“What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow!”

“To appreciate good music, one must be mentally alert and emotionally receptive. You can't be that when you are sitting at home with your feet on a chair … listening to music is more strenuous than that. Music is like poetry; it is a passion and a problem. You can't enjoy and understand it merely by sitting still and letting it soak into your ears.”

“As we opened our mouths to congratulate him he exploded in complaint — he must be losing his mind, he's growing decrepit, better discard him altogether, prepare his obituary; once there was a musician, but that's all over now, he could never forgive himself, and so on. “Didn't you notice that I missed the point? Don't you understand — I let the point slip!” On a later occasion he explained that each piece he plays is shaped around its culminating point: the whole mass of sounds must be so measured, the depth and power of each sound must be given with such purity and gradation that this peak point is achieved with an appearance of the greatest naturalness, though actually its accomplishment is the highest art. This moment must arrive with the sound and sparkle of a ribbon snapped at the end of a race — it must seem a liberation from the last material obstacle, the last barrier between truth and its expression. The composition itself determines this culmination; the point may come at its end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft, yet the musician must always be able to approach it with sure calculation, absolute exactitude, for if it slips by the whole structure crumbles, the work goes soft and fuzzy, and cannot convey to the listener what must be conveyed.”

“The messages that Rachmaninov wanted to convey were always very personal and intense, which resulted in an intricate, deeply emotional style ... Though Rachmaninov’s music embodied the composer himself with little outside consideration for other music ... it encompassed the Russian mind, particularly the idea that fate defies all other struggles against it; fate is destiny and people could not change their fate - also a personal belief of Rachmaninov. Another common quality of much Russian music is that it is fused with an underlying feeling of doom and dread. Rachmaninov’s style contained the previous aspects, while adding to many of his pieces, a single point imbedded in the music somewhere that carried no other tone than that of peace and hope.”

J.C.H.: For your performance with the R.T. State Orchestra you have chosen a Rhapsody on the theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov. How do you see the solution of the conflict in this work? Who is the winner—light or darkness?

A.M.: The clash of two irreconcilable elements, light and darkness, divine and earthly, does not mean the resolution of the conflict by somebody’s victory. All this is a discussion about the essence of being, about life and death. Deep psychologism threaded through all the work of Rachmaninov, and Rhapsody isn’t an exception.

“The sound of church bells dominated all the cities of the Russia I used to know — Novgorod, Kiev, Moscow. They accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave, and no composer could escape their influence. One day at an estate of a friend — Chekhov loved fishing, for fishermen not supposed to talk lest they frighten off the fish, and Chekhov was sparing of words – when the sound of church bells ringing at vespertide had died away, Chekhov turned to a friend and said, “I love to hear the bells. It is all that religion has left me.” Faith and hope had fled, but the beauty of bell song still woke an echo in his soul.

All my life I have taken pleasure in the differing moods and music of gladly chiming and mournfully tolling bells. This love for bells is inherent in every Russian. One of my fondest childhood recollections is associated with the four notes of the great bells in the St. Sophia Cathedral of Novgorod, which I often heard when my grandmother took me to town on church festival days. … The four notes were a theme that recurred again and again, four silvery weeping notes … I always associated the idea of tears with them.”

“You cannot know the feeling of a man who has no home. Perhaps no others can understand the hopeless homesickness of us older Russians. Even the air in your country is different. No, I cannot say just how.”