EPILOGUE
‘You cannot fathom Russia with the mind . . . believe in it’: See Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk and Irina Nachinski (eds), The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (London: Penguin, 2015). The anthology includes two different translations of Tyutchev’s iconic quatrain of 1866.
‘I never choose a piano and don’t try them out before a concert . . . walk on water’: Cited in Bruno Monsaingeon, Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations, trans. Stewart Spencer (London: Faber & Faber, 2001)
‘Siberia is an extensive and chilly land . . . Ask the Public Prosecutor to exile you here’: Anton Chekhov, ‘Letter to his brother, June 1890’ in Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island, trans. Brian Reeve (Surrey: OneWorld Classics, 2007)
‘Febris Sachalinensis’: Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
‘Kurilitis’: See John J. Stephan, The Kuril Islands: Russo-Japanese frontier in the Pacific (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)
Siberia has the virtue of not startling . . . left part of himself in Siberia for ever: Valentin Rasputin, Siberia, Siberia, trans. Margaret Winchell and Gerald Mikkelson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996)
Holman’s presence in Irkutsk had put him under suspicion: James Holman, Travels through Russia, Siberia, Poland, Austria, Saxony, Prussia, Hanover, &c. &c. Undertaken during the Years 1822, 1823 and 1824, While Suffering from Total Blindness, and Comprising an Account of the Author Being Conducted a State Prisoner from the Eastern Parts of Siberia (London: Geo. B. Whittaker, 1825)
‘My main aim in conducting the census . . . the impressions received during the making of it’: Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
‘I’m interested to be where I was not’: Cited in Valentina Chemberdzhi , V puteshestvii so Sviatoslavom Rikhterom (Moscow: M. RIK ‘Kul’tura’, 1993)
‘proclivity for adventure’: Catherine the Great, 1869, cited in Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge: Polity, 2011)
Was it all just a grand romance?: These ideas are explored in Barbara Fuchs, Romance (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
‘[John] Field did not so much play his own nocturnes, but dreamed them at the piano’: Cited in David Dubal, The Art of the Piano (Cambridge: Amadeus Press, 2004)
George Kennan had encountered one of the finest drawing rooms in Russia . . . a grand piano: George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System, Volume I (New York: The Century Co., 1891)
What this country endured is hard to fathom: ‘The terrible impact of all of Russia’s combined calamities, the Revolution, civil war, Stalin’s Terror, plus World War Two, can be glimpsed in one dramatic demographic fact,’ writes the American author Suzanne Massie. ‘In 1950, eighty-five million Russians who should normally have been alive were not. Of these, forty-five million men – one in two – were, in the parlance of demographers, simply “not there”.’ Pavlovsk: The Life of a Russian Palace (Leipzig: Liki Rossii, 1990).
A BRIEF HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY
‘the pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments . . . the invention of printing was to poetry’: George Bernard Shaw, The Fortnightly Review (February 1894) in Louis Crompton (ed.), The Great Composers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)
