INTERVIEWS WITH MASTERS: Igor Lazko Part I: Intro

Xenia E. Zilli
May 7, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Apr 2

I conducted an one hour and a half long interview with Mr Igor Lazko, on 1 February 2023 in Paris.

Igor Lazko is a classical pianist and piano educator who has made a distinguished international career as performer, recording artist and teacher of other pianists.

More about Igor Lazko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Lazko

Igor was my piano teacher and mentor for ten years, while he lived and worked in Belgrade. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that my fist question was about his Belgrade years, now from a different perspective and a lifelong experience behind him and me.

Igor, although quite busy, agreed to have an interview and was quite happy to talk about just everything, which brought back many happy memories from my student days and Igor's most energetic (as he expressed it), with lots of ‘saudade’ feelings mixed into it too.

[SAUDADE (sah-dah-juh) - an untranslatable, undeniably potent word which comes from Portuguese culture, and it is often expressed in literature and music. Saudade is a feeling of missing something or someone.]

I came to the interview bearing gifts for Igor, and to my surprise he had some for me too – 3 of his marvellous CDs – an amazing treasure of beautifully and masterly performed music, among which my beloved J.S. Bach's piano concerto No. 5 in F minor, and a quite unique interpretation of Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 53, No. 21 in C major - "Aurora". I could not receive a better gift !

To be continued ……

Listen to Igor Lazko play live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VEDmluY5nQ