Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
A lifelong student
Bespalko, who is on the piano faculty of Xavier University in Cincinnati and director of the eclectic Xavier University Music Series, started lessons young and has continued to learn. She was born in Mozambique and was 5 years old and living in Brazil when she began six-hour music studies with her choral instructor mother. Those three-hour sessions of music theory followed by three hours of piano lessons set her on a journey of discovery she still relishes today.
Two years later Bespalko began studying at the Moscow Central Music School. Following the 11-year program, she was accepted into Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory. She was one of 30 students accepted that year out of about 300 applicants. After earning a master’s degree in music, Bespalko immigrated to the United States in 2001 to study at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. She earned an artist diploma and then a doctorate in music.
“Coming to CCM was not an easy transition at first but I’m very thankful because I can adopt both languages,” Bespalko said. “I carry the training that allows you to find your own voice and that’s something that came from my Russian upbringing. I’m not saying CCM didn’t cultivate it but I already kind of had my own language when I started there. In the Russian approach, we are looking for a more artistic imperative but sometimes what we get is a more conservative approach.
“In CCM, it was a really wonderful combination of scholarship and performance so you could grow both as an artist and as a scholar,” she continued. “I’m very grateful for an American education because it really whipped me into being much more organized. I learned to balance much better.”
Audience immersion program
Bespalko was a silver medalist in the Wideman International Piano Competition in Louisiana in 2001. In 2005, she was a medalist at the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati and a gold medal winner at the Rachmaninov Concerto competition in Catalina, Sicily.
Sunday’s solo piano recital at the University of Dayton opens with “L’entretien des Muses” by Jean-Philippe Rameau followed by Robert Schumann’s “Papillons, Op. 2.” It continues with pieces by composers as diverse as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Philip Glass, Claude Debussy, Bill Evans and Alexander Scriabin.
“The format of the program is something very new for me, but it is something some artists tried to do in the past in some capacity,” Bespalko said. “I’ve been conceiving this for some time. The idea is that all the pieces can flow into each other, so I am asking the audience to stay with me for one hour and not react by applauding. I just hope they will be open to being immersed in something.
“Maybe they’ve never done that before,” Bespalko continued. “You know, drop the inhibition, drop the judgement and try to enjoy the music the way music should in my opinion. The way people listen to music is very subjective but with this program I tried to open up the idea of just being silent for one hour.”
The hope is audience members become immersed in the music for the entire performance.
“Of course, this comes from nowadays it’s hard for us to focus as humans,” Bespalko said. “We’re always looking to check our phones. We’re restless, myself included, and the idea behind this is I want to address that. I want the audience to join me on this trip. It’s one hour of pure music with no reaction. The pieces I have chosen for the program have a personal meaning for me that cannot be validated by applause.
“I’m taking kind of a theatrical approach to the recital,” Bespalko said. “The old model is becoming a little stale. I played this program in late February at CCM. I also did it on a much smaller scale here at Xavier. It was so quiet both times. People were just not breathing. You can get lost and not know where you are in the program. People said it was very difficult at first to let go for 10 minutes but then they were totally fine, and the finale really releases a catharsis.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Learning and sharing
Bespalko has been on Xavier’s piano faculty since 2007 and the director of the university’s music series since 2013.
“When I started teaching at Xavier, I was getting opportunities to be a promoter,” she said. “Now, I run my own series. I added a jazz series that has really helped me achieve certain goals I had in performance as an artist myself. That taught me a lot because artists in jazz are so different than classical musicians. They are so much looser. They have so much enjoyment for what they do.
“It opened up a different door, a different prism, a different perspective on how it’s done,” Bespalko added. “It also taught me a lot of things I was probably lacking with personal interactions, how you treat the audience and how you treat the promoter. This is a cool experience. I’m able to work on another side of things and also attribute that knowledge into my artistic ideas, my performances and my teaching.”
Contact this contributing writer at 937-287-6139 or donthrasher100@gmail.com.
How to go
Who: ArtsLive presents Polina Bespalko in a Vanguard Legacy Concert
Where: University of Dayton’s Roger Glass Center for the Arts, 29 Creative Way, Dayton
When: 4 p.m. Sunday, March 10
Cost: $18 general public, free for UD students, faculty and staff
More info: https://udayton.edu
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