NOVEMBER will see the culmination of a Russian five-year-plan of sorts when Vladimir Ashkenazy takes the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to the land of his birth.
The tour, announced yesterday by the SSO, will include performances in Moscow and St Petersburg and will be one of the last hurrahs of Ashkenazy's half decade as principal conductor.
"It will be good for Russians to see an Australian orchestra," Ashkenazy tells The Australian. "For Russians, it's (a case of) 'Australia? Where is it?' When we play there - as a world-class orchestra - I think they will say, 'Oh my goodness, listen to that.' They will be amazed."
The conductor and pianist is enthusiastic about the SSO experiencing the depth of Russia's musical culture, but says the benefits will flow both ways.
"I've conducted some Russian orchestras and - I don't want to be negative about my own country - but they could learn something from this orchestra," he says.
The tour will also see the orchestra playing in the Armenian capital Yerevan, a city Ashkenazy last performed in back in 1961.
"I have very soft feelings for Yerevan," he says, explaining his first piano teacher - Anaida Sumbatian - was ethnically Armenian.
Ashkenazy's wife, the Icelandic-born pianist Thorunn Ashkenazy, a crucial presence on his tours and a veteran of communist Russia, has been perhaps a little a cooler in her enthusiasm about the Russian segment.
"I'm not surprised," Ashkenazy says, giving a byzantine description of her experiences there in the 1960s, including coercion by authorities into taking Soviet citizenship to protect her husband's career and her subsequent struggle to get out of the self-billed "freest country in the world".
Ashkenazy, however, expresses cautious optimism.
"Russia is trying to be a legitimate member of the free world, but it's not quite ready. Twenty years (after communism) is not enough, you need a few generations. To simply criticise what Russia is doing now is childish. It needs more time. It needs willpower."
Assessing the SSO proved much more straightforward.
"It's a great orchestra."
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