Drifting Pianist Afanassiev Plays the Love of Things
ヴァレリー・アファナシエフは、ロシアのピアニスト、詩人・作家である。彼は日本の古典文学「源氏物語」の「もののあはれ」をシューベルトのピアノソナタに感じることができます。来日コンサートで出会った彼は、少し恥ずかしがり屋で、控えめにお礼を言いながらサインしてくれました。彼こそ静寂の響きを表現できる本物のアーティストである。 Valery Afanassiev is a Russian pianist, poet and writer. He can feel the "Mono no Ahare" of the Japanese classic literature "The Tale of Genji" in Schubert's piano sonata. When I met him at a concert in Japan, he was a little shy and signed his autograph while modestly thanking me for my visit. He is the real artist who can express the sound of silence.
"Drifting Pianist Afanassiev Plays the Love of Things"
Birth: Sep. 8, 1947 - Present
Birthplace: Russia Moscow
Classical music pianist
Living: Belgian nationality
National items such as Mussorgsky's Pictures
Beethoven, Schubert's sonatas, and Brahms'late piece
1)
He fled to the West to escape the hell of systemic oppression.
But even there, he ended up in another hell, that of popularization through commercialism.
Turning his back on them, he chose to live as a "hermit."
He is the portrait of a melancholy artist.
2)
The program features an interview with Valery Afanassiev, who describes himself as a political and aesthetic exile.
Afanassiev heard the sound of silence in the forest when he was lost in his childhood.
It has been deeply captured in his heart.
3)
For Afanassiev, to feel silence means to face the world one-on-one.
In particular, when he first began studying music, he heard the sound of silence on Sofronitsky's piano.
4)
He plays music that rises from the silence and returns to the silence.
I remember him saying that it was essential to continue to feel the silence, even when playing fortissimo.
5)
He has this sensitivity to silence.
He also encountered the aesthetics of "Ma" and "Mono no ahare" in classical Japanese literature, which he read while studying in Moscow.
"Ma"
=relation、pause、room、span、musical interval、interval、gap、opening、relationship、human relationship
"Mono no ahare"
Mono = things, stuff
no = of
ahare = sad, poor, pitiful, misery, sorrow
=When we see ephemeral things [things that don't last very long], like the seasons, flowers, people's lives, and so on, we feel moved by their beauty with a bit of sadness. That's "mono no aware."
6)
"Mono no ahare" means (according to Afanassiev) that life is a mixture of encounters and partings, happiness and unhappiness, which can never be separated.
It is deeply emotional, he said, and "The Tale of Genji" speaks of this more beautifully than anything else.
7)
And so, at the end of the program, the first movement of Schubert's last sonata, music that expresses the aesthetics of "the beauty of things," is played.
8)
He plays the piano against the backdrop of autumn leaves floating in the darkness of the night in a SHOIN (a traditional Japanese writing room, or a school) in Kyoto in the depths of autumn.
As if blending into the repercussions of the music, the faint nature sounds are also beautiful.
9)
Then, I want to leave you with a word that left a deep impression on me.
"You can never lose the beloved thing you always carry in your heart."
10)
It is what the pianist said about the landscape of Kyoto, which he says he loves.
But when this exile speaks, it seems to contain a deep sense of nostalgia.
Valery Afanassiev plays Schubert Piano Sonata D. 960 - video 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1oNW4SnGWQ
Vladimir Sofronitsky plays Schubert-Liszt : 10 Lieder Transcriptions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8m5bJK0OEI
Hi-Vision Special "Drifting Pianist Afanasyev Plays the Love of Things" (Japanese only)
ハイビジョン特集「漂泊のピアニスト アファナシエフ もののあはれを弾く」
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5f1AYRGdRo
https://blog.goo.ne.jp/nocturnes_1875/e/1f22a81eb3434d36e071bd708a88716b
Valery Afanassiev - Le Silence des Spheres
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5f1AYRGdRo