Violinist Yevgeny Kutik. A suitcase of music—carried by his mother, fleeing Belarus—leads to a decade of exploration. Griffin Harrington photography
Some people can’t go home.
The family of violinist Yevgeny Kutik, a Belorussian Jew, fled Minsk in 1990. He was five. They haven’t gone back.
After generations of violence against family members, during the long, notorious history of Russian anti-Semitism, they had had enough.
When they left, everyone got to bring two suitcases. Kutik’s mother, Alla Zernitskaya, filled one entirely with sheet music.
Those scores—Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Achron, Bloch and others—form the basis of Kutik’s documentary series, “Finding Home: Music from the Suitcase,” available for free beginning Feb. 11 on YouTube and FaceBook.
Each of the five episodes runs about half-an-hour. Kutik narrates the story of the family’s displacement, and of his subsequent violin studies in the United States with Zinaida Gilels and Roman Totenberg.
But mostly he just plays the music. Accompanied by pianist Anna Polonsky, Kutik’s engaged, emotional performances—especially in extended works like Bloch’s “Baal Shem,” Milhaud’s “Boeuf sur le Toit” and the culminating Franck sonata—reveal as much about his fragmentary past as does the narrative.
Kutik spoke on the phone from his parent’s home in Lenox, where the pandemic has landed the violinist and his wife after fifteen years of living in Boston.
“Growing up, you start realizing you weren’t born here,” he says. “I knew nothing about where I came from. Your home is absent.
“Of course I remember random things,” he says, “not connected in any way. These pieces—Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rubinstein and even Achron—start coloring in this culture that you left behind.”
The series was filmed and recorded during a performance marathon last summer in Rockport Music’s Shalin Liu Performance Center.
“It was meant to emulate a live performance,” Kutik says. “It wasn’t like a recording. We did it over the course of a day-and-a-half, three complete recital programs. We just got up and played.
“It’s a kind of exploration into the Russian and Jewish cultures of the Soviet Union,” he says. “It was very interesting to do such a deep dive into my past.
“My all-time favorite is Prokofiev. You always feel like you’re reading a short story of a colorful Russian life. All of these pieces have managed to fill in the culture much more tangibly.”
Kutik’s own development as a professional musician highlights the final two episodes. He was fortunate to study with Gilels and Totenberg before both of those esteemed pedagogues—themselves Russian immigrants—passed away. Kutik even performed for Totenberg on his death-bed, playing one of the great violinist’s favorite works, Wieniawski’s Polonaise.
“Zinaida Gilels was my teacher for about three years, every week,” he says, “and then I studied with Mr. Totenberg. When I first met him, I played an étude, and it was one of the most musical experiences of my life.
“In the fourth episode I play works that I studied with them both. I end with the Franck sonata, which I studied with all my teachers, my mother included. It’s been a friend in my development.”
Kutik has already recorded much of this music, a 2014 release on Marquis Classics. This docu-recital continues the exploration, and Kutik sees the project developing into a full-length film.
“The collection is huge, and there’s so much to choose from,” he says. “It’s occupied me for the past couple of years, and there are lots of ways to expand on it.
“We are definitely in loose conversations, assembling something that will resemble a formal documentary. I have no idea what to expect.
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Leonore Overture and Opera News. Artists Alone is a series about musicians and the impact of the pandemic. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.