The First Violin

Shynar NAGIMOVA With victorious 1^st place returned from Spain Shynar NAGIMOVA, a schoolgirl of Atyrau musical college under the academy named after D. Nurpeisova. The music festival “The Legend of the Mediterranean” was held in the town of Lloret de Mar.

Young talents from many countries, including Italy, France, Greece, Montenegro, Russia demonstrated their skills. Our Shynar won hearts of the sophisticated European jury with her skillful play on a violin and won the first place.

– Was it frightening to participate in the competition?

– Not at all. But competition was difficult indeed the evening before the concert. We didn't have an accompanying pianist. Without a supporting piano player music wouldn't sound as good as needed. We finally found a pianist and had only 3 hours for the joint rehearsal. When I showed her the musical scores, she lost courage and closed the piano cover saying “No-no-no!”. It was the final from Brusilovsky’s suite “Bozaigyr” (Chestnut Fast Horse) which is a difficult music piece. It took us some time to persuade her to have a rehearsal and Sandra (pianist’s name), at last agreed.

According to her musical academy teacher Klara NUSUPBAEVA, Shynar’s program for the competition was one of the most difficult programs. The next piece was Vivaldi's difficult “La Minor”.

–We made a beautiful Kazakh dress specially for this festival, said her mother Dina GABDESHEVA. – Contestants and the audience wanted to take picture of Shynar and her dress. After the performance the audience gave her a standing applause. The judge, a well known Spanish musician and composer Giuseppe SOTO said to Shynar “When you started playing, I had goosebumps. In those minutes I forgot the whole world. Thank you.”

Amal’ DZHARYLGAPOVA, another girl from Atyrau also participated in this festival. She competed in poetry reciting Federico Garcia Lorca’s “La Gitara” in Spanish and another poem “Homesickness” written by our local poet Kulyash NABIEVA. The poem is dedicated to our city Atyrau, and Amal’ voiced it in the Kazakh language.

Anastassia PASTUKHOVA