Andrei Gavrilov

Andrei Gavrilov is a Soviet, Russian, British, German and Swiss pianist and conductor, born on 21 September 1955 in Moscow. He was born into an artistic family: his father Vladimir Gavrilov was a well-known painter, and his mother Assanetta Yegiseryan was a pianist who had studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and became his first teacher.

From 1960 he studied at the Central Music School in Moscow, graduating with a gold medal. His principal teacher there was Tatyana Kestner, a pupil of Alexander Goldenweiser. He later studied at the conservatory with Lev Naumov, himself a pupil of Heinrich Neuhaus, who repeatedly praised Gavrilov's exceptional talent and deep musicality in memoirs and interviews.

Gavrilov gained international prominence in 1974, when at the age of eighteen he won first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. In the same year he replaced the ill Sviatoslav Richter at the Salzburg Festival. He later performed and recorded Handel suites together with Richter. In 1976 he appeared in London with the Bournemouth Orchestra under Paavo Berglund, and in 1978 he undertook his first tour with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, giving 30 concerts in major cities around the world.

In December 1979, while preparing for a tour with Herbert von Karajan, he was barred from leaving the Soviet Union. According to Gavrilov's own recollections, he was kept under near house arrest and constant KGB surveillance. In 1985 he was finally able to travel to the United Kingdom on tour with his wife Natalia Alkhimova and decided not to return to the USSR, living in hiding there for a time with the assistance of British special services. His request for freedom of movement was later approved by Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev; he retained Soviet citizenship and received what he described as a free foreign-travel passport.

After settling in London, Gavrilov moved in 1989 to Bad Camberg near Wiesbaden, where he also received German citizenship. The article states that he is now a citizen of four countries: Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. During these years he performed with orchestras conducted by Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa and Bernard Haitink, appearing in venues including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elisabeth Hall in London, as well as in many other cities worldwide.

Between 1994 and 2001 Gavrilov experienced an inner spiritual crisis and stopped concert activity for a time, living for a period on the Fiji Islands. In 2001 he moved to Switzerland and resumed performing. He appeared again in Moscow in October 2003, and in 2009-2010 undertook a large tour of cities in Russia and the CIS. In December 2012 he refused to perform after a rehearsal at the Moscow International House of Music, explaining on Facebook that the orchestra's playing level was unacceptable.

The pianist's repertoire includes works by Domenico Scarlatti, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Paganini in Liszt's transcription, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Franck, Grieg, Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Berg, Hindemith, Britten, Shostakovich and Schnittke. In 1982 he also appeared as a pianist in issue 32 of the children's film magazine Yeralash, in the episode "The Game Is Over, Maestro!"

In August 2011 his autobiographical book "Teapot, Fira and Andrei" was published in Russian, covering the period from his graduation from the Central Music School in 1973 to his departure from the USSR in 1985. The book combines memoir and reflection on the Brezhnev era and includes lesser-known details about figures such as Yuri Egorov, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya, Sviatoslav Richter and Valery Klimov. A Russian edition appeared in 2014, accompanied by a CD of Chopin nocturnes recorded by Gavrilov especially for the publication, and an English version was issued in 2016.