Excerpt from the book Andrei, Fira and Pitch (Scenes from a Musician’s Life) by Andrei Gavrilov (2016) .
I had barely got my breath back after Paris, London, Richter, Handel, Muti and Chopin when Nilych summoned me again. What is it this time? I turned up. He was whispering, the bastard. I could hardly hear him. He was sending me in September-October to play thirty solo concerts in Italy “through the allied Communist Party”. I already had experience of a tour like that, as I had been on one in 1977. I had given about thirty concerts. These “fraternal Euro-commis” booted me all round Italy giving concerts, from North to South, and didn’t pay a thing. Apparently “for friendship’s sake”. They only gave miniscule per diems that weren’t even enough to eat properly. What’s more, the concerts were every day. And travelling every day. Around the whole of Italy’s boot! The moment I got off the airplane in Milan there was a concert that same day in Cesena.
“Gavrilev! Maestro! Brother! Friend! Comr-r-rade! Rot-Front!”
With a smile all over his jeering mug a “comr-r-rade” was running towards me with his fist raised in the old-fashioned communist style, shaking it slightly. What was he, a nutter? I did not have any idea at the time what Euro-communism was. It had never occurred to me that after the bloody excesses of the Stalinist regime, and contemporaneously with the cynical, deceitful propaganda of our socialist homeland, somewhere in a normal democratic society there could still be red boys and girls who would play at all this rot-front stuff, wave their fists and belt out songs like the Bandiera rossa, and generally engage in all this mothball crap which only remained in the USSR in the form of jokes and textbooks! Here… not in China, not in Cuba, not in the Scientific Communism Department of the Patrice Lumumba Institute, but here, in the centre of Europe, in beautiful Italy. What a bunch of idiots!
Later I understood that in this world there are no capitalists or communists. Just crazies. Some are crazy and happy, while others are crazy and ferocious sadists. That is the only difference.
The “mothball communists” turned out to be normal Italians – sly and jealous. It seemed that they were only interested in one thing: getting rich and having sex for free. Well, and a little more – how to foul things up for the rich and powerful, as much and as foully as possible.
We musicians were exploited so intensively that it went beyond the wildest dreams of any “capitalist sharks”. My “amico” was constantly repeating all the “Avanti populo”, “companiero” and “tovarishch” stuff. He came from Florence and taught Russian at school. Judging from what he said, he often taught visiting Soviet chicks the niceties of European erotica.
“You know, amico Gavrilev, your women are so beautiful, but they know absolutely nothing – they don’t even know how nice it is when the man licks! They are so shy at first, almost want to fight and then, when they discover – they are so happy! I recently worked with one very beautiful woman, she was also a Russian teacher – she was so grateful when she left, she said, Mario, Mario I will never forget that, and her eyes were so happy-happy!”
I travelled the whole country with conversations like that with the sexually advanced communist by name of Mario…
The book can be purchased at Amazon
Click here to listen to Gavrilov’s performance
Andrew Andersen 