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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Jazz Baron in the Straightjacket of the Classics

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

New Orleans street musicians were called jazzy. Their obsession with this type of music was intoxicating. They would play and improvise for hours on end, gathering crowds, igniting them with their enthusiasm, causing respectable burghers to shrug in amazement.

A lot has changed since then. Jazzmen have long come to be respected and few would call them jazzy. Kostiantyn Vilensky, Kyiv pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher, is known as a jazz baron in Europe. A fantastic virtuoso, his renditions whimsically combine an explosive emotionality with an inbred expressiveness and refined artistry. His improvisations rule out such notions as banality or poor taste, and his style is truly aristocratic. His grandfather, Illya Vilensky, was a noted composer, graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and Moscow University's Law School. His grandmother was from the aristocratic family of Kniahovsky and showed considerable vocal talent. She sang to Heinrich Neihaus' accompaniment. The Vilenskys played host to Vladimir Horowitz and Isadora Duncan. There seemed no obstacles in the gifted boy's way to the musical Olympus. Fate decided otherwise. Kostiantyn was in his eleventh year at Kyiv's Mykola Lysenko Music School, preparing for the Prague Spring International Contest when he over-practiced. For a month his hands were kept in plaster, then followed other courses of treatment before he could start from scratch. Years of unbelievably hard work and utmost dedication were wasted. Now he could only play for himself. After graduating from Kyiv Conservatory's Composition Department he started teaching a jazz harmony class.

When in the early 1980s Kostiantyn Vilensky appeared with his jazz trio; success was instant and overwhelming. They started giving concerts — solo and sessions with colleagues from Kyiv, Moscow, and other cities. Vilensky now had the reputation of one of the best jazz pianists. Shortly he headed Kyiv's jazz club and organized the first all-Union jazz festival, Holosiyeve’88. Today the musician recalls that period with a touch of nostalgia and mentions his performances together with the celebrated double bass player Viktor Dvoskin, concerts and recordings with the Melodiya Company as the best years of his creative life. He has lived and played in Poland the last couple of years, working mainly for the Stefan Zieromski Theater in Kielce. He is the author of a musical based on Yevgeni Schwartz's Cinderella and music for Wispianski's play Wedding Party. Staged by Peter Szczarski, using Mickiewicz's and Szymborska's verse, it won a drama festival in London.

Then came a sudden proposal from Sweden. Vilensky who had not touched classical music for 25 years was offered to appear in a summer music festival in Falsterbo with Beethoven's second piano concerto. The jazz baron agreed and played music where every note was glorified by an age-old tradition and the slightest digression, let alone improvisation, would be considered blasphemous. Even in the cadence, where every musician tends to show his/her virtuosity to the best advantage, this concerto (unlike the four others) is traditionally kept in strict accordance with Beethoven's interpretation. Vilensky, however, noted shrewdly that Beethoven was known as an excellent improviser.

Urban Rosengren, a young Swedish organist, composer, and festival organizer, went to a certain risk inviting Vilensky, but his creative intuition proved him right. Listening to his jazz records, Rosengren had sensed his excellent classical school. In a word, Vilensky's Beethoven sounded genuinely impassioned, vigorous, and optimistic.

 

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