Index
Aidu, Pyotr, 50–1
Akademgorodok: chamber orchestra, 260, 271; city life, 265–6, 270–1; city planning, 259; construction, 258, 266; cultural history, 268–70; Festival of Bards, 268–9, 270; Mühlbach grand piano, 260, 271–3, 308; Physics and Mathematics School, 271, 272; piano playing, 264–5; science city, 258–60; South Cemetery, 263, 265–6; Truth Street (No. 4), 269–70
Aleksandrovsk, 129–30, 134–6
Aleksei, Tsarevich, 152, 153, 157, 158–9, 173, 227
Alexander I, Tsar, 78–9, 111, 340
Alexander II, Tsar, 92, 150, 151, 295, 314
Alexandra, Empress consort (Tsarina), 56–7, 152, 153, 157, 191
Aliabiev, Aleksandr, 56
Aliabiev, Aleksandr (son of above), 56, 64
Altai: history, 183–4; immigrants, 177–8, 179–80, 183, 187–8; Mongolian border, 176, 343–5; mummies, 184–5, 345; name, 7; piano delivery, 347, 351; piano playing, 264, 309; pianos, 177, 178–80, 185, 188–9, 351; search for pianos, 176–7, 180, 189, 343, 345, 353; space junk, 181, 182; travellers, 177, 342; wildlife, 40, 177, 181–2, 296, 344, 345
Anastasia, Grand Duchess, 153, 159
Arakcheyev, Aleksei, 78–9
Arseniev, Vladimir, 42–4, 43
Atkinson, Lucy and Thomas, 177
Avdonin, Aleksandr, 166–74
Avril, Father Philippe, 70
Avvakum, Archpriest, 109
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 32, 90, 94, 262
Baikal, Lake, 14–15, 69, 71, 72
Balakirev, Mily, 119
Baldaev, Danzig, 219
Bardach, Janusz, 224–5
Barnaul, 7, 177, 264, 284, 334
Basargin, Nikolai, 91
Bechstein pianos: Ekaterinburg grand marked ‘House of Revolution’, 164, 172, 308; Irkutsk grand, 89; Kiakhta grand, 93–4, 97–8, 103, 106, 107, 308, 352; Olga’s baby grand, 124–6, 125, 308; rebuilt, 28, 30; search for, 49; on Trans-Siberian Railway, 2
Becker, Jacob, 65–6, 277, 279
Becker pianos, 27, 101, 123, 249, 278; Ekaterinburg grand, 164; factory, 65–6, 88n, 155; 236–8, 244–5, 273–4; Old Believer’s grand, 185, 188; Old Believer priest’s upright, 110; search for, 146; state nationalization (1917), 66, 278, see also Red October
The Bell, 102
Bell, John, 54–5
Belyayev, Mitrofan, 155
Berg, Raissa L., 259–60
Bering, Anna, 68–9, 313
Bering, Vitus, 68–9, 313–14
Bering Island, 303, 305, 315–16, 317
Berzin, Eduard, 228, 230
Bestuzhev, Mikhail, 100, 102–3
Bestuzhev, Nikolai, 85, 100, 102–3, 106
Birobidzhan, 342–3
Blüthner pianos, 66
Borisov brothers, 85
Borodin, Alexander, 119
Brendel, Alfred, 281
Brezhnev, Leonid, 268
Broadwood, John, 63
Broadwood & Sons, 25–6, 50, 66
Buryat people, 34, 35, 83, 93, 107
Busoni, Ferruccio, 90n
C. F. Theodore Steinway Academy, 251, 346
Catherine the Great, Empress: cultural influence, 56, 58, 59–62, 72, 78, 82; death, 72, 78; Jewish policies, 150; lovers, 60–1, 61; marriage, 58; piano anglais (1774), 21–2, 242; Polish rule, 110–11; reign, 18–19, 41, 43, 52, 58–9, 110, 341; serfdom policies, 19–20; Siberian policies, 19–20, 54, 69, 72
Chaliapin, Fyodor, 195
Chekhov, Anton: descriptions of Siberia, 4, 107, 337; health, 127; journey to Sakhalin Island, 127–30, 340–1; Siberian travel plans, 36–7, 70–1, 127–8, 310, 340–1; travelling along Great Siberian Trakt, 69, 71–2; view of Irkutsk, 72; view of Nikolaevsk, 128–9; view of Sakhalin, 130, 132–5, 133, 136–9, 145–6, 339; view of Tomsk, 120–1
Chemberdzhi, Valentina, 284–5
