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| | "It was a magic “sunset” spring, and the loving couples walked along the streets, following the Lord’s Grave, and shared their dreams..."
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I was born in a small one-storied house in Fleming Street, with three front-steps leading to the porch. Next door in the wrecks there lived a lunatic, alone, like a hermit. He walked almost nude. Once he had been a reach person, a cabinet-maker, but later on he went out of his mind. On the same side of the street but a bit down there was a small tavern, which maybe no one remembers but me. The Tricalon Street was where my grandma lived. There were fields of yellow daisies and camomiles around. All my childhood is closely related to the yellow color sensation. At the time of coup d'etat in Greece, the really hard period of time for the country, my family gave hide-out to the young revolutionists. I remember that wonderful feeling of love and human unity, which wandered in the air of Athens. Everyone was kind and good. Everyone aspired to freedom, struggled for the human rights, and helped each other. What a pity that it became a thing of the past forever.
As I was a child I had a dog Rocky, a boxer. His owner had left him in the airport and my father picked him up and brought to me. It’s amazing but I clearly remember all doings that took place when I was one year old. I remember our family walks, when my aunt fell in love with her future husband. I remember my father’s photographic laboratory. At that time I was ill with bronchitis and a woman came to me to give an injection. And I was laid up on my father’s bed, and a light ray from printing the photographs reminded me of a woman’s breast shedding the golden wine. Those times are associated with the music of Mozart and Schubert in my mind, especially with Schubert. Up to now I get happy thinking of those times.
I recall a small store of an old man Georgis Pandasis. He gave us fireworks, that we set to fire for the God’s Resurrection Night. Nearby there were two temples – St. Dimitry church and Taksiarch, where the saint Anthem served. He carried my first divine celebration of Easter. It was a magic “sunset” spring, and the loving couples walked along the streets, following the Lord’s Grave, and shared their dreams. All the people went out of doors waiting for the religious procession to pass. There was a feeling in the air that the scent of sweet smelling relics loaded all its wafts avowedly from Jerusalem. In May, for the Holy Joann day the girls jumped over the fire, twined wreathes and then threw them into the fire. It’s like a Russian religious holiday of Ivan Kupala, but in Greek way.
My first girlfriend lived in a basement floor, and the windows of her room were situated on the pavement level – the feet of the passers-by were seen quite well. Her father was a very strict man, that’s why I climbed out of the window in order to avoid his eye. We used to meet each other on the cemetery. We had our own holidays, we listened to the millions of records, but most often Ravel, the concert for the left hand performed by Alfred Cortot, compositions of Jani Christou, Claude Debussy played by Walter Gieseking, singers Conchita Supervia, Kirsten Flagstad, Kathleen Mary Ferrier, the first symphony of Jean Sibelius, conducted by Robert Kajanus. Then I was captured by the books of Giyom Appoliner, mastered the skills to control my energy, and studied the psychodynamics.
When I was 14, my brother Vangelino and I arranged the rehearsals which at times ended with chaos, we put the whole room in mess. Once even the police came, such noise we caused. We constantly abused one another as a joke – at the time of a rehearsal he talked on the phone with his girlfriends and I found it pretty blasphemous. Now he lives in Prague and composes our “odd” music for the theatre.
My mother played the piano very well. In the mornings she gave lessons and the sound of the piano was spread around the house, in the street, running into the tolling of the churches’ bells. Sometimes it was heard a quite rhythmical tone of a slow performance of Czerny’s etudes. The music was with me already before I was even born. I came to birth with the music “in my ears” and started to play the piano before I learned to read. At the age of seven I was already able to read the scores and do the instrumentation. As a child I was in ecstasies listening to the recordings of my father and uncle Mitia. By the age of ten I already knew by heart all symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Because of my great wish to play in the orchestra I started to play the violin – I liked those mighty powerful beginning of Rachmaninoff’s concert, when the strings enter.
The physicians were amazed by my photographic memory; they tried to examine the origin of my astral journeys and visions. In my childhood I didn’t even dream to become a musician. Music was my liturgy, natural like the heartbeats. At the university I began to study a facultative psychology and philosophy, wrote poems; when I was 15 I even won a national contest of young literati. Three books of collected poems were published in Greece. I became a soloist – I played the violin and sang, and only later I started to take lessons of conducting. It was a hobby at the beginning. One said that I did it better than the others but I never thought about it. One day I saw Ilya Musin on the record, the greatest conductor and pedagogue of the 20th century. I went to Saint Petersburg and became his student. I’ve been his student for five years. I owe him what I am. It’s not so important if you love the music; it’s much more important if the music loves you. Probably the conducting has picked me out. A conductor is a poet, a wanderer guided by God, whose mission is to unite the flesh and the spirit inside the invisible light. He is a doctor, a teacher but also a victim, an offering. He burns himself for the consolation of the remainder, inferior, I mean the audience; he has to know how to touch the invisible strings of a human’s soul, everyone’s got his own truth inside, you know; and my duty is to master the art to make this truth be heard. Conductors, your profession is a mission, it’s a long farewell when you take a decision to leave the outward things.
I like to go to the sea. For me it’s a symbol of the basic senses – return and parting. I read a lot, write poems, compose music, but I prefer not to perform my own pieces because I’m not sure that I’m able to be adequate towards myself. I listen to various music, alternative, Indy-pop, a vanguard, from Pearls before Swine, Joy Division, Suicide till Einst?rzende Neubauten, Nurse with Wound, Supersilent 5. I do like everything except the nonsensical sound mess, so called the “factory” of sounds.
By Julia Chechikova
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