AUGUST 99

LIPOVETSKY

LANGUAGE OF MUSIC-HE'S AFFLUENT

By Jennifer Plants
Special to the Florida State Times

Florida State's Leonidas Lipovetsky does not like being called a "child prodigy."
"There was much music in my house," he says instead, when confronted with the label. "My mother sang Mozart arias to me at a very early age. That shaped my musical understanding."
When, at the age of 4, Lipovetsky played Mozart's C Major 545 Sonata on the piano, it seemed only natural to him.

"I was always playing."
"But," he laughs, "I was very lucky to have a mother who didn't let me get fooled by talent."
Lipovetsky's musical talent, however, is undisputed.

Since his recital debut at the age of 12, Lipovetsky has performed to worldwide critical acclaim.
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Lipovetsky came to New York in 1962 to study at The Juilliard School of Music, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees, and where he was the first winner of the Van Cliburn Scholarship.

His New York orchestral debut was with the National Orchestral Association at Carnegie Hall, and he has delighted audiences across Europe, Russia and South America, having toured with the Czech Philharmonic Janacek and the English Chamber Orchestra.
Today, Lipovetsky is an associate professor of piano in the department of music at Florida State University.

Though he declares a concert career "unpredictable," he himself is an active concert pianist, as well as an educator. His baroque classical and romantic repertoire, coupled with his one-of-a-kind arts education program, is in demand locally and internationally, and he is renowned for his dramatic performance energy and technical clarity.

In 1972, as a way to combine his disparate interests and to communicate his love for musical expression, Lipovetsky created Project Music and the Arts, a residency program that unites the studies of art history with music theory and performance.
At museums, universities and community centers throughout the world, Lipovetsky shows how the courses of music and art history are intimately intertwined. His community-based lectures and workshops for children and adults culminate in a public performance of his work. Project Music and the Arts has been presented in communities from Sarasota to Moscow.

"There are common elements to all of the arts," he says. "I just point out the connections."
To his audiences, the abstractions of music suddenly become clear when compared to the visual arts. The style of a painting is explained with a sonata; an architectural form is described with the rhythm of a waltz.
To Lipovetsky, music is not an isolated art form. Theatre, dance, literature, painting, sculpture, each form of art draws upon another, and though music to him is "one of the cogwheels of civilization," it is only a part of this larger concept of art and aesthetics.

He credits his family's gigantic library as part of his impetus to become a pianist and his study of architecture as the discipline that originally taught him the basic and abstract elements of art.
Music, like each art form, can be most simply defined as a language. Just as it takes time and patience to learn the nuances of French or Spanish, discovering the minutiae of music's forms of expression is a challenge for both the musician and the audience.

"Unfortunately," notes Lipovetsky, "it is very difficult to understand a language most of the world doesn't speak. For example, most people read a newspaper every day, but how much does anyone really understand? A musical composition is like that, just times 100."
Poor interpretation makes comprehension even more difficult.

"Inflection is to language as performance is to sheet music. When you hear words you don't understand or spoken with an accent, most music sounds like that to me."
Musicians study, then, in order to speak their language clearly, so as to be precisely understood. There are few greater masters of this language of music than Lipovetsky.
The accomplishments of his students speak for themselves. Former students have gone on to positions as diverse and prestigious as director of the Atlanta Chamber Players and as accompanist and coach for the Metropolitan Opera.

Lipovetsky sees his teaching as really just helping students to "unlearn" bad habits.
Piano is designed to be played with the whole body, and students must learn to play with more than just their fingers.
Music, as defined by Lipovetsky, is "the technique of conveying abstract thought through the motions of the finger, hands, wrists and torso."
He is modest about his effect on his students. "It is rewarding to see a student succeed, but Marcus Roberts had great preparation and training before he met me, " he says.

"Talent," he says, laughing, "is what you really need to succeed." And as Lipovetsky knows, you just have to be careful not to rest on it.

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