas. Although I haven’t read it yet, it looks very interesting and potentially inspirational to adult amateurs. Perhaps I’ll read it on the train to Paris…

Peter started piano at around age six, taking lessons in his home town of Rainhill from esteemed local teacher Raymond Murray, who had studied with both Gordon Green (Royal Northern College of Music) and Douglas Miller, a pupil of Godowsky.

Choosing to read physics at university and follow a technically-oriented career path, piano study fell largely by the wayside as Peter attained a degree and PhD in physics. On leaving academia he started piano study once more, gaining his Licentiate Diploma in Music Performance (LRSM) in 2003.

Since 2005 he has been fortunate enough to study with internationally acclaimed writer, musician, teacher and broadcaster Jeremy Siepmann, who Peter credits with having transformed his approach to playing the piano.

For more information about Peter, please visit his website.

 

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What is your first memory of the piano?

My bare feet cooling on the cold pedals of the piano during the hot summer. Another is playing the piano and singing to my grandfather and grandmother on a Sunday afternoon.

Who or what inspired you to start teaching?

Teaching has always come naturally to me. I found that when I am passionate about something I can explain it comfortably. So when I started teaching during my undergraduate studies I realised that I enjoyed teaching and learned a lot about my own playing at the same time.

I suppose I also subconsciously took in a lot about teaching techniques from the way my teacher taught me when I was growing up.

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers?

Johan Cromhout was my teacher for ten years when I grew up in South Africa. He has taken me from learning to properly read music (I started by playing by ear) up to performing and being able to comfortably discuss my programme in the viva voce of my DipABRSM. He always managed to find a balance between allowing my spontaneity to flourish whilst shaping my progress in the right direction. We listened to a lot of music as well. A part of my two-hour lessons in later years included a cup of tea and listening to CDs.

Martin Katz was my teacher during my study at the University of Michigan. He is a fascinating teacher and the way he can put every scenario in context of today is inspiring and admirable. Charles Owen taught me about focus and economical use of technique to acquire a better result.

Who or what are the most important influences on your teaching?

The teachers I studied with influenced me greatly as I mentioned above. I am also very much influenced by Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) where (said in an immensely simplistic way) the imagination is used to build an awareness of what one wants to achieve and then following that path your imagination has set out already. I am not giving it its best explanation, but it is fascinating to learn how we can open up various avenues for ourselves by imagining it all in as much detail as possible first. I try to introduce visual art and literature in my teaching as well. It just helps to get students thinking a bit differently about all those black dots.

Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?

I was teaching a very talented 6 year old. He had been taking lessons for a year and I introduced B major to him. He experimented a bit and worked out C major and D major on his own. I shall never forget the excitement and marvel that he was filled with. He realised that he can create things on this white and black maze. This reminded me of the importance of not only to always try and convey this to my students, but also to remind myself of this lesson.

It has been said many times before, but it is also very true for myself: I constantly learn from my students.

What are the most exciting/challenging aspects of teaching adults?

I enjoy working with adults because they often have their own ideas from the beginning and then open themselves up to more ideas. Challenges can be that old habits die hard and as teacher one has to find an individual barometer for each student to keep the balance between encouragement, alteration and guidance. Where children often take things at face value, adult students often ask more questions, challenging the teacher. I like that – it makes both of us think!

What do you expect from your students?

A motto I try to instill in my students is to have dedication and discipline in accordance to one’s goals. Some adults I work with want to play for relaxation and do not have careers as a musician in mind. For me it is important that they still have certain expectations of themselves and live up to them. For my students studying music degrees I expect them to aspire to the same motto. They are often in a place in their careers where they are trying to find where they fit in in the musical world and so it is important to keep one’s head. I think this motto can help them to be inspired, but also impresses upon them the responsibility associated with their work. The children I teach (often second study pianists) often have this motto naturally build in, but I think it is the result of the fact that they have learnt the lesson by learning one instrument already.

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions?

Any experience of performance is important and influences the development of anybody learning a musical instrument. Each of the above brings up its own challenges as a performer, but I think students are not often enough reminded of how different these experiences can be. Competing against oneself in an exam vis à vis competing against others in competitions and some festivals often make performers react when in the heat of it all. Performing in a concert is also different. Some people prosper better in some scenarios than others. I think it is important as a teacher to find which of these different performance setups work best for each student and then encourage them accordingly.

What do you consider to be the most important concepts to impart to beginning students, and to advanced students?

For beginners I think the most important lesson is to be disciplined and meticulous – count, check rhythm, play correct notes and learn sensible fingering as (hopefully) set out by the teacher.

