For the first time I heard musicAeterna when they performed Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. As a conservatory student, I made it to an open rehearsal. I was struck by the magnetism of the conductor and how sensitively the musicians react to his remarks. A few years later, I was invited to work in the viola group in a joint project of the conservatory and the orchestra: we played Desyatnikov's The Rite of Winter and Strauss's Metamorphosen. This experience had a great impact on me, and my heart soared with the hope of collaborating with musicAeterna further. Soon I had the opportunity to participate in the work of the orchestra again as a guest artist, and in 2022 I applied for an audition and was offered a permanent position. Previously, I collaborated with various chamber and symphony orchestras as a concertmaster and soloist. I am happy that the musicAeterna Orchestra has become my first official permanent job.

The amount of work in musicAeterna is huge. Standard orchestral rehearsals last only 3-4 days, at musicAeterna we rehearse for at least two weeks – this is a tremendously deep immersion in the material. As a result, a much more qualitative study of details is obtained. Teodor Currentzis is an amazing conductor, he is attentive to every musician and is ready to share his ideas and suggest directions for growth.

As a child, I tried my hand at many occupations: I played tennis and took oriental dance classes. My parents limited me in no way. One day my grandmother suggested that I study music, I chose the class of violin – I was struck by some violin concert on TV. In the process of studying, the violin transformed into the viola. Now I understand that this instrument, its deep timbre and colorful sound – softer than that of a violin – perfectly suits my temperament.

When I switched from violin to viola, I began to listen to Yuri Bashmet's recordings. I love quartet music making, which I owe to my wonderful teachers – Elena Ivanovna Ozol and Vladimir Vladimirovich Balshin. The viola is largely not a solo instrument, but a chamber, quartet instrument, it has the function of the middle voice in the score. My gold standard chamber ensemble is the Borodin State Quartet.

I can endlessly listen to the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Currently, I have Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon on my playlist on repeat. In my free time, I like to read foreign classics – Mann, Sartre, London. Now, for example, I'm reading The Magic Mountain. I used to read Russian literature voraciously. I've read all of Dostoevsky and a lot of Leo Tolstoy. I used to make lists of what I definitely have to read, but now I choose a book following a momentary desire.