“I wonder, why I have never heard this pianist before?”, internet surfers used to exclaim after listening smartphone recordings of Varvara Myagkova concerts. Why you can’t stop listening to her play once you’ve come across any of her recordings? Yes, she obviously fascinates you and leads with her to the depth that she discovered due to her amazing gift, but how does it work?

The great late Vera Gornostayeva, a legendary piano tutor, used to call Varvara “a miracle”. The professor first met the pianist while the latter was a student of Moscow Conservatory, and her teaches was Gornostayeva’s daughter Xenia Knorre. Xenia Knorre used to tell about her pupil: “She has skilled hands, but her virtuosity is driven by the feeling that in an incomprehensible way goes beyond either physical obstacles and technical problems. And does it due to the spirit”.

Despite the facts that Varvara Myagkova is a laureate of pan-Soviet competition (1992) and the International Competition in Andorra (2002), and since 2000 she has been busy as solo artist, concertmaster, soloist of different ensembles in the Conservatory, House of Performing Arts, touring Russia, and creating music projects, by the recent times she hasn’t been a household name.

And now, pianists Lukas Geniušas and Vadym Kholodenko, as well as violinist Roman Mints, post recordings of Varvara – and in 2019 she was invited to several big festivals in Russia and abroad; pianist Boris Berezovsky invited her to perform at “Summer Nights in Yelabuga”, one of the most significant festivals in Russia. 

“Myagkova has a very certain gift – an otherworldly one, so to speak. She doesn’t merely play music, she kind of predicts and professes”, Geniušas believes.

When this musician plays, you have a strange feeling that there’s a stream of “direct speech” – as if she is creating her own music while keeping composer’s style. Varvara’s play depends on her current state of mind, that’s why her renditions are always different. And not just “different”: a new music is being born right away. Myagkova says, that it’s nothing but her way “of perception of life, a way of thinking”.