Chita, 49, 83–4, 96, 191, 194, 284
Chopin, Frédéric: mazurkas, 115; in Paris, 112–13; piano on Warsaw bonfire, 114, 118; played in Kamchatka, 298, 299, 302, 317; played in Mongolia, 350; played in Nikolskoye, 317; played in Tobolsk, 332; playing for Constantine, 79, 111; ‘Revolt Polonaise’, 113–14; Vera’s playing, 262–3
Clare, Horatio, 304–5
Clementi, Muzio, 62–3
Clementi pianos, 62–3, 241
Cliburn, Harvey Van, 267
Cochrane, John Dundas, 342
Collins, Perry, 295
Commander Islands: arrival at Medny, 305–6; Bering Island settlement, 315–16; Bering’s death, 313; border area, 288, 303; ‘The Boy and the Bird’, 300–1, 301; fur trade, 314; piano, 300; piano playing, 300, 301; voyage to, 305; voyage to Kurils, 318; wildlife, 306–7, 313–14
Conover, Willis, 278
Conquest, Robert, 223n
&nb
sp; Conrad, Joseph, 34, 112
Consolo, Ernesto, 261
Constantine, Grand Duke, 79, 111
Cortot, Alfred, 261
Cristofori, Bartolomeo, 20–1, 351
Cui, César, 119
Custine, Marquis de, 41
Dashkova, Ekaterina, 60
Decembrists: academy in exile, 84–5, 111; amnesty for survivors, 92, 114; Atkinsons’ accounts of, 177; beliefs, 78, 180; executions, 80, 81; exiles’ feelings about Siberia, 91, 92–3, 100–2; influence on Siberian culture, 99–100, 102–3, 178–9; music in exile, 82–3, 84–5, 85, 91, 95, 100–2, 284; relationship with Polish exiles, 112, 113; relationship with prison commander, 83, 111; Revolt (1825), 77–8, 79–80, 112, 149–50; Siberian exiles, 80, 82–6; trunk of secrets, 103, 106
Demidoff, Prince Elim Pavlovich, 177, 178, 296, 297, 298–9, 302
Diaghilev, Sergei, 179, 325
Diderot, Denis, 21, 59
Diederichs: factory, 155; grand piano, 123–4; pianos, 278
Doroshevich, Vlas, 135–8, 145
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 17, 76, 133
Dué Post, 136, 138, 139–46, 144
Durmin, 45, 48
Eco, Umberto, 281
Ekaterinburg: imprisonment of Romanov family, 56, 157–8, 163–4, 167, 190; Ipatiev House, 157–8, 159, 160–5, 161, 162, 163, 167, 169, 172, 191, 242n; murder of Romanov family, 56, 158–9, 160–3, 191; Romanov graves, 168–71, 170, 173–5; Romanov piano, 157–8, 159, 163–4; Russian Civil War, 191; search for Romanov piano, 160, 163–6, 172, 174–5, 308; Soviet, 157, 168
Elizabeth, Empress, 18
Elwes, Henry J., 177
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 281
Engels, Friedrich, 93
Erard: factory, 22, 63; grand piano (1840), 33–4; piano, 55–6, 308n
Erard, Sébastien, 63
Ermakov, Pyotr, 170
Estonia piano, 265
Feldgun, Georgi, 224
Field, John, 23, 24, 36, 63–4, 350–1
Figes, Orlando, 152n
Frunze, Mikhail, 89
FSB, 5, 343, 352–3
Galich (Alexander Ginzburg), 268–9
Ganina Yama, 168, 171, 173
Girev, Dmitri, 130–1, 131
Glinka, Mikhail, 25, 64
Gogol, 129, 133
Golovnin, Vasily, 288–9, 291
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 285–6, 300
Gorely volcano, 291, 299–300
Gorky, Maxim, 154
Great Patriotic War (Second World War): attitudes to, 165, 286; casualties, 240; impact on Siberia, 40, 217; pianos, 28–9, 124; safekeeping of national treasures, 28; term, 6; Western Front, 29
Grotrian, Friedrich, 255
Grotrian-Steinweg: factory, 255; upright piano, 249, 254–5, 257, 309, 345–51
Grozny, 293
Gutheil, Alexander, 245
Harbin: architecture, 192, 198–9; history, 192–3, 196–8; Kaspe kidnapping, 195–6; musical culture, 192, 194–5, 200–1, 202; pianos, 192, 199–201
Hawes, Charles, 138, 343n
Henselt, Adolf, 64
