Natasha Paremski
Natasha Paremski
07 June 2007
STILL
IN HER TEENS, PIANIST NATASHA PAREMSKI ALREADY HAS AN IMPRESSIVE
PERFORMING CAREER BEHIND HER. FEMKE COLBORNE FINDS OUT HOW SHE’S
ACHIEVED SO MUCH SO YOUNG
Natasha Paremski
Natasha Paremski first realized she was mature for her age when she was eight years old. Her parents moved to SF Bay Area from Russia after winning a Green Card Lottery, and she immediately felt different from the children around her: 'The material we studied in school in Russia was much more advanced than what they were doing in California so I was put in a class two grades ahead.'
Not many pianists make their professional debut at the age of nine. And not many make their recording debut at 15, or perform as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic when they are still in their teens. Now approaching her 20s, you might almost think it's about time for Paremski to start considering her retirement.
But she's only just getting started. Still studying under Pavlina Dokovska at the Mannes College of Music in New York, she's got a packed concert schedule ahead of her this summer, including a tour to Spain and performances at California's Green Music Festival and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico. She's also busy preparing John Corigliano's Piano Concerto for performances in the 2007/08 season - and that's between various multimedia projects and TV appearances.
'We had a very cute old piano in our apartment in Moscow and one day I just started playing it'
So just how has the Russian pianist achieved such success in such a short space of time? 'I guess I've always wanted to live up to the people around me,' she says. 'I've always been surrounded by people who are much older than me so I always grew up rather quickly. And I've never allowed people to cut me any slack. Why get used to that? That's not going to happen for most of your life. So I've never allowed that.'
Despite her child prodigy status, Paremski was not pushed into music from an early age by her parents. She doesn't even come from a particularly musical family - her mother and father are both keen amateur pianists but make a living in computer science, and her younger brother has just gained a place to study aerospace engineering at San Jose State University in California.
'We had a very cute old piano in our apartment in Moscow and one day I just started playing it,' she says. 'I would just sit and play around with it every day. And I think it was that that actually inspired my mother to enrol me at music school.'
She began her musical career at the Andreyev School of Music in Moscow, later enrolling at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music after her family moved to the States. At 15 she won a competition to play as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and it wasn't long before other US orchestras came knocking at her door: the San Francisco Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Houston Symphony, New York Youth Symphony and San Diego Symphony, to name a few.
But Paremski is determined not to limit her musical career to recitals and concert performances, and is keen to stress the importance of 'thinking outside the box': 'The most important thing in this day and age is to be able to reach outside your comfort zone and do things that are not normally done. Playing a lot of concerts is not enough. There are many different groups of people you have to try to reach, and people will only start to notice you if you do different things that tailor to different people.'
She is referring in part to her recent appearance in a BBC drama-documentary about the life of Tchaikovsky, screened in the UK earlier this year. The two-part show formed part of a three-week season dedicated to the life and work of the Russian composer, who Paremski has a particular affection for: 'I really love Tchaikovsky. He doesn't get as much respect in some circles as I wish he did.
'It was very interesting,' she says of her first TV experience. 'I loved the way they decided to explore the music and go to all those places and take the time to explore them. Music is primarily a listening art, of course, but it doesn't have to stop there. And it was fun being on TV!'
'Music is primarily a listening art, of course, but it
doesn't have to stop there'
Her latest out-of-the-box project is a collaboration with Sting and Trudie Styler, an exploration of the music and writing of Robert and Clara Schumann. Paremski has been one of two pianists at several performances of this project in New York, London and at Windsor Castle.
She's also preparing to perform a new suite of pieces based on different styles of dance by avant-garde jazz composer Fred Hersch, a $10,000 commission she was awarded as part of the Gilmore Young Artist Award in 2006. Paremski feels this was a real high point in her career so far: 'The most special thing was the people on the panel - people who are very high up in the music business. For them to notice me and respect what I do means so much more to me than the money.'
There are bound to be more high points to come, but in the meantime Paremski looks humbly to her idols to inspire her on to even greater things: 'H�l�ne Grimaud, Stephen Hough, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yefim Bronfman; they are all such selfless musicians. They surrender themselves to their art and that's very inspiring to me.'
