I had to share this story about Ivo Pogorelich and Aliza Kezeradze because it is one of those unusual love stories that stays with you.
Pogorelich, the Croatian pianist, met Aliza in Moscow when he was still a teenager. She was a Georgian pianist and teacher, 21 years older than him, and became one of the most important influences on his musical life. They married in 1980 and remained together until her death from liver cancer in 1996.
Their relationship was not simply a story about an age difference. Aliza was his teacher, mentor, wife and, by his own account, someone who fundamentally changed the way he approached music.
In a 2006 interview with Die Welt, Pogorelich spoke about her with extraordinary intensity. He described having to reinvent himself after her death and explained that he could not even touch the piano for a period because playing brought his memories flooding back.
“She was so demanding,” he said. “She clothed herself in art, she absorbed it, devoured it.”
He also described how much she had shaped him as a musician.
When Aliza entered his life, he was 17 and struggling with his piano studies. He felt he was at a dead end. She helped him find another way of approaching the instrument and, ultimately, his own artistic identity.
It is striking that their relationship began as a musical one. Pogorelich has said that when he first met Aliza, she immediately noticed something about the way he played and began teaching him. Other accounts of their relationship describe her as a major influence on his development as a pianist.
And then there was the age difference.
Twenty-one years is still considered a significant age gap, particularly when the older person is the woman. We are used to seeing the opposite represented in films, celebrity culture and real life: an older man with a much younger woman. When the genders are reversed, people tend to look twice.
But perhaps that is precisely why stories like this are worth remembering.
Love does not always arrive in the form we expect it to. Nor does an important relationship necessarily fit neatly into the categories we have created for it.
What makes the story of Pogorelich and Aliza particularly moving is what happened after she died.
He has spoken openly about how devastated he was and how long it took him to return to music. In the same Die Weltinterview, he said that he needed time before he could become creative again.
Their story therefore isn’t simply about an unusual marriage. It is also about influence, grief, artistic partnership and what one person can leave behind in another.
Aliza did not simply share Pogorelich’s life. She helped shape the pianist he became.
And perhaps that is what I find most beautiful about their story.
We often talk about love as though its value can be measured by how long a relationship lasts or whether it fits the conventional idea of a successful romance.
But some relationships change us permanently.
Some people enter our lives and alter the way we see the world.
Aliza seems to have been that person for Ivo Pogorelich.
And perhaps that is enough to make their love story worth remembering.
Read more: Does Age Difference Matter When Dating?
You can also read my selection of films about older women and younger men if you are interested in how age-gap relationships have been portrayed on screen.
