A Late love confession. Author Valery Baranovsky
I don’t know why I decided to write about Polina Osetinskaya, although I am not a music critic and have listened to her for the first time. Maybe, It is driven by her sudden arrival to Odessa, where she haven’t been for ages. I do have in my mind an image of young girl in a long dress- who rushes along corridors and stairs after her father, gets lost and finds herself suddenly, chewing some little sandwich, while I was, as my old buddy says, was turned on by her father’s speeches about new screenplay ideas and his child-pianist converting system.
Was it possible that I, movie studio director’s deputy imagine, that old folk Osetinskiy was completely right. We didn’t make a deal about movie unfortunately. But baby-Polina really turned into uniq performer, virtuoso, sometimes a philosopher, a lyric who can use complete rate of expressive tools. How? How did it happen? I don’t want to wish-wash. She answered all these questions in her book “Goodbye, melancholy”, the antitheses of a famous novel by F. Sagan. And it wasn’t just a game of words for her. By finishing this opus she probably got rid of heavy obsession, connected to yearly studying conflicts which probably haven’t passes away yet, even when the halls are full of audience.
Maybe I felt something close and tender in her state of loneliness and that’s why I decided to talk about the nature of it. And this is about Polina’s music. I will permit myself some familiarity. Since the very first minute she walked up the philharmonic hall, looking at no one and nothing, set down, throwed her arms down for a moment, I was taken and attached to a oblique light profile between deck and mirror wing of a grand piano, where her guise was reflected and oddly transferred to some not-euclid space.
There are written hundreds and hundreds pages about how good this pianist is “on board”, how she is paying with classical material, interpreting it sometime totally unpredictable, her own way, how easy and naturally she is connecting lyrical motives with a true drama.
Osetinskaya performed mozart and Chopin in the first act of her concert. She played it the way no other living pianist could do it. That’s not a problem for a handy pianist to play everything by sheet. But Polina’s technic doesn’t live by itself, but opens for her wide opportunity to say herself.
Osetinskaya played very femine,tender, much more then authors of these pices probably have done them. It will be a waste of time if I would start to discuss Polina’s technic details — her sound power, her ability to make beautiful harmonies last longer, till their natural disappointing. She plays eyes closed being under the rule of sound power, forgetting about audience.
These impressions can get even stronger in any music lover would listen to her second act: “Four impromptus” by Shubert, and “Isolda’s death” by Wagner-List. That all was about her inner drama voice and difficult to explain but I will try, pretending nor for being right neither for science based knowledge of random clues.
I am sure that Polina’s wide music interests let her perform some new, rare pieces, to include them into her performer’s compendium and to play them gratefully on every stage just after a quick rehearsal.
Not going deep into her technical abilities I see how she is connecting to some energetic pole, where everything in our world is getting converted to certain music, doesn’t matter where, what time or by who it was composed.
Author Valery Baranovsky, source Reflection.