On April 14, the Russian keyboard player Alexei Lubimov and the singer Yana Ivanilova performed a concert at DK Rassvet, a venue in central Moscow which, similar to New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge, hosts concerts and cultural events and doubles as a club. As Lubimov was performing playing a solo portion of the concert, with two Impromptus from Schubert’s D. 899 set, two uniformed police officers entered the hall, warning the audience that a bomb threat had been reported at the venue.
Lubimov kept playing. The policemen stood near the door for a few minutes, then they went to the piano to silence the music. Lubimov finished the thrilling, lurching coda of the second Impromptu—which modulates bracingly from B Major to Eb Major in a handful of bars—while the policemen milled around his instrument, their obvious awkwardness not hidden by their masks. The video quickly went viral. This is Lubimov’s first interview since the concert; we spoke by phone in Lubimov’s expressive mixture of English and German.
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