Yuri Abramovich Bashmet is a truly outstanding Soviet and later Russian violist, as well as a teacher, conductor and simply a respected public figure.
It was thanks to Bashmet's educational work that a huge number of ordinary people and professional musicians realized that the viola, traditional for a symphony orchestra, could well be a solo musical instrument.
Childhood and youth
Yuri Abramovich was born into a family of ordinary Jews in the city of Rostov in 1953. When the boy was five years old, his father, who worked in the railway sector, moved the family to Lviv, where Yuri spent his youth and managed to graduate from a music school. The mother of then still little Yura dreamed that he would play the violin, while Yuri Bashmet himself adored playing the guitar.
But it turned out that they took him to study playing the viola. In the early seventies, after graduating from a specialized music school, Bashmet decided to go to Moscow, to conquer the capricious audience. There, the future great viola player surprisingly easily entered the conservatory, which he successfully graduated from in 1978.
Personal life
It was in the Moscow Conservatory that Yuri was lucky to meet love in the person of the violinist Natalia, with whom they happily married all their lives and raised their daughter Ksyusha and son Alexander. In addition, Bashmet, already in his second year, began to actively perform, having won the love and recognition of connoisseurs of classical musical creativity and even his own teachers.
Concert activities
For the first fees, Yuri Abramovich Bashmet allowed himself to buy a unique viola created in the eighteenth century, which was played by Mozart himself. Yuri Bashmet began giving really large concerts in the seventy-sixth year of the last century. Since then, Yuri Abramovich has played not only throughout Russia, but also in the best concert halls around the world, such as Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic and others.
While in France, in 1985, Bashmet first tried himself as a conductor and, oddly enough, he really liked this kind of activity. The very next year, Yuri Bashmet created an ensemble, which he called "Soloists of Moscow". Under the direction of Bashmet, the musicians of the classical ensemble still perform in various parts of the world. And in the mid-nineties, Yuri Abramovich began for the first time in Russia to hold an international competition for violists. In the 2000s, Bashmet also had his own television programs, which won deserving awards. In addition, Yuri manages to give music master classes in many countries. During his career, the outstanding violist managed to receive the incredibly honorary title of People's Artist of the USSR and a huge number of other awards.
Thanks to his active public position and desire to convey to the audience the masterpieces of world classical music, Yuri Bashmet makes an invaluable contribution to the country's cultural treasury.
