Contemporary music requires time, just like any other kind of it. It takes an effort to reflect on a composition and to arrive at some kind of concept. Some composers enjoy inventing new techniques for sound production, so you get a wider array of sounds. Over the past ten years I've been able to try out different ways of manipulating the instrument. For instance, Stepan Nikolayev's work required playing a melody in Scandinavian style with flageolets. The combination was different for every grand piano, because different models and sizes have different string length and bridge placement. Or take a flat screwdriver: you can produce a peculiar kind of glissando, much like a howling siren, if you put it in between two strings of a course, raise the dampers and slowly move it along. Another example: if you move an inner tube of a bicycle tire along the strings, you get a piercing sound, which for a piano is unnatural - it sounds like a car braking abruptly. Or, if you move it very slowly and apply a lot of pressure, it sounds like a creaking door.

Janis Joplin, Sergey Kuryokhin, Nick Cave.

My first encounter with musicAeterna took place in November 2014. Me and the other conservatory students had a very fortunate opportunity to see the performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. The impression I received back then was strong enough to literally overturn the way I saw music. In 2020, I was invited to play Alexey Retinsky's chamber music compositions. It was hard to believe that this was really happening. I think a lot of people dream of becoming a part of a group that, in a sense, was a teacher and a source of inspiration. That performance was the first one after six months of COVID-caused isolation, and it became the starting point of my concert life. After that there were more collaborations with musicAeterna, and a year later, an audition for the orchestra.