CODY ENGLANDER
Staff Writer
According to pianist Ilya Itin, the musical experience is in the ears of the listener, rather than in the talent in the fingers of the pianist.
Itin said one of the functions of music is a “sense of communion.” He explained that opportunities like today’s performance foster a shared experience that is larger than any single individual one.
“When we gather and listen together, we experience something bigger than us. It doesn’t mean we all experience the same thing — we have different backgrounds, thinkings, emotional makeup. But there’s something when we’re in that world, music is created in the being of listeners. It’s not the performer, it is the listener,” he said.
At 4 p.m. today in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, Itin will make his performing debut at Chautauqua Institution. Itin is a world-renowned musician and the recipient of multiple awards for his performances, including acclaim from a critic from The New York Times who described him as “… a brilliantly insightful pianist who offered a superb recital.”
Itin will be performing the music of Russian composers Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
“It was a very young culture, in a sense, because the music in a European sense came to Russia quite late,” Itin said. “In less than one hundred years, Russian music developed to such a degree, it’s astonishing.”
He explained that he feels a connection to the music because of the inspiration of the Russian composers to catch up to the world musically in such a short span of time, historically speaking.
“I feel that music — in a sense — is a part of me. It’s part of my cultural DNA,” Itin said. “It’s a part of my being. Playing music, It’s a language that not only I speak in, but I think in.”
Music is a part of Itin as much as his limbs are. For Itin, music being a sense of experience makes it a holistically unique form of art.
“Music is not an art, in the sense it’s not an object like a painting or building or sculpture,” Itin said. “It’s an art that changes, something not tangible. Music is an event, there is a beginning and an end.”
It doesn’t matter for Itin if it’s the first time or one hundredth time he’s performed a piece; each time he has a different experience performing it. As long as the audience is moved by the piece, he’s moved, too.
“The moment I go on stage, it’s new every time,” Itin said. “… I’m absolutely fine with people walking in, people walking out, clapping in between movements, not clapping, falling asleep, coughing, having a cup of coffee.”
He said his hope is that the audience will be “open to whatever comes to them” during his performances.
“My only hope is, whether they are seasoned music lovers or they know nothing about music, or they are bored, or just came to the concert because they wanted to socialize, or show off new diamonds, all of this, it’s fine,” he said. “I just hope they find at least a little bit of something that resonates with them, something that opens up a window to a new world, a new reality to them.”