Herzen, Alexander, 84, 102
Holman, James, 22, 340, 342
Howard, Benjamin, 128–9
Ibach grand piano, 291, 296–8, 298, 299, 317
Imperial Russian Geographical Society, 98
Imperial Russian Musical Society, 65–6, 119, 121, 278, 352
Inber, Vera, 236
Irkutsk: architecture, 74; bellringer, 73–5; Decembrist exiles, 85, 102; education, 72, 99, 121; library, 72; musical culture, 66, 72, 86, 96, 121, 123, 284; piano tuners, 88–9; pianos, 87–9; Polish connection, 113, 115, 117; prison governor, 321; search for Volkonsky piano, 77; Siberian exile system, 54, 76–7, 85, 113, 115; travel from, 72–3, 340; travel to, 69; Volkonsky house, 86, 87
Journal de St-Pétersbourg, 9, 65
Kadykchan, 232–3, 234
Kamchatka: bathhouse piano, 296, 298; capital, 290; landscape, 11–12, 289–90, 296; Peninsula, 222, 288, 289, 296, 318, 321; piano delivery, 288–9, 297–8; piano expeditions, 11–12, 292, 299–300; piano factory, 229; pianos, 17, 291–2, 295–8, 298, 317; population, 286–8, 290; ships to Kuril Islands, 303; telegraph, 295; travelling to, 288; weather, 290, 292–3; wildlife, 296
Kandinsky, Wassily, 94, 95, 325
Kandinsky family, 94–5, 99
Kaspe, Josef, 195–6, 198
Kaspe, Semion, 195–7, 196, 198, 200
Katz, Arnold, 270
Kawai grand piano, 231–2
Kennan, George, 99, 120, 295, 353
Khabarovsk: architecture, 41–2; musical performances, 324–5, 342; piano tuner, 324–5; pianos, 39–40, 50, 229, 284, 325; Stürzwage baby grand, 309, 325, 327, 327–9, 331, 352; wildlife, 42–3, 45
Khanty-Mansiysk, 17
Khrushchev, Nikita, 258, 266–8, 267, 270
Kiakhta: architecture, 96; Bechstein piano, 93–4, 97–8, 103, 106, 107, 308, 352; border crossing, 72, 93, 176, 347; history, 93, 104–6; merchants, 95–7, 102–3, 104; newspaper, 102; piano teachers, 114; pianos, 96; Resurrection Cathedral, 98; social life, 95–7, 99–100; tea trade, 72, 93, 95–6, 97, 104; Trinity Cathedral, 104
Kirov, Sergei, 204
Knox, Thomas Wallace, 114–15, 295
Kolyma: climate, 223, 227, 232–3, 335; free workers, 232, 331; Gulag prisoners, 76, 223–7, 234; Gulags, 16, 130, 222–3, 234; Highway, 16, 226, 233, 333; Magadan Theatre, 225, 227–30, 228; mines, 225, 232, 234, 333; music, 226–7, 229–30; pianos, 227, 228, 229–30, 231, 231–2, 233; travelling to, 16, 76, 223–5, 332–3; Wallace’s visit, 225, 226
Kozin, Vadim, 228–30, 231, 274, 333
Krasnoyarsk, 49, 284, 308, 353
Kravchenko, Valery: appearance, 296, 298, 302; background, 291; Bering Island upright, 303, 317–18; ‘The Boy and the Bird’, 300–1; Ibach grand piano, 291, 296–8, 298; piano expeditions, 291–2; piano performances, 301, 303, 317
Kubatsky, Viktor, 156
Küchelbecker, Mikhail, 93
Kunashir, 303, 319–20
Kuril Islands, 288, 289, 303, 306, 318–21, 339
La Pérouse, Jean-François, 321
Ledebour, Carl Friedrich von, 177
Lemeshev, Sergei, 195
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov): ban on shamanism, 44–5; cultural policies, 29, 155–6; death, 7; embalmed corpse, 28; name, 4; portraits, 214, 248; revolutionary career, 4, 139, 152; Siberian exile, 16; statues, 234, 292; views on art and music, 29, 154
Leningrad: Conservatory, 213–14, 234, 278; Hermitage Museum, 156n, 240; name, 7, 245; Pavlovsk Palace, 240–1, 242; permanent collection of musical instruments, 156, 279; Philharmonic, 237, 243–5, 246, 249, 265, 309; Philharmonic Hall, 238; premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh, 273–4; protection of musical instruments, 28, 156, 241–2; Radio Orchestra, 237, 276; rock music, 285–6; Volkovo Cemetery, 275; see also Petrograd, St Petersburg