For advanced students I would actually say the same and on top of it to read as much and as widely as possible, trying to put the works they play in social and historical context.

What are your thoughts on the link between performance and teaching?

Both performance and teaching is a way of communication, similar to two dialects of the same language. Some are well-versed in both dialects, others are fluent in one and proficient in another. It is the individual’s responsibility to find his or her feet in either or both dialects.

Who are your favourite pianists/pianist-teachers and why?

Argerich for fire, Barenboim for colour, Schiff for philosophy and Perahia for surprise.

South African-born pianist Nico de Villiers is an accompanist, teacher and coach, based in London. He holds degrees from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the University of Michigan and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Read Nico’s full biography here

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So, the trouble all started when a friend asked to park her Bechstein upright in our house, 21 years ago. Pregnant with my first child and lit up with enthusiasm, I applied my hands, but the brain failed: it had been too long since the Grade 5 exam in 1974. So the lid went down. This was London, where nobody confessed to an enthusiasm they couldn’t back up with expertise. Why spend hours toiling away at an activity you were clearly not talented at, when there were so many other distractions or annoyances to attend to? Also, the really cool people who could turn their hands to the keyboard played improvised blues or at least popular songs that everybody could sing to after a glass or three of wine. What on earth was the point in making painful, grinding progress with a piece of Schubert that anybody who was interested could listen to at the flick of a switch, played by Paul Lewis or Mitsuko Uchida or any other of the great contemporary pianists of the day?

Then when I hit forty, the desire to learn kicked in. We now know that music lights up circuitry in the brain that cuts across most of the areas understood by magnetic imaging. Listening to music does that: learning even more so.

With a gradient that started at Distinction in Grade 1 (aged 9), plateaued at Pass in Grade 5 (aged 12), things weren’t looking promising for my efforts, at the age of 40, to rise to the challenge of Grade 6. That Grade, incidentally, carries with it the humiliating requirement that you have to have passed Grade 5 Theory. This meant that I had to take time off to sit the exam, along with 6,000 13 year olds, in some LSE exam warehouse behind Bush House where I worked, to the puzzlement of my boss (“Didn’t you do that when you were at school?”). Anyway, I passed, and the rest is history. After Grade 6 was the “gentle” Grade 7, which real pianists don’t bother to do because it’s such a small gradient. I thought I might get some leeway from the examiner when I staggered into the room on crutches with a knee injury – perching the damned things on the piano in order to wind down the seat after the 6 year old who’d preceded me – but ABRSM assessors are, quite rightly, armour-plated against individual appeals to mercy. I was despatched with barely 10 points over the pass mark. By Grade 8, I was slaveringly grateful to have passed by 1 singular point.

So why do I do it? Alan Rusbridger puts it so well, and his book led me to this site. The activity is a forbidden fruit, in a way. Not just the classical repertoire, but the attendant costs of the space needed for such a demanding piece of furniture. Of course it attracts accusations of elitism. But Rusbridger puts it so well when he describes his working day as somehow incomplete without the slight adaptation of brain chemistry that results from just twenty minutes at the keyboard. We don’t understand it yet, but I suspect when we do, the unglamorous process of struggling to learn a piece of music, or even playing a scale or an arpeggio, will have the same status as the celebrated endorphin release that we get from a long run or session at the gym.

And of course it’s so much more than that – the business of learning a piece of music gives you a view of its underside, its working parts. Even if you never reach the level of competence that enables you to play the damned thing to yourself, let alone anybody else, it opens up an entirely new dimension when you listen to the expert rendition. So that’s how that scale works! Ah – the bass chords there are a pianissimo rumble, not a statement. Oh, a dotted rhythm, not a triplet? Interesting interpretation!

Thank you, Frances, for this site. Let’s hope that Alan’s book – which celebrates, amongst many other things, the online amateur pianist – will be the source of many exchanges. Piano playing is one of the most privileged and interesting pursuits, but quite solitary in its way. For those of us not able to sightread our way through dazzling trios, or to pop in and out of duets, this online community is a source of encouragement for a hobby that seems to the rest of the world as eccentric in the extreme.

Rosalind is a former academic who now edits the Human Rights and Public Law Update online Journal and undertakes comparative and public law research for members of chambers. She also records and edits audiostreamed seminars for the resources section of the Chambers website. She edits and contributes to the National Health Legal Service’s Authority’s Human Rights NewsLetter.

Rosalind lives in Norfolk and takes lessons with pianist Christopher Green Armytage.

In another incarnation, Rosalind runs the annual Burnham Market Literary Festival in North Norfolk.

UK Human Rights Blog

Twitter: @rosalindenglish