CV: Igor Bezrodny
LONDON, ENGLAND. January l952,”The Daily Herald”
”. -.Bezrodny produced sounds on the violin which can be compared to molten gold.”
GENEVE, SWITZERLAND. October l1954,”Tribune ds Geneve”.
”…There is no doubt that Bezrodny is one of the greatest contemporary violinists. His playing is simply mesmerizing.”
TOKYO, JAPAN. March 1957. ”Asahi”. Saburo Sanobe.
”…Bezrodny’s playing impresses not only with its mastery, but also with its individuality. He is not outwardly showy, as it is often with other masters, but rather his technique is always intrinsically connected with his own deep and unique interpretation. …”
ATHENS, GREECE. August 1957. ”Ethnos”.
”.. .Bezrodny is a brilliant virtuoso and a musician of depth.
His wonderful playing of Taneyev’s Suite and Bach Ciaccona built up a real temple of art on the holy hill of Akropolis.”
IGOR BEZRODNY (7.05.1930 – 30.09.1997) was a unique individual, an outstanding musician – violinist, conductor, professor. His range of activity was wide. Besides playing in the top concert halls with best-known orchestras and conductors as a soloist, he also played in the legendary Moscow Trio with Dmitry Bashkirov and Mikhail Homitzer. He was the chief conductor of Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic, and as a pedagogue he has given us a whole generation of well-known violinists.
Bezrodny was born in Tbilisi to a family of famous violinists. Father Semyon was the leader of Tbilisi Opera and professor in the Tbilisi Conservatoire, later he hold professorship in Moscow, mother Tatjana Pogozheva was well-known teacher also in Finland.
Bezrodny’s talent became evident very early, when, at the tender age of 2, he was so inspired by Jean Sibelius’ Valse Triste that he marched onto the stage to take over conducting of the orchestra where his father was playing as concertmaster!
He had the rare opportunity to study exclusively with professor Abram Yampolsky for the duration his entire education (1937-1955), first in the Central Music School, and later in the Moscow Conservatoire.
Immediately after finishing his graduate violin studies in the Conservatoire he began to teach there. At the same time as he began his post as professor of violin, he began and completed a conducting course with professors Nikolai Anosov, Boris Haikin and LeoGinsburg (1962-66).
Bezrodny developed early and with amazing integrity as a violinist. At the age of 17 he won the violin competition at the first World Youth and Student Festival in Prague, sharing honors with older and more mature musicians like Leonid Kogan and Yulian Sitkovetsky.
Following his initial success, he triumphed in tlie Jan Kubelik Competition in Prague in1949 and in the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1950. As a result of his success in the competitions, at the age of 20 he was the youngest ever artist to receive the Stalin prize in 1951.
In addition to the recognition of his native Soviet Union, his contribution to the world of music was also recognized, by the governments of many other countries throughout his career. He had received honorary degrees and medals of honour from many States in the world. He performed a total of more than 60 countries all over the world, in many of them as the first Soviet person to step on the territory.
In 1950 he visited Finland for the first time and from that moment this country became of special importance in his heart. Since then, he visited Finland yearly, playing with orchestras, giving solo and trio recitals, holding masterclasses, and conducting. Jyväskylä Kesä Festival was connected with the name of Bezrodny for 20 years.
In 1953 he was invited to Sibelius’s house in Järvenpää, where he played for the composer his Serenades and discussed his violin concerto and other compositions. This meeting made a great impression on Bezrodny. Also instrumental in his development as an artist were meetings with Charlie Chaplin, Igor Stravinsky, Walt Disney and other significant figures of that era.
From the very beginning, Igor Bezrodny intrigued audiences with his artistic integrity. Light and warmth predominated when he played. There was a freshness of feeling and a frankness of emotion that charmed and won over the listener. No single trait of his seemed to outshadow others. Though his technique was polished and perfect, virtuosity was never a goal in itself. Bezrodny rejected mannerisms and special effects.
This was a truly universal musician. With immaculate taste and an impeccable ear combined with a highest level of training, he could play compositions of all periods and styles. He gave premiére performances of many pieces, among them Dmitri Kabalevski’s Violin Concerto, and many other works were either written for or dedicated to him.
In 1967 began his career as a conductor. His clear and original ideas were apparent from the very first concert. The critics noticed the elasticity and power of his gestures and constant control of the orchestra. Poetic, philosophical, and improvisatory elements, as well as the ”breath” of musical phrasing, were characteristic of Bezrodny the conductor. He often spoke of the need to find the focal points of a piece of music, searching for the connection between the composer and the performer, and of the performer and the listener. He was especially sensitive to the drama inherent in the symphonic repertoire, which was occasionally inspired by his avid interest in cinematography. One of Bezrodny’s most cherished non-musical honours was a prize he received for his film about South America in an all-Soviet contest for amateur filmmakers.
In 1976-81 he was the chief conductor of Moscow Academic Chamber Orchestra, in 1986-90 the chief conductor of Turku Philarmonic Orchestra in Finland. As a guest conductor he has also visited many countries in Europe and America.
He was also in high demand abroad as a master teacher and jury member. He gave numerous violin masterclasses in Europe, America and Asia and he was a member of the jury in many well-known international violin competitions, such as Tschaikovsky, Sibelius, Bach, Wieniawski, Spohr, Huml and others.
In addition to his post at the Moscow Conservatoire, Bezrodny was the professor of violin at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki between the years of 1990-97. As a respected pedagogue, he continued and developed the tradition of one of the greatest violin schools of the XX century – Abram Yampolsky’s. He instilled in his students a fine understanding of various styles, good taste, artistic sensitivity, and technical mastery. Active approach to the creative process and balanced development of the student as an artist and human being were typical of Bezrodny’s teaching. He never came to the class with his own violin, explaining it as follows:
”I have a strong desire not to play in a lesson to demonstrate. The students must not hear even a note of my playing. Maybe this way is much longer but it avoids danger of mindless copying and provokes fantasy of the student. My main mission is to develop the artistic point of view of the student any age or professional level.”
As a result each of his students retained his own artistic identity. Unfortunately, Bezrodny made relatively few recordings because of his dislike of the unnaturalness of recording process. He expressed that the artist had to ”fill the air between him and the listener with music”, and a recording is merely ”a mechanical imprint of sounds”.
Although at times critical of the current trends in music at the end of the XX century, Bezrodny remained hopeful that humanity will one day recognize the spiritual value of music:
“There are so few performers nowadays who honestly fulfil their artistic mission and use the violin
as a singing, speaking instrument of the soul. There is so little indication of genuine life in the
music, so little inspiration and imagination. Performers rarely offer new stylistic tendencies and
new expressive means for the instrument. But we should not forget that most of the masterpieces of violin literature were created by composers who were acting on contemporary styles of playing and on the artistic individuality of the outstanding masters of the time, their new conception of the violin. Lessons learned from the past are important to the future. Let us hope that the future will bring changes in the right direction. ”