DS: Do you really like music?
VE: Music - yes! Perhaps almost more than Russian poetry.
DS: Are you playing the piano?
VE: No, nothing. In adolescence, in his youth he tried to play, but I saw that I was doing worse than shit, and threw.
DS: You have a piano here...
VE: Well, the piano, what, because there are too many familiar pianists. I have one of the people entering the apartment, every third plays. So I hardly have him silent, that piano. Let the people mess...
VE: Well, so here. Music, perhaps, was even more influential than both poetry and prose. And for some reason, many found traces of it... But music is not the manners of the 18th century. I do not share this universal obsession with Vivaldes, Bahas, Handels, Albinones, Chimaroses, Monteverds, Palestrines. But little by little, starting with the late Beethoven, through Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn...
DS: A Bach?
VE: And to Bach is completely indifferent. Not a single line of Bach touched me, not a single one. If you call your favorites, so Gustav Mahler, Jan Sibelius, well, to some extent, Bruckner, Dmitry Shostakovich... Of the Soviet ones, when it falls successfully under the disposition of the spirit - Prokofiev. Yes, sometimes even Kabalevsky.
DS: A Stravinsky?
VE: Well, and, of course, Igor Stravinsky. Here Igor Stravinsky does not fit into the picture, since I like more the music read, which now for some reason seems vulgar. But I don't care, I don't think I'm afraid of being old-fashioned. The main thing is uncooled play in music. So I can't understand any coopers or Ramo... I understand only music, starting with early romanticism.
DS: And you are only engaged in classics?
VE: Only. And therefore, of the current ones, I listen only to those on whom I detect at least a small trace of my favorites. Boris Tchaikovsky or Alfred Schnittke - of ours. And from the Western once very much loved especially the early Miyo, Arthur Onegger was not even so, but Darius Miyo - yes, wore... With the things of Jean Cocteau, he wore a lot - with the "Bull on the Roof" of the same Miyo, with Pulenk... Yeah, Carl Orf, I also forget - Carl Orf. Here it is - sinful that I forgot, such a person to forget...
DS: And as you think, Vysotsky, Okudzhava...
VE: Vysotsky, Okudzhava - by itself. This is so much everyday love for them that you don't directly talk about it. That is, so familiar love as to neighbor people, without whom it is impossible. That is, you will not swear love for them, since it is unnecessary, as you do not apply it to people who cannot do without... And I am very pleased that the Russians love them. They love, maybe a little from the other side and for other reasons - but still they love. I am glad when in the most bad apartments there are sometimes glimpses. From the window, for example, Vysotsky's hoarse voice... And already joyfully on the heart and not so blackly looking at the Russians, something else is warming in them.
From an interview with Skillen D. "He was looking for authenticity"
