A Life on the Road for Soviet Violist Yuri Bashmet

In a performing schedule which he says usually contains “140 to 150 concerts a year,” Soviet violist Yuri Bashmet may not remember particular performances.

But he ought to remember his debut appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thursday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center (repeated tonight and Saturday at 8, and Sunday afternoon at 2:30). Not because he is playing two different viola concertos--he does that a lot, he says--or because this is his first time to play in Los Angeles, but because yesterday (Thursday) was his 38th birthday.

In the lobby of a downtown hotel Monday afternoon, Bashmet quickly recounts those 38 years.

No, he says, he was not a rock star in his native Ukraine. But he did play the “geetar,” as he pronounces it, and a lot of pop music, for eight years.

He explains first that, in the Soviet Union, there are no tours for rock groups or recordings made and sold of their songs.

But, “when I went to the conservatory (in Lvov, the town where he grew up) I formed a band among my friends, and we played a lot. We played for parties and for dances, and that was my main interest at that time.”

From 1963, when he started playing the guitar--he was already a budding violinist and, of course, a pianist by school-requirement--until 1971, young Bashmet participated heavily in pop music. His daytime training was in classical music--he switched from violin to viola at the age of 14, “because there were too many violinists in my class”--his after-hours activity in pop music.

There came a point, however, Bashmet recalls, when he had to make a choice.

“As kids (who went to conservatory and) who played popular music for fun, we were thought of as ‘bad boys’ among our friends and families, because ideologically, the government was against pop music. But we were still not outcasts.”

As young people about to embark on their life’s work, however, Bashmet and his friends reached a crossroads when they got to be 18.

On the one hand, “When it came to Jimi Hendrix, I was not ready for him, for his kind of abstract improvisation. For me, it was too new.”

And, on the other hand, “I needed to devote all my time to preparing for the major musical competition in the Ukraine, the following year.”

Bashmet went on to win that competition the following year, even though he was the only violist entered, and had to compete against a field of violinists.

“I got more points than all of them, so I was declared winner of the entire competition, but not of the violinists!”

Today, Bashmet still maintains residence in Moscow, where his two children live, but travels most of the year.

In the spring of 1991, for instance, the slight, long-haired violist will not return to the Soviet Union until May, when he has a break in his schedule. As of this month, he tells us, the orchestra of which he is music director, the Moscow Soloists, has moved to Montpelier, France; all of the members are now French residents.