The fifteenth edition of the Visual Music Festival of Lanzarote found a place in its complete concert schedule
to talk about music through the images with the documentary ‘Oleg and the rare arts’ by the Venezuelan
director, but living in Spain, Andrés Duque.

The filmaker was captivated by the music he once heard when he watched a movie by the Ukrainian filmmaker Kira Muratova. Quickly, he looked for who had composed it and discovered in a YouTube video a man improvising with a black bag over his head blinding his eyes. So Dukque decided to go to St. Petersburg to meet the enigmatic Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaichuk, where he had to wait a month to gain the trust of the musician.

At the time of the recording, Oleg was 89 years old (he died in June of this year) and the image he presented to the camera does not presage a hint of musical genius. Weak and stooped body, sweat pants and a messy haircut. However, in between his baroque speeches that derive from recognizing Catherine the Great as the only love of his life to fbelieving himself the guardian of the piano of Tsar Nicholas II, his hands flow between the black and white keys, improvising of course, to give us notice of his mastery.

Oleg was born in 1927 and very soon became an infant prodigy. He even played regularly for Stalin. After being a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, he wrote music for theater and cinema, converting his eccentric personality into a commonplace of Russian culture.