Well, it's really an autobiography, because I'm writing about myself...
Having been born in the USSR, I should have had the perfect conditions to be a musician, huh? Well... It's not true. Why?
There is an answer, or even several: after having started to learn the violin (properly) at the age of 7 (that's not taking
into account that I'd had access to a piano from the age of 0), we immigrated to Israel when I was 8.
So I went to a music school there. It turned out that I'd been taught incorrectly on the violin, and we started from scratch.
Three years passed, I was the best student they had. Played in the local orchestra. But here... Two things. First - oh yes,
I enjoyed playing the violin, improvising, playing along to Mozart and stuff like that. But I hated having to practice what
they gave me. Especially if it meant practice every day. They expected an hour a day minimum. I practiced 20-30 minutes.
Second thing is...our family moved back to the USSR. (Dad's work.)
That was the end of my violin learning experience (apart from trying to find a new teacher in Uzbekistan, and finding one, but she played out of tune, and that was no good!!).
Still. We always had a piano at home, and I always liked playing it, and even took 3 lessons once. Never again though.
Five years later, I played Beethoven's 'Moonlight' Sonata (1st and 3rd movements) at a school concert in London (where we'd
moved to). I did a GCSE in music in 3/4 of a year and got an A*, and went to university (Imperial College) to study maths!
I studied there for two years, and the best part was going to the choir sessions (with Therees Tkach Hibbard (oh, how great
she is, it's impossible to tell with words)), and performing with the choir. And we did stuff like Verdi's Requiem,
Bach's B minor mass, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Mozart's Requiem, and other music by some great (even modern)
composers.
But I quit maths 2 years later. I needed music. It turned out that I have nothing. I'm not a violinist, nor a pianist; not anything! Nothing that is... Ah! But there's a little trick. I'd been composing for some time already. Quite good stuff, too, (to my taste (then)) hehe. :)
Anyway. I applied to the Academy of Gnesin in Moscow, and got in on a preparatory composition course. That meant that I had
to do one or two years as preparation, and then I'd have to pass some exams, and get onto the 1st year of an MA course in
composition.
But things went a bit better than that. In that one preparatory year, I learnt "all the stuff that I had to have learnt by then already", i.e. the stuff that I'd missed while not having studied music, and plus, I passed (with all A's) all the subjects that year 1 composition students do. And after some talking to professors on the course, I'd been given the go-ahead to continue studying with students in year 2. That means that I had completely skipped the preparatory course PLUS (and that's a big plus there) - I didn't have to sit the entrance exams.
Year 2 started out very slowly, unfortunately, for me (which means I did a lot, but not a lot of it was considered anything
done). And my grades, due to that, in the first half year weren't up to standard.
The second half of the year went much better with regards to studies. I finished off the sonata with the Waltz, and composed the
fable "Quartet".
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