By Heidi Trautmann
I said to Rauf after the concert on June 30 in Bellapais …in love forever with music you are…Oh No, he answered, I am always fighting her in endless arguments! Rauf looked exhausted like a Marathon sprinter returning as a winner while Maka was holding court among her admirers.
It was a beautiful piano concert with a precious programme and the concert hall was nearly full. It looked to me like a family gathering with Rauf Kasimov and Maka Borchashvili known to everybody, not only known but highly appreciated by us through the work they do and through the music they have given us. Both musicians have lived here for many years, lived and worked, taught music and piano. Both musicians like to share the riches they have been given with their talent, humbly and with passion.
The concentration with the head bowed, the slow encounter of hands and keys, a mutual respect for the music created for them, for us, the melting of body and mind in the flow of tunes, halting the tone and let it ring and then let loose again, running away, chasing and fighting. It left us breathless and I saw so many bodies around me take up the beat and jerk and twitch.
In the first part of the programme Rauf and Maka played solo in alternate order beautiful pieces by Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin , Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Scriabin; after the intermission we heard them play Franz Schubert and Valery Gavrilin, pieces written for four hands. They moved in unison on a level which is their life.
Soaring enthusiasm from the audience thanked Rauf and Maka for an exceptional evening.
Contrary to Rauf I don’t know much of Maka Borchashvili personally but what is stated in her CV. Please read about her under http://helpinghands.cc/sabit.php?id=12 This list of achievements speaks better than I can say.
When I interviewed Rauf two years ago he said something about music which never left my mind:
“What is music, you ask. It is there in our cosmos, it is there to grab, all the tunes, all the notes are there but it takes a genius to bring the tune down onto a piece of paper. Look at J.S. Bach, he created music and the paper with his notes would fill this room - a computer has calculated that he composed music for 300 years to play or you to listen to, just imagine, three life times, he had understood to make this cosmic royaume his own. A musician making a musical instrument his tool, his profession, has found his own way into the world of music, a world he has created for himself and nobody else can enter…. understand, yes! But not enter. When the so-called normality around me starts hurting me, I hide in this very special world of mine. Music, my hide-out!” Please read the entire interview under http://www.heiditrautmann.com/category.aspx?CID=6147237163