Playing with Fire

10

1960–1970

THE FINAL DECADE

Beauty does not belong to an aesthetic category, but to a spiritual, metaphysical category. It is the highest condition of everyday life, of existence.

Father Vsevolod Shpiller¹

Everything is magnificent in a person who is turned towards God.

Father Pavel Florensky²

Yudina’s final decade saw her achieve a lifelong dream, to welcome Stravinsky back to Russia and to play for him. It also brought humiliation, official opprobrium and illness. Banned once more from the concert platform, she used her time to contemplate and write about her extraordinary life.

Yudina’s ‘modernist’ crusade was initiated with a series of performances of Stravinsky and other contemporary composers. On 2 October 1960 at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire she first performed Krenek’s Second Sonata and Stravinsky’s 1924 Sonata, together with Prokofiev’s Fourth and Shostakovich’s Second Sonata. An intrusion of Italian ‘gallant’ sonatas by Paradisi and Galuppi started the recital. A few days later she repeated the programme at the Leningrad House of Composers; Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s selected Preludes and Hindemith’s Third Sonata replaced Prokofiev and the Italians. Bogdanov-Berezovsky was enchanted: ‘All details of your performances are engraved in my memory. I carry them lovingly within me.’³ The young Leningrad composer, Boris Tishchenko, found himself ‘drawing parallels’ with Glenn Gould, who had reintroduced Krenek to Leningraders. ‘Later Maria Veniaminovna also played Webern’s Variations – here one could talk of “perpendiculars” – Gould’s performances were transparent and crystal-clear – Yudina’s active and protesting! [. . .] Altogether Yudina’s playing was categorical, convincing, penetrating, magnetic and hypnotic.’⁴ Tishchenko composed his second piano sonata under her influence. Although dedicated to her, Yudina never played it.

From Paris, Suvchinsky wrote with the latest news: he had been to the Leningrad Philharmonic’s concerts in the city. Their programmes (Rachmaninov and Kabalevsky) were awful, and Yevgeni Mravinsky was unworthy of this magnificent orchestra. ‘He stabbed and thundered his way through the unfortunate [Tchaikovsky Fifth] symphony, tearing it apart!’⁵ Suvchinsky was indignant to read Shostakovich’s interview in Pravda of 8 September, in which he stated that Stravinsky had reached a compositional impasse! ‘That’s like saying Pushkin wrote verse in Chukchi!’⁶ Stravinsky was in South America, conducting his own music; in Europe, Boulez had been invited to conduct Wagner’s Ring cycle at Bayreuth. For Boulez, such success as a conductor risked interfering with his compositional work.

Other things also interfered when Boulez signed the Manifeste des 121 – the so-called ‘Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the Algerian War’. ‘He is now banned from the Radio and all official concert platforms!’ wrote Suvchinsky. ‘While in principle I agree with him, it’s a blow to our musical activity.’⁷ Suvchinsky transmitted gossip about Jolivet taking Boulez to court:

Two years ago at a performance of Boulez’s music at the Domaine Musicale, Jolivet declared loudly, ‘If I was un Préfet de police, I would forbid such music.’ Boulez retorted loudly, ‘That’s not surprising, you’ve got the ugly mug of a sleuth!’ Jolivet, being a terrible coward, fell silent and vanished. This spring, his wife, a horrendous, bellicose lady who treats her husband like a wet rag, bumped into Boulez. She suggested to him they smooth over the incident. Mme Jolivet was wearing an enormous, unbelievably hideous hat. Boulez responded, in front of her husband and other witnesses, ‘When a person has a chamber pot on her head, what’s the use of speaking to her. I advise you to empty your brains into your hat and chuck them down the gutter!’ At this Mme Jolivet made for Boulez with her fists. They were separated – Jolivet stood frozen to the spot.⁸

Fortunately, none of this disrupted the negotiations for Yudina’s Paris concert, Suvchinsky assured her. Jolivet had talked to Kabalevsky, who stated ‘that the Soviet Union of Composers would not hinder your visit to Paris’.⁹ Jolivet wrote himself, advising Yudina to contact the French cultural attaché in Moscow.¹⁰ However, in late November the Soviet Embassy in Paris notified the Concerts Pasdeloup that ‘due to her enormous workload, Mme Joudine [sic] will be unable to perform at the concert on 29 January 1961.’ Suvchinsky was downcast, for he had just persuaded Radio France to offer Yudina two recital programmes. Jolivet was in despair, and Yudina was furious. Suvchinsky and Jolivet devised a new plan, whereby she would come to Paris sometime in May to play the latter’s concerto with the Orchestre National de France, which was considerably better than the Pasdeloup orchestra.

