Sentimental Work: Viktoria Mullova

I never heard the Sibelius Violin Concerto when I was young. I grew up listening to records by Leonid Kogan, who was my teacher later on, and for some reason he never recorded the Sibelius. So I first heard it while watching the finals of the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition aged 18. The US violinist Dylana Jenson played the Sibelius in the final, coming second, and I knew then that I wanted to play it. Then I couldn’t find the parts and I had to take pictures of the pages on a camera when I finally got them. It’s a difficult piece to learn, and I spent time working on it with my teacher, Volodar Bronin. As I didn’t have any recordings, unlike most of the other repertoire I practised, I just played it the way I thought it should be played, so it became completely my piece and no one else’s…