The Pianist of an Uninhabited Island

I heard him for the first time in Paris. He played Bach's last, unfinished masterpiece The Art of Fugue. It is an unplayable piece. Not technically but in the intellectual sense. An East European civil servant came out on stage, dressed in a grey suite, with large, framed glasses, bowed clumsily, sat down at the piano and played the whole work. There was not a single theatrical gesture or superfluous movement, as if nothing could be more natural than this. It hardly needs stating that he played from memory. And he played perfectly.

Koroliov in his Hamburg home (photo: Stephen Wallocha)

Evgeni Koroliov's Bach performance was a revelation – and not just for me. When György Ligeti heard his recording of The Art of Fugue, he said the following: "If I could take with me a single piece of music to an uninhabited island, it would be Koroliov's Bach recording, because I would listen to it in the midst of starvation and deadly thirst, until my final breath."

One of Koroliov's most influential Bach experiences was hearing Glenn Gould playing in Moscow in 1957 when the Russian was only eight. If there are pianists whose analytical approach can be measured against Gould's, then Koroliov is definitely one of them; at the same time, he is quite free from Gould's iconoclastic allure. He was a student of Lev Oborin at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire but also took lessons with Maria Yudina and Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1976 he moved to Yugoslavia with his Macedonian wife, then emigrated to the West, and since 1978 has taught piano at the Hamburg Music College (where György Ligeti was one of his colleagues).

For Koroliov, teaching and concert performing are equally important. "It is a very important thing to discuss musical questions with talented youngsters," he said in an interview. He does not teach as though he is an infallible authority; rather, he regards his students as partners. Indeed, he does not think he knows everything. But he knows magnitudes more about music than numerous contemporaries who have enjoyed international careers as star virtuosi. Koroliov is not interested in the instrument but in what the instrument says. And in anything which can be interpreted as music. The medieval art of Ars Nova or 20th century and contemporary music is more important to him than the 19th century piano repertoire that has been played to death. And he is a dedicated chamber musician: he has performed with Natalia Gutman, Mischa Maisky and the Keller Quartet, and regularly gives duet and two-piano recitals with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva.

As for the audience, Koroliov has said this about us: "For me the most important question is how I relate to the given work that I am playing. That demands tremendous concentration and spiritual energy. I don't have time to flirt with the audience to tease out their desires. I know that many artists do this and I have no problem with it. But I am simply different. In the end, I hope the audience is grateful for my labours." As for gratitude, I am not just grateful to him for that experience in Paris, but to fate as well! Gergely Fazekas