Vladimir Ashkenazy: 'I kept the promise'

‘It’s a very unusual but true story,’ Vladimir Ashkenazy told local music critic Chang Tou Liang in a 2008 interview on his website Pianomania, when asked how his association with the Hong Kong International Piano Competition began. ‘I was performing with the Hong Kong Philharmonic some time in the ’80s when I met Drs Andrew and Anabella Freris. They invited me to be the patron of the Chopin Society of Hong Kong [which they had established].

Later they asked, if they were to host an international piano competition, would I agree to be the jury’s president? I said “Yes”, thinking the event would never happen. But some twenty years later, they planned the first competition in 2005,’ he says. ‘I made the promise – and so I kept it!’

Running from 16 October to 2 November, the triennial HKIPC is an ambitious project staged by the aforementioned Chopin Society.

In addition to overseeing the competition as chairman, Ashkenazy will also be conducting the concerto orchestra. With a top prize of US$15,000 (S$18,000), a record deal and a concert appearance with the SSO at the Esplanade with the flamboyant Russian conductor up for grabs, the stakes are certainly high, and many of the world’s most promising young pianists are making the trip to the region for the opportunity.

The eventual winner will only be announced on 31 October – just four days before the SSO’s event – and then summoned to Singapore for what should be a show of epic proportions.

Born on 6 July 1937 in Russia, Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy started piano training at the age of five and progressed to the Moscow Conservatory of Music. His big break came at just 18 when he won the second prize in the 1955 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

After marrying Thorunn Johannsdottir in 1961, he moved to his new wife’s native country of Iceland before later moving on to London where, free from the chains of the communist bureaucracy then rampant in the Soviet Union, his career took off on a global scale.

‘I left Russia when I was 26, [which is] quite young to leave your country and face the world,’ Ashkenazy reflected in a 2010 video interview on the London Philharmonia Orchestra website. ‘But I had been to the West before for performances, so in a way I was prepared for it. [The biggest difference was] you suddenly become your own master, whereas in Russia I was just a cog in a huge wheel. When you come to the West you have to decide everything for yourself.’

But the young immigrant soon sharpened those decision-making skills, leading to numerous award-winning recordings on the Decca label both as pianist and, later, as conductor. The numerous orchestras to have benefited from his leadership include Japan’s NHK Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Iceland Symphony and the Sydney Symphony. Besides his world-renowned musicianship, the 74-year-old is also known for his lively, generous personality that beams despite the hardship of his early life.

Although he performed here previously as a recital pianist in 2003, this gala concert will mark Ashkenazy’s full-orchestra debut in Singapore. While the concerto item and guest performer are unknown, what is definitely on the bill is Tchaikovsky’s exhilarating Fourth Symphony in F minor.

Premiered in 1878, its brass fanfare and lush romanticism initially received unfavourable reviews from peers and critics, but soon became a staple among orchestra programmers. We’re tempted to think that having a Russian-born conductor perform the music of his compatriot will bestow the evening with a more authentic, electrifying verve.

As will the fact that this might all never have been. Waving the baton came to Ashkenazy by accident: his first conducting gig came when he was already an international pianist, leading an amateur orchestra directed by his father-in-law in Iceland. A musician from those early days remarked that while Ashkenazy had yet to work out his conducting technique, the orchestra loved his music making so much that they wanted him back as often as possible.

‘I never thought I would conduct. It was simply much too complicated, and all my time was consumed by piano playing,’ he recalls. ‘So it sort of came bit by bit, little by little. Being a part of the music was quite natural for me, but it took some time before I could be comfortable standing in front of an orchestra. Fortunately I am now as comfortable as one can be.’

Ashkenazy leads the SSO at Esplanade Concert Hall on 4 Nov.