Rauf Kasimov and his students meet their audience in Bellapais in November 2013

By Heidi Trautmann

In his book ‘The Alchemist’ Paulo Coelho writes about our ‘personal calling’, the dream to follow our personal calling in-spite of everything, of fights and tears, of happiness and joy that comes along with it. “…. once we have overcome the defeats – and we always do – we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life….”. This is said so beautifully and I want to share it with the twelve young people who have decided to make music and to make music their life, especially with the ones who will make music their profession. Some of them I have accompanied through the years, have been to their concerts with Rauf Kasimov as their tutor, some of them I still know before Rauf appeared on the scene, when they were with children music groups or performed on school stages and could not yet reach down to the pedals.

They are grown up now, I could see that when I greeted them this last Sunday on 17 November, still children by age but young adults full of confidence and euphoria, by their appearance and their poise; this is something Rauf Kasimov, their teacher, said to me: with the understanding of music goes the understanding of life, the attitude of mind and heart and it influences automatically posture and body language.

I can read this in the faces of my young friends, there is this open, satisfied look after the work they have delivered at the concert. Twelve young musicians taught by an extraordinary fine piano teacher have demonstrated with full commitment what music is for them, that is was worthwhile to give up part of a normal childhood, to practice for many hours a day, year after year. This is what Paulo Coelho speaks about.

We all appreciated the good information on the young performers, about their age and the school they are attending and what hobbies they have. Our youngest musician is just six years old, the oldest 16 years. Tell me, what did you do when you were a teenager?

The programme was well designed, not only with music adapted to the character of the young musicians but also as a whole: there was no break which I found very good, it would have been unfair to the youngsters to wait so long in the cool corridors of Bellapais; and, in the middle of the programme we were hearing non classical pieces, some jazz, some pieces from musicals, love songs, so that a certain tension was kept when in the sort of second part it became classical again. We also heard some lovely compositions by Rauf Kasimov, some of the pieces are especially made for children, like ‘snow ball game’, ‘rain drops’, ‘Bear in a forest’ and more.

I do not want to comment on the individual skills of the young pianists, I want to see it as a whole;  I was delighted, touched by the obvious progress of the ones I know and by the presentation of those that are new to me. The little one, Suna Alsancak, with her six years won the hearts of us all, what a brave little pianist, but little in height only; my heart went out to all of them when they came on stage, I was proud of them. In some there was obvious shyness in facing the audience, some knead their fingers with a little nervousness, and you could see the gathering of deep concentration before they started to play, and they played well and made good music; there was one who really had rhythm in his venes for jazz; one that obviously loved Mozart deeply and looked like Queen Guinevere about to meet Lancelot, another one who still wore teeth braces last year and is today a young woman and one who is out to conquer the world.

They all had begun a love affair with the piano and had something important to say in the terms of music and we all listened attentively and recognized it.