My Story | iliakim

Many times my features, especially my eyes, inspire people to pop up the rightful question: “why do you play piano?” It usually happens after a concert, everything went well, I’m still excited and, above all, relieved. I know exactly what people expect from me…“music is my life and piano is my chosen instrument”…well, I have to admit… it sounds pretty damn good! But I decide not to lie so I give them the truth. “My parents thought it might come handy to have a human jukebox at home”. My parents love to sing and particularly my dad, after a fun night out with his friends, would come home, slightly tipsy and wake me up to be accompanied by piano for his favourite canzone ‘O Sole Mio’.

I was soundly asleep but that didn’t matter, did it? When it comes to art…

It didn’t take me much to pass from ‘O Sole Mio to pianistic literature so at the age of 11 I gave my first solo recital and not much later they sent me off to Berlin.
I arrived just in time to see the Wall come down…I didn’t even take a piece of it. I just soaked up everything, went to every concert, cinema, theatre. I saw Karajan bent in half like an old oak tree, Kissinstill a boy with a big crop of hair that made him 5 inches taller and, of course, Kleiber my idol!
Then some kind of obscure desire, a yearning took me to Italy. Here, I madly fell in love with Belcanto and found an adoring husband.

Piano is certainly not my chosen instrument. It’s been imposed on me and it definitely hindered me to have many life experiences as I would have liked. But it’s been Arianna’s thread which enabled me to travel around the world and get to know many interesting people. After all this, I’ve finally come to understand why I play piano. It’s not just for piano or for that matter music’s sake that I am a pianist but I realize that my job is to bring the joy and enthusiasm to people. That, I’m sure, is a very beautiful thing! It makes me very happy to know that the audience, while listening to me playing piano, might forget the hardship of life and feel transported into the world of peace and beauty.