About me, by myself
Circumstances were favourable. For me, my parents being avid music makers, to absorb music was as natural as being breastfed. At just five years old I was already allowed to put records on by myself, which familiarised me with all the music captured in their grooves and fuelled what was to become my lifetime hobby: collecting recorded music in its many formats, which has created a picturesque landscape of innumerous vinyl records, CDs and DVDs that sit on the shelves around our house.
One of my pet projects is comparing interpretations. It’s so fascinating for a performing artist to listen to interpretations from the earliest recordings to the present day, and to consider and pinpoint how they differ with friends.
I began teaching the piano while I was at boarding school, to top up my pocket money. After studying music, I went on to teach privately and at various music schools and colleges. During this time more and more concert engagements came up, and this fostered an expansion of my repertoire, which ranges from the Baroque to moderate modernism - Bach to Bartók.
My interest in technology and visuals, which emerged while I was still at school, paved the way for my fascination with motorcycles and photography. Years later many a concert promoter was surprised when I appeared in my motorcycle gear, complete with crash helmet under my arm! My passion for technology even saw me taking various motorcycles apart for maintenance and storing the myriad separate parts in numbered boxes under my grand piano! After I’d put them all back together it was the biggest thrill each time the engine would start.
I grew older, and my interest moved towards the world of hifi. Living in Stuttgart, I came into contact with some of the writers at AUDIO magazine. As time passed the editors there came to value my judgment and increasingly to allow it to shape their own record reviews, and for many, many years now I’ve been contributing articles for AUDIO as a freelancer.
About Sviatoslav Richter
„How did you meet Svjatoslav Richter?“ I am often asked.
A stroke of luck and a simple twist of fate were the key players. It was a journey that spanned from our very first meeting to the day the Maestro gave his last concert, together with me, on March 30th 1995 in Lübeck, and beyond that until he died on August 1st 1997.
One step at a time, though: From the moment I got to hear his first records at an early age, Richter has been my guiding light. The sheer richness of tone, the almost sculptural quality of his somatic presence and the wonderful aura that engulfed his playing literally took hold of me, leaving a lifelong imprint. I first met him in person as far back as in 1978 at a film shoot at Ismaning Palace in Bavaria, though it wasn’t until 1983 that I really got to know him. He was looking for a chauffeur and I was given the job, which included being his concert page-turner, and stayed in it for years to come. It took me a long time to pluck up the courage to offer him a cassette of one of my own concerts, but when I did, it really fired his enthusiasm. He in turn asked me years later to be his rehearsal pianist. Those days working together were an incredible experience and we were so finely tuned to one another musically that when we were driving back from a rehearsal one day, he invited me to play Max Reger’s Beethoven-Variations for two pianos with him the next year. We started rehearsing on May 28th 1994 and the first concert was on July 1st in Schliersee, Bavaria. The second concert in Wildbad-Kreuth was recorded and released on CD.
Artistically, and for me as a human being, the years I was privileged to share with Svjatoslav Richter, 1983 to 1997, are a symbol of true events in my life that inspire me to this day.
Affectionately,
Andreas Lucewicz