Viktoria Yurievna Mullova (Russian: Виктория Юрьевна Муллова, IPA:[vʲɪˈktorʲɪjəˈmuləvə]; born 27 November 1959) is a Russian-born British violinist.[1] She is best known for her performances and recordings of a number of violin concerti, compositions by J.S. Bach, and her innovative interpretations of popular and jazz compositions by Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, The Beatles, and others.[2]
During a tour of Finland in 1983, Mullova and her lover, Vakhtang Jordania, who posed as her accompanist so they could defect together, left the hotel in Kuusamo, after Jordania told the KGB officer who was watching them that Mullova was too sick from drinking to attend the afterparty. The Stradivari violin owned by the Soviet Union was left behind on the hotel bed. YLE journalist Jyrki Koulumies,[20][21] accompanied by photographer Caj Sundman, drove them in a rented car across the border via Haparanda to Luleå, Sweden where they flew to Stockholm.[citation needed]
At that time, the Swedish police treated the young, on-the-run musicians just like any other political defectors from the Eastern Bloc: they suggested that the couple stay in a safehouse over the weekend until the American Embassy opened so they could apply for political asylum upon relocation.[citation needed] So for two days they sat under pseudonyms in a safehouse not even daring to go outside, because their photographs were on the front page of every Swedish and international newspaper. Two days later they arrived in Washington, D.C., with American visas in their pockets.[citation needed]
She formed the Mullova Chamber Ensemble in the mid-1990s. The ensemble has toured Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands and has recorded the Bach violin concertos on Philips Classics. She was nominated for a 1995 Grammy Award for her recording of the Bach Partitas, and she won a 1995 Echo Klassik award, a Japanese Record Academy Award and a Deutsche Schallplattenkritik prize for her recording of the Brahms violin concerto. Her recording of the Brahms B major Trio (no. 1) and Beethoven's Archduke Trio with André Previn and Heinrich Schiff was released in 1995, receiving a further Diapason d'Or.
Mullova plays the Jules Falk Stradivarius from 1723 and a violin made in 1750 by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. Her bows include a Baroque style bow by a Walter Barbiero,[22] one of the finest makers of modern bows, a Dodd and a Voirin.
^Through verbal commentaries on music the Soviet ideology ‘appropriated’ the classical musical heritage.[5] The last stages of the education system were developed by the composer and teacher Dmitry Kabalevsky. Classical music performers were household names rivaled to movie stars and popular singers through its constant presence on a Soviet TV, just like the ballet dancers[6] and Kabalevsky's then-famous credo quote "Beauty Evokes Kindness" (Russian: Прекрасное пробуждает доброе, romanized: Prekrasnoe probuzhdaet dobroe)[7]Vladimir Lenin's self-proclaimed atheism, as a lack of transcendental ideals that are important to the others, was perceived as wishful thinking because of Maxim Gorky's 1924 testimony about the leader's admiration for Issay Dobrowen's performance of the "preterhuman music" of one of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, all of them being the "New Testament" of Moscow Conservatory piano department (with The Well-Tempered Clavier as "Old Testament"; all-Soviet famous Hans von Bülow statement[8]).[9]
The oppressive musical education system, as mentioned by Mullova, included thousands of state-sponsored regional non-special complementary children musical schools raising the professional classical music consumers mostly, after a full 8-year-course, and not only the professional musicians. The stable existence of multiple pre-professionally trained listeners has created additional pressure for the performers, sometimes have returned to classical music "from the front door" many years and even decades after the graduation from the musical school.[10][11] As an example of attitude, Ludwig van Beethoven's classical song Marmotte [ru] has become a point of Soviet children's early, elementary school or kindergarten age introduction to the "unfading ethical ideal".[12] The Soviet ideology was based on "another myth about Beethoven: a democrat, sansculotte, a man of the revolutionary era, a rebel, a revolutionary".[13] Beethoven was ubiquitously wrongly referenced by kids with the false patronymic "Ludwig Ivanovich", from 'van', although his father's name was also a variation of "Ivan", and it has become a popular in-joke.[14]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the system was financially "abandoned by the state to face the merciless fate" and, as a repentance for his collaboration with the Soviet authorities and a certain level of animosity, a lack of solidarity, towards his fellow composers Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Kabalevsky has been excluded from a shortlist of worthy Soviet-era composers.[7] By 2019, the number of classical music fans was reduced to a fourth-place overall, 22 percent, behind the Russian/Soviet pop and "criminals' songs" (30 percent). It was still more than a number of people who attend religious services at least once a month, as of 2008.[15][16] However, according to the Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, the ongoing cultural genocide of instrumentalists and their admirers by the Russian officials is far from complete, yet close: "Russia has the best audience, the most educated".[17][18][19]
""Appasionata" (№23 f-moll, Op.57)". beethoven.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 12 September 2020. A. M. Gorky," Gorky about Lenin "," Izvestia VTsIK ", 1924. No. 84. April 11
^"Modern Balalaika School". YouTube (in Russian). Voronezh: Andrey Karpov. 12 September 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2020. And the motivation is very simple. Do not approach the refrigerator Or ask those who give you food not to do it. And under these circumstances, you will calmly master everything. If you are being told that tomorrow, excuse me, they will shoot you away if you do not master Paganini's "Perpetual Motion", then 80 percent will master. There will be casualties, and 20 percent will not. Well, first of all, you can't really shoot them away, so let's transfer them to another institution, out of sight. But do in the way the rest won't know about it. They think that those people are gone and that's it. And now, when you ask them to master something, 100 percent will do it, as the others are gone. I'm kidding
^"Orchestra Rehearsal". rg.ru (in Russian). Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 10 April 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2020. Arthur Domansky - accompanist of the highest category. For an hour of work at the conservatory, he receives 86 rubles
^"Ivan Ilyin, Putin's Philosopher of Russian Fascism". The New York Review of Books. April 5, 2018. Retrieved December 12, 2019. The proper interpretation of the "judge not" passage was that every day was judgment day, and that men would be judged for not killing God's enemies when they had the chance. In God's absence, Ilyin determined who those enemies were
