If record companies asked me to record, I always said: yes, why not?
mainFrom typically forthright interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy:
If record companies asked me to record music, I always said yes. Why not? In the Soviet Union, recordings were limited to Soviet and Russian music, maybe Beethoven and Mozart. When I started travelling to the West, I brought back suitcases full of scores and records that you could never find in Russia. The officers would open my suitcases and ask, what is this? Other people brought back clothes, expensive things they couldn’t buy in the Soviet Union. Because I had so many recordings and scores, people heard and asked to borrow them; very rarely, they didn’t return them….
Read on here.
Great interview. My impression: a great solo pianist, a wonderful chamber musician (especially considering all those fantastic recordings of Beethoven and Brahms with Perlman), but a less interesting conductor (I dislike of his too fast tempos especially in Stravinsky’s works). And his sons are excellent musicians too (‘artistic DNA’ does exist).