No one had to tell Russian-born Mikhail Yanovitsky where Secaucus was when several residents from Harmon Cove asked him to perform a piano concert there in 1997. For Yanovitsky, who had immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union in 1990, Secaucus was his home away from home.
“I actually came to America in 1990; Secaucus was my first home,” he said during an interview last week after his playing a return engagement in December as one of the events sponsored by the Harmon Cove Cultural Committee.
Oddly enough, the Cultural Committee didn’t encounter Yanovitsky in Harmon Cove in 1997 when they first approached, but in New York City, after several members took in one of his concerts. The members speculated only whether or not they could lure him across the Hudson River to play for a smaller audience in Harmon Cove.
“Enthralled by his talent, they got a crazy idea: maybe they could get him to do a concert at Harmon Cove,” said Alice Allured, a member of the committee. “Since his aunt and uncle live at Harmon Cove, and he stayed with them when he first came to the U.S. from Russia. Maybe he would do it.”
And he did. Then returned again last month to equal praise from the residents.
A whole different world
Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1965, Yanovitsky began formal training at a very early age with his mother as his mentor, then later studied with legendary musical professor Marina Wolf – at the Leningrad Special Music School for gifted children. At the age of 18, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Eugene Moguilevsky and Mikhail Voskressensky, both of whom were considered masters of the craft in their own right.
Life for artists differed sharply in the Soviet Union than it did in the United States. Most musicians were affiliated with universities, institutes, museums, or the Academy of Sciences. In the Soviet Union, musicians were always a privileged caste. It was believed: if you’re an engineer, you were trained to become an engineer, but if you’re a musician, you were born to be one. Yet like every other profession, many musicians found themselves organized into unions, which were very powerful forces in every day life. While membership didn’t guarantee employment, unions often provided a minimum monthly reimbursement to those without other means. Such organizations of the arts virtually eliminated the notion of the “‘starving artist.”‘
Music production also differed from America in other ways. Literature and the arts came under direct party control during the 1930s, with mandatory membership in unions of writers, musicians, and other artists entailing adherence to established standards. After 1934 the party dictated that creative works had to express Socialistic spirit through traditional forms. This officially sanctioned doctrine, called “Socialist realism,” applied to all fields of art. The state repressed works that were stylistically innovative or lacked appropriate content.
In the Soviet Union, musicians were told what they could perform, composers what they could write. A program committee chose both the repertoire and the performers.
Although the music world in the Soviet Union had already started to change by the time Yanovitsky got ready to leave for America, like everything there, changes came slowly. With the coming of independence, state budgets did not contain sufficient funding for the arts, leaving performers to their own devices, such as playing at weddings or depending on well-to-do patrons. Many musicians in the former Soviet Union typically earned around $50 a month. Some top musicians in St. Petersburg made as much as $300 a month.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, money didn’t matter. Musicians were always taken care of. Even later, such musicians survived by trading services. To pay a medical bill, a violinist might give the doctor’s son music lessons. This was a significant change in America, where musicians from the former Soviet Union soon discovered that they would not be taken seriously unless they got paid.
Becoming a star
For Yanovitsky, what happened after his coming to America was a huge surprise, something he didn’t predict when he first arrived.
“I planned to stay and make a living by playing and teaching piano,” he said.
Young Concert Artists, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and launching the careers of outstanding young musicians, took him on, and Yanovitsky became a star. His stunning New York debut in 1991, and his critically acclaimed Kennedy Center debut, stunned audiences and the critics, who praised his command of the keyboard and his densely woven interpretations.
He did his graduate work at The Juilliard School, where he worked with Seymour Lipkin. When asked how Juilliard differed from his study at the Moscow conservatory, he said the difference was enormous.
“Back then, Moscow Conservatory was making professional performers and musicologists [by] offering great assistance,” he said. “On the other hand, Juilliard has always been a strong base for personal endeavor, yet it has not directly involved in most activities outside the school.”
By this time, however, Yanovitsky had already become a star. During the 1990s, he gave recitals in 29 of the 50 states, in the most prestigious venues, winning award after award. If that wasn’t enough, he appeared in Tokyo, Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Denmark, England, Mexico, and Uruguay.
In 1994, Yanovitsky made a long-awaited return to his native St. Petersburg to give a recital in Philharmonic Hall with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.
“In the U.S., I vowed never to return to the Soviet Union,” he said. “This idea has lost its importance overnight, that is, the demise of the USSR on the first day of 1992. I was free to travel after becoming a permanent resident, and my first trip to Russia was in 1994. I played in my hometown at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. This hall has been the most beautiful compared to any others I have ever performed, including the Metropolitan and Gardner Museums. However, the main difference was feeling that a lot of listeners, many of them professional musicians, knew me personally.”
Yanovitsky is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Temple University in Philadelphia in piano performance and was appointed professor of piano at the University of Georgia at Athens. Getting the doctorate is one of the few dreams he has yet to realize.