Yuri and Natalya Bashmet: four weddings and life on the notes of love

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

His whole life is surrounded by fans, his students at the conservatory sigh for him. Without denying himself the right to fall in love, Yuri Bashmet invariably declares that there is only one woman in his life, his Natalia, for more than forty years.

Childhood of genius

He was born in 1953 in Rostov-on-Don, but from the age of five he lived in Lvov. It was in this ancient and beautiful city that his first acquaintance with music took place. The parents of the future genius had nothing to do with music: his father worked as an engineer on the railway. And my mother was a philologist.

It was the mother who brought her son to the Lviv music school. She quite rightly believed that the child's employment in various fields of activity will not only help determine his vocation, but also protect him from the unpredictable influence of the street.

He was presented with the cheapest violin for 9 rubles 25 kopecks, but inside the future musician everything protested: music may not leave time for football, a bicycle and walking with friends. However, he could not openly go against the wishes of his mother and obediently began to study violin at a music school. In the fourth grade he was transferred to the ten-year music school named after S. Krushelnitskaya.

Probably, fortunately, there were no places in the violin class, and he was accepted into the viola class. For him, changing a musical instrument meant only one thing: there would be more time for his beloved guitar. After all, the violin in his life was only for the sake of his mother, for himself, young Bashmet studied the guitar. It was she who occupied all dreams and hopes.

Later, it was the guitar that allowed him to become the favorite of the whole class. In the era of the Beatles infatuation, the boy, masterly performing the works of the famous four, enjoyed indisputable authority.

However, the lessons at the music school were not in vain either. In the ninth grade, Yuri Bashmet already played in the symphony orchestra of the Polytechnic Institute under the direction of Semyon Arbit. By this time, the musician himself had already rethought his attitude to music, having discovered in the classics all its depth and infinity and, finally, having heard how amazing his viola sounds.

Moscow Conservatory

While on tour of the symphony orchestra in Moscow, the rector of the Lviv Conservatory, Zenon Dashak, who himself had an excellent command of the viola, introduced young Yura Bashmet to the founder of the Russian school of viola playing, professor of the department of viola and harp at the Moscow Conservatory, Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky. And determined him to take private lessons from the genius of the viola.

Later, it was to him that Yuri Bashmet entered the Moscow Conservatory. Having written an essay very badly, Yuri no longer hoped to become a student. Finding himself in the lists of applicants, he was sure that Borisovsky himself contributed to this, because the great maestro, immediately after passing the exam in his specialty, hastened to congratulate his student on his admission. However, a year later Borisovsky died, and Bashmet moved to the class of Fyodor Druzhinin.

In 1972, student Yuri Bashmet bought a unique instrument for 1,500 rubles - an old viola made by the Italian master Paolo Testore in Milan in 1758. It is on this viola that Bashmet continues to play to this day.

Natasha Melnik

In the first year, during some student party, Yuri noticed the beautiful Natasha. She was a violinist, came from the Ukrainian city of Sumy and immediately attracted a musician. But it turned out that he was not at all her type.

However, it was not so easy to get rid of Yuri, he was used to achieving his goal. Even now, Natalya does not understand how she began dating Yura. Probably, it was just fate. Somehow it happened that they became inseparable from the second year. And on the fifth, Yuri Bashmet came to his teacher for advice. He loved music and loved Natasha. And due to his own youth, he could not decide in any way whether he needed to marry, whether this would interfere with his becoming as a musician. However, Fedor Druzhinin definitely said that you need to get married if you have feelings. And if Yuri begins to work honestly, then the rest will be added to him from God.

Four weddings

In the fifth year, they played a noisy, cheerful student wedding of Natalia and Yuri Bashmet in the hostel, where they were allocated a special room by the vice-rector of the conservatory for economic affairs, Vladimir Karpovich Chastnykh. Toastmaster at the wedding would be the only adult person - Fedor Druzhinin. But this cheerful, playful youth wedding was the first in a series of holidays for a newborn family.

The Moscow wedding was followed by a Kiev wedding. The newlyweds were almost forcibly removed from the train by friends of Yuri's parents in order to congratulate the young lovers on such an important event. Yuri Bashmet's parents in Lviv had another wedding. And then it would have been dishonest not to celebrate the marriage of Natasha's parents in Sumy.

Family is forever

Yuri Bashmet, like any creative person, is a creative and enthusiastic person. He falls in love easily and has great respect for all lovers. But at the same time, he always knew how to keep himself in hand and not go beyond the bounds of decency. He himself says that in his life there is only one and only woman - his beloved Natasha.

Thanks to her, he found that very reliable rear, which allowed him to take place as the star of the musical Olympus. A rather talented violinist sacrificed her own career so that her genius husband could completely devote herself to creativity.

For a long time, the world celebrity did not even have his own apartment. To get the opportunity to invest in an apartment cooperative, the already famous all over the world violist had to seek help from a high-ranking official of the USSR Ministry of Culture. lucky with his wife. He understands that not everyone is given to love the way Natalya loves him. She doesn't just love. She is not only a faithful wife, but also an excellent friend and advisor to her eminent husband.

Being the wife of such a person is not at all easy. But can all the difficulties be compared with true love that has accompanied this couple for more than forty years?

They say that all happy families are alike. The family of Yuri and Natalia Bashmet reminds with their calm happiness the family of the composer Eugene and Natalia Doga.