Over the next months, Yudina’s enthusiasm for Stravinsky grew in proportion to her disillusionment with Jolivet. She never got to Paris. No other Soviet instrumentalist did so much to publicize Stravinsky’s works. As she explained to the composer, ‘I am playing your music as often and as well as possible, so as to encourage others to do likewise. If needed, I will instruct other performers as best I can, so they may approach the truth as closely as possible. Soon I will have mastered your Serenade. Mon Dieu, quelle Musique!’¹¹

Yudina gave the first Soviet performance since the late 1920s of the Serenade on 25 December at the Gnesins’ Institute. Her recital should have opened with Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur L’enfant-Jésus, but the censor rejected the work for its religious title. She substituted Messiaen with Mozart’s D minor Fantasia (in her view, it was no less spiritual), followed by Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s Preludes before Stravinsky’s Serenade. The second half of the concert was shared with her favourite partners Derevyanko and Drozdova, performing (respectively) Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Hindemith’s Sonata for Two Pianos. On 29 December they repeated a modified version of the programme in Leningrad’s new Concert Hall near the Finland Station.

In her first letter to Stravinsky, Yudina had told him, ‘It was rumoured during Bernstein’s Moscow visit that you would return as a guest to your country of birth. I was seized with such joy!’ Stravinsky was taken aback. ‘To come as a guest – to one’s country of birth?’ he wrote in the margins of the letter. She had touched the émigré Russian’s sore point, the inevitable tragedy of being deprived of a homeland. For his part, Stravinsky had also transgressed when he wrote saying he counted on seeing Yudina soon in Paris. How little these émigré Russians understood of a Soviet citizen’s non-existent rights to travel, she complained. Her reply of 28 November, reputedly forty pages in length (most of which are lost), is said to have taken Stravinsky several days to read, and touched on many themes from Sofia, the embodiment of wisdom, to her hopes for his visit – ‘Ah, Igor Fyodorovich, you would receive such enormous recognition here – and more.’¹²

Yudina undoubtedly played a significant role in Stravinsky’s decision to celebrate his eightieth year in Soviet Russia. On 16 January 1961 he replied to her letter – her performances of his music gave him great joy. ‘I see you are not just interested in Firebird and Petrushka, which until recently were branded as decadent. I would like to come to you this year, but it won’t work out. I have too many engagements which I cannot not fulfil.’¹³

Yudina for her part was also fulfilling engagements. Despite the ban on appearing at the Leningrad Philharmonia, she and Fyodor Druzhinin gave a recital at the Small Hall on 10 February 1961. Acting as ‘accompanist’, she played sonatas by Schubert, Honegger, Hindemith and Volkonsky. In March, Yudina was to give her first performances of Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta – Fantasie Ricercata. Because of ill health she postponed the concert until 6 May. Most of the programme was with two pianos, performing Bach Contrapuncti from The Art of Fugue with Volkonsky, Hindemith’s Sonata with Drozdova, and with Derevyanko, Ruslan Nikulin and Valentin Snegirev their first performance of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. ‘The Bartók required an incredible amount of preparation – some forty rehearsals,’ Derevyanko recalled. ‘We rehearsed until ready to drop – often until 2 a.m. Yudina was very demanding!’¹⁴ Each rehearsal cost her six roubles, for she herself paid for the hire and transport of the percussion instruments.

Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta provoked the audience’s wildest applause. Yudina told Arvo Pärt that ‘although [Volkonsky] did not write it for me, Musica Stricta seems to have been composed for me, and I am extremely flattered by his dedication’.¹⁵ Altogether it was ‘a miracle!’ The programme was repeated twice in Leningrad. At the second concert on 12 May at the House of Composers, Yudina and Drozdova gave the first Russian performance of Stravinsky’s Sonata for Two Pianos. The Bartók went particularly well, Yudina boasted to Lyublinsky: ‘We were literally carried on high [. . .] given flowers and photographed by TASS. I am terribly pleased – our unbelievable amount of work was justified. We were overjoyed.’¹⁶

In May the Secretary of the Composers’ Union, Tikhon Khrennikov, set off for the USA at the head of a delegation of Soviet composers. In early June they attended the new Los Angeles Festival, where Stravinsky conducted a performance of his Symphony of Psalms. Only a few days later the composer attended a concert of Soviet works, including Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony and Khrennikov’s Violin Concerto of 1959. Robert Craft reported Stravinsky’s groans as he rushed out before the interval. Stravinsky told Suvchinsky that the music was ‘terrible trash’, but escape was impossible, ‘especially as the previous day all these Soviet musicians had paid me a visit, we entertained them, and they invited me to celebrate my eightieth birthday next year with them in Moscow (if I’m still alive)’.¹⁷

