Classic
After winning the competition in Muri, is a great career tempting?
Leonid Surkov won first prize in the oboe category at the Muri Competition in April – now he is playing at the Open Classics on the Rhine.
Leonid Surkov won the Muri Competition and is now playing in Rheinfelden.
Bild: Daria Fedorova
How often does this go through your head: What if I hadn’t met this person but that person? Then I probably would have … The subjunctive permits many things, but in the case of Leonid Surkov, the early encounter with a music teacher was fateful. Because she not only played the recorder, but also the oboe. An instrument that makes the 23-year-old Russian go into raptures.
«The oboe is wonderful because it can do everything: it is lively and expressive and it comes very, very close to the human voice. That’s why you can sing with her.” Because she is sensitive, you have to suffer a bit when dealing with her, “but that’s part of it”. In short: the boy couldn’t stop playing this wind instrument, which is why he continued his studies at the Gnessin Music School in Moscow.
Schicksalsmoment in Berlin
This is where you have to step in. Don’t you automatically associate violin, cello and piano with Russia? Leonid Surkov nods: “Yes, but the oboe is also valued in my homeland, especially when it is heard in a large orchestra and in great symphonies such as those by Peter I. Tchaikovsky.” The fact that the young, fabulously German-speaking musician has been studying at the University of the Arts in Berlin in Washington Barella’s class since 2019 also falls into the category of destiny. «I met someone who I knew straight away: I want to continue my musical studies with him.»
When Leonid Surkov talks about his path so far and a future that is still open, one is surprised at the serenity that is immediately transferred to the vis-à-vis. There is talk of love and gratitude and that sounds completely sincere with this musician who talks about his profession in such a reflected way. Surkov carefully places word after word – and that’s why you can hear the punctuation marks, under which the dashes seem to glow, as it were.
Not a hint of showing off, though Surkov has won quite a few prestigious competitions; most recently the Muri Competition in April this year, where he was awarded first prize in the oboe category. Does he want to gain fame with competitions? No. “That’s not the most important thing. Competitions make sense to me because I always feel my development very strongly. Competitions are exciting and complicated at the same time. You have to be sincere and honest – especially in the knowledge of jury members who judge you and who may not like my game. But you can never please everyone.”
“In the orchestra you have a lot of responsibility”
Leonid Surkov not only liked Muri, but before that when he applied for the Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra. He played and gained experience there in 2017 and 2018 before joining the Verbier Festival Orchestra in 2022. Another formative event of which he says: «It is an honor to sit in an orchestra. You bear a great deal of responsibility because you know that you will meet completely different personalities.
You have to get along with everyone so that it works – professionally and under time pressure.” He finds it exhilarating to “feel impulses, to have open ears and open souls” together with other musicians: exemplary in those concerts when Gianandrea Noseda, General Music Director of the Zurich Opera House, performed Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1st, 4th and 15th symphonies conducted with the Verbier Festival Orchestra. What a heart-touching experience! Again, the word gratitude comes into play.
“An artist must be a seeker all his life”
Leonid Surkov absorbs with all his senses what brings him and his oboe further: whether in the large collective of an orchestra, in the smaller of a chamber music ensemble or as a soloist: this young musician pursues everything with meticulousness and passion. Soon he will do his bachelor’s degree in Berlin. The after is open. Only one thing is certain: Leonid Surkov wants to stay “in this wonderful cultural city”.
Anyone who has heard it in Muri will definitely want to experience it again. Leonid Surkov will perform as part of the Open Classics am Rhein, in Rheinfelden, which will be held for the second time in 2023. As in the competition, he will play the highly virtuoso Fantasia sull’opera “Poliuto” di Donizetti by Antonio Pasculli, “the Paganini of the oboe”. What’s next? You don’t want to ask Leonid Surkov about that, because you now know that he’s open to everything. “What’s important to me,” he says, “is what the conductor Herbert Blomstedt once said: “An artist must be a seeker all his life.”
Open Classics on the Rhine, Friday, August 18, 7:45 p.m
www.hochrhein-musikfestival.ch
2023-08-11 03:13:50
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