She's A 12-Year-Old Girl From Russia And A Musical Genius At The Keyboard

From the grand piano downstairs in Victoria Bogdashevskaya's house, you can hear the excited bark of a little greyhound and the soft giggle of a 12-year-old girl.

Then you hear an explosion of virtuoso arpeggios from the piano, attacking the toughest of Schumann's "Abegg" Variations. It's a shower of crystal-clear notes, played with such confidence that you can't believe these are the hands of a 12-year-old.

Anastasia Solomatina stops playing her teacher's piano for the moment and comes upstairs to shake hands. Sweet-faced, with a shy smile, she could be any 12-year-old girl, until she starts talking about the piano.

"Nastia," as her family calls her, came here last November with her parents from Nizhny Novgorod and is just learning English, but she doesn't have any problems communicating at the keyboard.

"I like many things," she explains. "We went to the zoo, and to the Wild Waves park. I like walking and playing with the dogs. I love to read."

Her first English book was "Charlotte's Web," followed by "James and the Giant Peach." Now she has moved on to James Herriott's "Every Living Thing"; any book about animals strikes a responsive chord in her, and she likes this one well enough that she's translating it into Russian.

No one really understands the phenomenon of a musical prodigy - a phenomenon that implies not only the ability to make incredible music with the fine-motor skills of the hands, but also the artistic

depth to feel, understand and interpret the music in a wholly original way. The first half of that package is easier to comprehend than the second; how do you account scientifically for a brain that instantly soaks in and masters hours of complex musical notation, and then transforms it entirely in the playback mode?

However you describe it, the phenomenon of musical prodigy is unmistakable to witness.

When Anastasia Solomatina began piano studies at the age of 6, her talent bloomed so quickly that she was ready for her recital debut in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin Hall one year later. A year after that, at 8, Anastasia won the Second Tchaikovsky Moscow Regional Competition.

Since then, there have been more competitions, in Italy, Sweden and Russia. In May, the young pianist won first prize in her division in the Stravinsky Awards International Piano Competition, held in Illinois.

Ask Seattle Symphony Music Director Gerard Schwarz about her, and you'll get raised eyebrows and superlatives: "She's marvelous, an incredible young talent. She's the real thing."

Bogdashevskaya, her teacher, says: "She came to me already an accomplished pianist, strikingly good. But there is always something to fix and to guide. She has already a huge repertoire, but she needs to learn more concerti. She is a very brilliant virtuoso, but she needs to develop her lyrical side and slow down a little."

Because she is the pianist of the Seattle Symphony and a Russian emigre herself, Bogdashevskaya often is inundated with requests for help from musical new arrivals from Russia. When word came of Anastasia's impending arrival, Bogdashevskaya just thought, here comes another one.

"I didn't even want to play the videotape her father sent. I was very busy. But my daughter said, `Just sit down and watch it.' "

She was impressed enough to offer unpaid lessons and assistance to the Solomatina family, which needs it. Both parents are trained engineers (the mother, Olga, also has a bachelor's degree in music), but work is hard to find. The father, formerly in the Russian military, is making a little more than minimum wage repairing computers, and the family lives in an apartment where Anastasia can't practice the piano in the evenings. She practices around five or six hours a day, which makes for some tough decisions about school this fall.

Money is a major problem: Without money, Anastasia can't get to the competitions and auditions. Bogdashevskaya would like to see her go on to an excellent conservatory, such as the Curtis Institute of Music.

What does Anastasia want?

"I love to play," she confides. "I like to practice. But I also like competitions and concerts."

Her mother nods.

"She likes big hall. She likes full hall."

Bogdashevskaya nods, too.

"When she plays before a big audience, it is like she is lighted from within.

"Even when she doesn't play her best, she is still better than anybody else."