Leningrad, Siege (1941–44): civilian casualties, 156, 229, 274, 275, 279, 330; experiences of, 273–7, 330, 346; loudspeaker broadcasts, 235–6, 238; music, 235–6, 276–7; orchestra re-formed, 237–8; performance of Shostakovich’s symphony, 238; pianos, 29, 241–2; state treasures, 156, 240–2
Leningrad Symphony (Shostakovich’s Seventh), 236–8, 244–5, 273–4
Lerner, David, 297–8, 299, 317
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 147
Lichtenthal pianos, 25, 87–8
Lindbergh, Charles and Anne, 322n
Liszt, Franz: appearance, 23, 296; audience reactions, 23, 23–5, 325; foreign tours, 284, 325; performances in St Petersburg, 9, 24–5, 26, 41, 119, 121, 325; pianomania, 9, 23, 24–5, 121, 325; played in Mongolia, 41, 350; playing for Tsar, 119; Pleyel comparison, 64; Les Preludes, 237; quoted, vii, 6; Russian tour, 26, 255; Tchaikovsky encounter, 41; ‘Unstern’, 281; Vera’s playing, 261, 263; view of Field’s performances, 351
Littledale, St George, 178, 297; Lotar-Shevchenko, Vera, 260–6, 263, 270–3, 308
Lourié, Arthur, 155n
Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 147, 156
Lundstrem, Igor, 194–5
Lundstrem, Oleg, 194–5, 200
Lushnikov, Aleksei, 98, 100, 102–3
Lushnikov, Klavdia, 98, 99–100
Lushnikov family, 98, 98–100, 101, 102–3
Lvov, Prince, 164
Lyapunov, Alexei, 264, 272
Magadan: city, 223, 228, 230–2; convict town, 223, 224, 232; grand piano, 227, 228, 229, 308; journey to, 224–5, 232, 333; Kawai grand piano, 231–2; Philharmonic Hall, 231; Red October upright, 229; search for pianos, 226; Theatre, 225, 227–30, 228, 231; Wallace’s visit, 225
Makushin, Pyotr, 121–4, 122
Mao Zedong, 199, 200
Maria, Grand Duchess, 157, 158, 173
Maria Feodorovna, Empress consort, 60, 62, 241
Marschall, Andreas, piano, 88
Marsden, Kate, 310–12, 311
Marx, Karl, 93
Mason, Daniel, 33–4
Matania, Edoardo, 91
Matsuev, Denis, 66–7, 249, 285
Matua Island, 319
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 155, 168
Meares, Cecil, 130–1
Medny Island, 305–6, 314, 314–16
Mickiewicz, Adam, 113
Mirny, 17, 230n
Mitchell, Elsie, 342
Modigliani, Amedeo, 325–6
Morozova, Boyarina, 240, 241
Moscow: architecture, 41, 75; Battle (1941), 251; Bolshoi Orchestra, 237; Bolshoi Theatre, 195, 202; collection of abandoned instruments, 50–1; Conservatory, 121, 226, 234; McDonald’s, 285; musical culture, 60, 65, 138–9; Napoleon’s invasion, 78; Philharmonic, 257; piano-making industry, 63, 255, 325; piano performances, 23; pianos, 28; protection of musical instruments, 28; public library, 122; religion, 75, 108; scientific institutions, 259; Tretyakov Gallery, 240, 241, 242, 243
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 62, 88, 332
Mravinsky, Yevgeny, 243–4, 245
Mühlbach pianos, 123, 260, 271–3, 278, 308
Mussorgsky, Modest, 119, 179
Nagaevo Bay, 222, 224, 230
Nanai people, 43, 50
Nansen, Fridtjof, 207–9, 352
Napoleon, 59, 78, 82
Nenets people: dress, 211; forest-dwellers, 342; language, 205, 213, 214, 215; music, 205, 211–12, 213–16, 351; Nansen’s encounter with, 208; protest movement, 206, 211; shamanism, 206, 211, 212–13, 220; Soviet acculturation, 205–6, 214; traditional way of life, 205, 210, 220
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