Review of “Playing with Fire”

The Story of Maria Yudina, Pianist in Stalin’s Russia”, by Elizabeth Wilson.
Yale University Press 2022, 331 pages.

This excellent book is a timely tribute to the – in the West - largely unknown Russian pianist Maria Yudina (1899 – 1970), recounting both her musical life and her place in Soviet culture. She comes across as a chaotic genius, living life at maximum intensity, utterly devoted to art and philosophy, deeply religious (which caused her many political problems), and even in a murderous political environment a passionate defender of her family, friends and pupils, apparently without concern for her own well-being or material comfort. Elizabeth Wilson is the ideal author, having grown up partly in Russia, studied cello with Rostropovich in Moscow, and written about Shostakovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and Rostropovich.

If Yudina’s name is unfamiliar, she nevertheless features in a well-known story in which Stalin heard a radio performance she gave of a Mozart concerto and demanded a recording of it. Unfortunately, no recording had been made, so Yudina, the orchestra, a conductor (not the original one who had got drunk in the meantime), and a makeshift audience were hastily reassembled during the night to make the recording and satisfy the dictator’s whim. It’s a great story, and features at the beginning of Armando Iannucci’s film “The Death of Stalin”. Sadly, Wilson concludes that it is probably untrue.

Trained at the St Petersburg Conservatory, Yudina won the Rubinstein Prize (with Sofronitsky) in 1921 and joined the piano faculty. Her interests went well beyond music and she embraced Hellenism, German philosophy, philology, history, architecture, literature, and orthodox religion. The book captures the intellectual ferment following the 1917 Revolution and the various “circles”, in which Yudina was often involved, created to discuss different philosophical ideas.

By the late 1920s, however, the ruthless Stalinist repression had begun. Yudina, disillusioned with the revolution, lost her job at the Conservatory in 1930 for her religious beliefs (she would later also lose teaching positions from the Moscow Conservatoire and the Gnesins’ Insititute). Again, the book captures the fear, squalor and poverty at this time. Many of Yudina’s friends were arrested and executed or sent into exile, and she was herself lucky to escape arrest. She sent food and other necessities, and even managed to visit some camps and places of exile.

Yudina’s acquaintances are a who’s who of Russian cultural life, including Shostakovich, Chagall, Prokofiev, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Maxim Gorky, and Solzhenitsyn.

As a musician, Yudina was very active and hugely influential. As well as teaching for years in St Petersburg/Petrograd and, from 1933, Moscow, she performed frequently in the main towns and cities of Russia as well as on the radio. She gave her all to the War effort, playing many recitals in Moscow, visiting Leningrad during the siege (a very dangerous operation), and even visiting front line units and naval vessels. She was very interested in vocal music and commissioned Russian translations of Schubert songs, as well as organizing a performance of Tanayev’s opera Oresteia. She visited other socialist countries such as Poland and Bulgaria and was a member of the Soviet delegation to East Germany for the Bach celebrations in 1950 – the visit that inspired Shostakovich to compose his 24 Preludes and Fugues. She does not seem to have visited the West.

She mastered Bach early on, and also took a close interest in contemporary music (also causing her political problems). As well as offering core repertoire, she played for example Krenek, Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Berg, Casella, and even John Ireland, whose piano concerto she learned for a visiting British orchestra. She did much to promote Russian composers – Shostakovich and Prokofiev of course, but also less well-known figures such as Gnesin, Shcherbatov, Shaporin, Gvriil Popov, Kochurov, and Bogdanov-Berezovsky. She took a renewed interest in contemporary music in the 1950s and was in touch with Boulez, Stockhausen, and Messiaen. She was instrumental in bringing Stravinsky to Russia in 1962.

Her playing style was highly individual – not technically perfect (although her technique was very fine), and not always faithful to the composer’s instructions, but always connecting directly with the listener and getting to the heart of the music. She was inspired by extra-musical associations (eg she saw Bach’s preludes and fugues as connected to stories in the Bible). The author provides a useful discography; Yudina recorded a lot and although few recordings have been issued in the West, many are available on You Tube. She was not always well served by her pianos (mainly Bechsteins, which apparently dominated in Soviet concert halls until the late 1950s) or by recording engineers. One also wonders how she managed to practice given the intensity of her life, her precarious living arrangements, and the fact that she never actually owned a piano.

Wilson follows Yudina’s life in chronological order and never deviates from the facts in the sources she uses – including Yudina’s own diaries and letters. The result is an easy and fascinating read. The author brilliantly navigates a mass of material, bringing both the extraordinary character of Yudina and the whole Russian milieu to life. It can be difficult to keep up with the sheer number of people mentioned - perhaps an index of main characters (like in “War and Peace”!) would help. But this is a small point. I thoroughly recommend the book to anyone interested in 20th century pianists and/or Soviet cultural life.

The Great British Piano Population