Remembering Dmitri Bashkirov: a structure-obsessed musical surgeon

 This article originally appeared in International Piano magazine.

His masterclasses were very old-school, with pupils subjected to roars of ‘No, no, no!’ as Bashkirov adamantly pounded the piano top to indicate tempos. At one memorable public lesson in Katowice, Poland in February 2014, he tripped over his own feet in vexation at a student’s rhythmic irregularities, crashed into a video camera and fell to the stage, fortunately unharmed.

Amidst all the drama, Bashkirov would typically reduce complex music to a skeletal framework when dissecting the full unfolding of a melodic line. More than a pianist, he was a structure-obsessed musical surgeon.

Bashkirov did not learn his scalpel technique at the Tbilisi Conservatory, where he was mentored for a decade by Anastasia Virsaladze, the refined Georgian pupil of Anna Yesipova, a much-admired Leschetizky student. Nor did Bashkirov experience physical aggressiveness at the Moscow Conservatory under the tutelage of Alexander Goldenweiser, an old and sedentary fount of anecdotes.

Instead, especially from Virsaladze, Bashkirov acquired a lyric sense, which made him capable of performances like a 1981 Moscow rendition of Schubert’s Impromptu in G-flat major Op 90/3, one of the few to match the heart-breaking, forward-moving impulsiveness of Dinu Lipatti’s celebrated recording. Similarly, Bashkirov’s Mozart Piano Concerto No 14 K449, conducted by Rudolf Barshai in 1963, offers some rare moments of Olympian bliss.

Achievements such as this attracted a stellar list of students to the Moscow Conservatory and the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, where Bashkirov taught from 1957 onwards. They included the future keyboard stars Dmitri Alexeev, Arcadi Volodos, Nikolai Demidenko, Kirill Gerstein and Dang Thai Son.

Pianism is about breathing, he would inform pupils, adding a surreal comment as if echoing achievements by his great-aunt, the Soviet physiologist Lina Stern: ‘A pianist has six lungs: the real ones in the chest, and other pairs in the elbows and wrists.’

This respiratory ideal resulted in vital performances, exemplified by one of his musical heroes, Arthur Rubinstein, whose recitals ‘instilled optimism’, as he told fellow educator Arie Vardi in a 2014 TV interview. Whether considering the world today or the Soviet oppression that he endured stalwartly, this precious gift of optimism is not to be gainsayed as a keyboard ideal.

Dmitri Bashkirov, pianist and teacher, born 1 November 1931; died 7 March 2021