<<  -- 2 --  Tess Crebbin    ONE YEAR ON

TC: When did you see Boris next?

LV: I saw him again at the masterclasses in Lübeck, where I accompanied the cellist from my piano trio. Boris liked my playing very much and so he invited me to a chamber music project that he was working on. In 1991 he got me involved in his first chamber music project we got together in Weimar -- and a lot of the people whom I met there through Boris became long-term friends and musical partners of mine.

TC: But between you and Boris a strong partnership also resulted, didn't it?

LV: Yes, very much so. We gave recitals together and he even asked my wife, Tanya, to write a piece for him. We talked about this a few years back and he said: 'Yes, I recall, that was 2 December 1993'.

TKV: It was incredible that he would remember all the dates and when we did what. His brain was a bit like an appointment diary, where all the dates are written down with precisely what happened on those dates. He had an unbelievable memory for dates and events.

LV: Yes. I remember that he would sometimes call me and say: 'Larsnik, do you know that today is the 20th anniversary of the reunion of the 5th communist party of outer Mongolia' -- or other very obscure facts like that, and it was always absolutely true. He did not just know the dates of your regular historic events, he knew the history of some of the most out-of-the-way places, because he was so intelligent and this intelligence caused an enormous curiosity that in turn caused him to do a lot of reading and to absorb an incredible number of facts on almost every subject you can imagine.

TKV: He had a great knowledge of everything: history, politics, literature, you name it -- he knew it. And he also had this wonderful gift for turning situations around for you. I remember once when we had just moved, and I was having a bit of a hard time with my new neighbour. So when we sat together one evening I said that I just couldn't warm up to our neighbour and that we had not gotten to know this guy at all and that I basically didn't even want to because I was longing for my old neighbours. There was just too much new stuff going on for me to deal with a new neighbour as well. But Boris was very enthusiastic and he said: 'Tanya, it is so incredibly interesting to get into the life of a stranger. You don't know just how much I envy you this situation of meeting someone completely new and finding out all about them. Sometimes the life of a stranger looks very ordinary on the surface and you get into it and then you learn about all this drama that unfolds suddenly.' This is what he was like, very open and very eager to learn new things about people. And he had this great gift of making his enthusiasm rub off on you.

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