Antonii Baryshevskyi gave his all at the 6th NTD International Piano Competition and felt he “received a marvelous experience.”
The Ukrainian pianist made it to the final round on Tuesday at the Kaufman Music Center in New York City and performed a program of Liszt’s Waldesrauschen, and one of his favorite works, Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, including five posthumous variations.
“I tried to show all my ideas I have about this music,” Antonii said. “I feel like I am standing behind a big mountain, trying to tell everybody how beautiful it is, trying to describe the parts of it, trying to take everyone on this journey with me, a journey through this big mountain.”
Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes were developed by a theme written by an amateur musician, and “he really makes a huge castle from this just one-page theme,” Antonii said.
“He uses different textures, he gives us different worlds that never existed before. From one etude to another, we go someplace far away from the main theme. Sometimes it disappears, sometimes it comes back. It’s like a huge novel.”
An improviser and composer himself, Antonii appreciates the depth of classical music as an art form. Music is the art of time, and as an art that demands so much from both its interpreters and listeners, Antonii seeks works worth exploring.
“I want to play good music, as beautiful as possible,” he said.
“Classical music is about deep ideas, deep emotions,” Antonii said. “It has a lot of meanings. Usually, a piece of classical music, even if it is one page, it’s never never just one idea or one shape or one emotion; it’s usually a lot of things. Like a Chopin etude, it can be one page, but it is so many things, so many shapes of emotions, colors, it tells a story.”
Antonii grew up listening to vinyls of great performers like Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, Christian Zimmerman, Grigory Sokolov, and Andras Schiff.
“I took from them that music is about power, about energy, about emotions—but also about great structure, about details, about something that builds up our minds—also something that blows our minds.”
“Music cannot be just cold, and mathematical. Music has to touch people,” he said.
“Music is like air, I cannot imagine myself without it.”
