Anastasiya Bazhenova, pianist

Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

I didn’t grow up in a particularly musical family, but I was surrounded by art, theatre, and a sense of beauty that shaped how I experience music today. My grandmother was a professor of English, but she also taught art history in English at the university. She introduced me to painting as a way of seeing the world. I still remember her books on Gauguin and Van Gogh, and how she taught me to look at a painting as if it were alive. I think that’s how I learned to listen to music, too — not just with my ears, but with attention, with presence.

She also had a full set of Beethoven sonatas on vinyl — I can’t remember who played them (maybe Gilels or Richter), but I loved them. Whenever I visited her, I would carefully take the records out and put them on. There was something about that sound — warm, serious, full of mystery — that made me feel at home. I think I was listening long before I knew what I was hearing.

My mother, a dramatic theatre actress, brought another layer — she took me to concerts, ballets, and operas from early childhood. We would go to Swan Lake together two or three times a year — always as if for the first time. That’s how music became, for me, not just sound, but story, movement, something deeply human.

There wasn’t one single moment that pushed me toward a career in music. It was more like a quiet current — a sense that music was the most natural way for me to exist in the world. Over time, that current became a decision.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

One of the ongoing challenges has been staying true to my artistic instincts while navigating a field that often prioritizes trends, image, and quick visibility. I’ve always wanted to create something lasting — to play music that matters to me and present it in a way that feels honest and fully mine.

The real work began when I started building my career on my own terms — shaping my repertoire, developing my artistic identity, and making long-term decisions without a large support system behind me. Being both the performer and the architect of my career requires resilience, vision, and deep self-trust.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

I’m especially proud of my recent video recording of Mendelssohn’s Fantasia in F-sharp minor, which I filmed in Oslo this summer. It’s a piece I’ve lived with for a long time, but it took me years to feel ready to record it. There’s something deeply personal in its blend of lyricism and agitation — it feels almost like a psychological portrait, full of restlessness, tenderness, and clarity. I wanted the video to reflect that emotional depth, not just through the playing, but as a whole artistic statement.

Which particular works/composers do you think you perform best?

I’m most drawn to music that allows for emotional complexity — works where something is always shifting beneath the surface. Rachmaninoff, for example, feels deeply personal to me. His Third Piano Concerto is a piece that’s almost embedded in my DNA — it’s technically demanding, yes, but also emotionally vast.

I also respond strongly to composers who write with a kind of internal tension — Prokofiev, for instance, with his sharp contrasts and psychological undertones.

Ultimately, the pieces I perform best are the ones where I feel something at stake — where the music becomes a kind of dialogue between clarity and chaos, structure and impulse. That’s where I come alive as a performer.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I choose repertoire the way I build meaning — intuitively, but with a sense of structure. Some seasons I’m drawn to contrast — light and shadow, elegance and intensity — other times, it’s more about a quiet fascination with a composer’s language.

Often, a recital for me is more like a story than a setlist. Not necessarily narrative, but emotional — like chapters in a book that only make full sense together.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

It’s not the name of the venue that matters to me as much as its atmosphere. I’m drawn to spaces with a clear, honest acoustic and an intimate scale, where you can feel the audience breathing with you. Some of my most memorable concerts have been in small chamber halls or old churches, where the piano sounds almost like a human voice. Those spaces allow you to strip everything back and build a real dialogue with the listeners.

What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?

I need movement to think. Long, fast walks through the forest with my dog — that’s where ideas settle, emotions shift, and I remember who I am outside of the stage. I also ski regularly — slalom is my winter obsession. There’s something about speed, precision, and silence on the slopes that reminds me of performance, but with a different kind of freedom.

At the same time, I read constantly — essays, poetry, fragments. I return often to Brodsky, to the strange beauty of Gogol’s stories, and to writers who explore memory and solitude. I also find inspiration in photography — Helmut Newton’s boldness, Tim Walker’s dreamscapes — and in visual art more broadly. Museums are a kind of emotional archive for me. I often travel alone, and those solitary journeys sharpen my attention. I notice things — light, gestures, atmospheres — that later find their way into how I play.

I don’t think of inspiration as a moment. It’s more like a texture that builds up over time — through movement, stillness, and looking closely at life.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Some of the most memorable concerts are not the biggest ones — they’re the ones where everything quietly aligns: the space, the instrument, the audience’s attention. One that stays with me was a recital in a cathedral in Gothenburg. The piano was extraordinary — one of the finest I’ve ever played — and the acoustics made every sound feel both intimate and infinite.

The hall was full, but there was a kind of shared stillness in the room. I remember playing a slow passage and hearing it rise into the vaulted ceiling like breath. That kind of space doesn’t ask you to impress — it asks you to be honest. It reminded me that the most powerful performances are not about display, but about presence — and what can happen when music meets silence.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

For me, success means living a musical life on my own terms — with honesty, depth, and freedom.

It’s not about numbers or noise. It’s about presence, attention, and the invisible shift that can happen in a room when music reaches someone.

If a person walks away hearing the world differently — more openly, more truthfully — even for a moment, that’s success.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?

I don’t think classical music needs to be simplified or rebranded to attract new listeners. What people respond to is truth — something that feels alive, not preserved in glass. The problem isn’t the music. It’s the way it’s often presented: safe, detached, apologetic.

Audiences don’t need to understand everything. They need to feel something.

And that comes not from explanation, but from intensity — from programming that means something, from performers who believe in what they’re playing.

For me, a concert isn’t a collection of pieces — it’s a form of expression.

A story, a mood, a set of emotional contrasts. The more personal it is, the more universal it becomes.

Visual presentation matters, too — not as decoration, but as part of the atmosphere. A concert begins long before the first note and continues long after the last one. Everything — the setting, the light, the silence — can support the music’s inner world.

In the end, I think people are hungry for depth. Not explanation, not novelty — but a sense of presence. If we play as if it matters, they’ll listen as if it does.

What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?

I think we need to talk about the pressure on classical musicians to become content creators — to constantly produce, promote, explain, and simplify their artistic identity for visibility. We’re expected not only to play, but to brand ourselves, to package our work into digestible fragments that fit the language of social media.

This shift can be exciting — it gives us autonomy and reach — but it also risks reducing what we do. Music isn’t always immediate. It’s not always photogenic. Sometimes it resists explanation. When we focus too much on branding, we risk flattening the complexity that makes performance meaningful: ambiguity, contradiction, silence, surprise.

If we want classical music to stay alive — not just as a genre, but as a serious art form — we need to create space for artists to go deep, not just be visible.

What advice would you give to young or aspiring musicians?

Discipline isn’t the opposite of freedom — it’s how you earn it. Everyone talks about inspiration, but real growth comes from structure: how you shape your days, how you return to the instrument even when nothing feels magical. Without discipline, even the most talented musicians drift. With it, you build the space for something deeper to emerge — something personal, unpredictable, alive.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Perfect happiness isn’t something I expect to feel all the time — it comes in flashes. A moment of absolute clarity on stage. A phrase that suddenly sounds exactly the way it felt inside. A sudden alignment between thought, sound, and breath.

It’s not peace, exactly — more like presence. A kind of inner stillness where nothing needs to be proved or explained. Just being in the right place, doing the right thing, and knowing it without doubt.

For me, happiness is also freedom — not chaos, but the kind of freedom that emerges from clarity and inner rhythm. When life is steady enough that something unpredictable, something real, can emerge.

www.anastasiyabazhenova.com