An account of this meeting published by the Soviet musicians (written by Boris Yarustovsky) confirmed Stravinsky’s wish to visit Soviet Russia.¹⁸ The composer skilfully evaded journalists’ questions such as ‘Why go to a country where copyright fees aren’t paid?’¹⁹ Igor Blazhkov gave Yudina an ‘authentic’ second-hand version of the story: ‘I.F. (Igor Fyodorovich) invited Khrennikov to his house and they had an unusually frank discussion. I.F. asked why his works were played so little in the USSR, and why he attracted such hostility. Khrennikov answered “we really love your work, but you are fierce in your criticisms of the USSR” [. . .] It ended up with I.F. crying on Khrennikov’s shoulder and telling him he dreamt of spending his eightieth birthday in Russia.’²⁰

Khrennikov was referring to an article in the February 1961 issue of Sovetskaya Kultura, which in turn referred to Stravinsky’s critical Washington Post interview. Yudina complained to Suvchinsky that Stravinsky’s statements were counter-productive. If he negated Soviet culture, she passionately defended it: ‘You know that in our democratization of culture there lies a great Truth. It’s a Christian Truth, only its creators don’t know the name of God [. . .] There is the Domain of the New Viennese School and Boulez, and no less the Domain of Shostakovich, the Domain of Festivals of Massed Songs!’²¹ Suvchinsky was sympathetic, but wisely advised against raising such matters with Igor Fyodorovich. ‘Instead, play his music in Russia as much as possible – always and everywhere.’²²

At the end of June, Yudina received Stravinsky’s letter telling of his invitation from the Union of Composers, signed by Khrennikov, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Shaporin and Kabalevsky. ‘I sent a telegram saying I would gladly be with them in a year’s time in Moscow. If all goes well, I will realize this great joy, which will be further intensified through meeting you.’²³ He gratefully acknowledged the gift of a rare volume of Balmont’s verse donated and inscribed by the poet’s daughter, containing Zvezdoliki (King of the Stars), which he had set for male chorus and orchestra in 1911. Stravinsky had mixed feelings about visiting Russia: ‘It’s scary to peer into my eightieth year, scary to think of the musical goings-on in Russia, scary the idea that they should celebrate “their venerable musician”, who happens to smile when he feels like throwing up.’²⁴

A sign of better times came with the staging in May 1961 of Malegot’s production of Petrushka in Leningrad – Stravinsky’s ballets had last been seen in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Although unable to attend the premiere, Yudina suggested to Malegot’s director, Boris Zagursky, she could ‘review’ a performance for Stravinsky and additionally mount an exhibition on Stravinsky’s creative life. He accepted both proposals. When Yudina finally attended Petrushka on 16 July it proved a disappointment – the theatre was on tour in Australia, and the second cast didn’t impress: ‘The stage seemed far too empty for the festive Maslenitsa (Shrovetide Fair), and there was a similar dearth of strings in the orchestra and lack of virtuoso wind players.’²⁵ She waited to write to Stravinsky.

Yudina continued her Beethoven exploration throughout 1961. On 15 May she played a whole recital with the ‘Appassionata’ and Ops. 101 and 109, as well as the ‘Eroica’ Variations Op. 35. She had recorded the latter in January as well as the 12 Variations on a Russian Dance WoO 80. Now came the turn of Beethoven’s last work for piano, the 33 Variations on a Theme of Diabelli Op. 120 – that ‘Mikro-Makro Kosmos!’²⁶ On 30 May Yudina started the Diabelli recording. Later that day she travelled down to Peredelkino with Pasternak’s son, Leonid (Lyonya), to mark the first anniversary of Pasternak’s death. ‘Here, at the poet’s graveside, crowds of people had gathered of all ages, predominantly the young – there was a sea of flowers. All were silent or spoke in whispers. As night fell, they started reading poetry, by the light of the full moon!’²⁷ The anniversary of Pasternak’s death became an annual event at Peredelkino, which Yudina observed with recitations by his graveside of his verse or readings from the Gospels.

In June Yudina was back in the recording studios, recording Debussy’s Cello Sonata with Natalia Shakhovskaya and completing the Diabelli Variations. Her next project was recording Stravinsky’s Sonata and Serenade – ‘I’ve lived to see the day!’ she exclaimed.²⁸ However, the initial session on 10 July was disastrous. Amplified noise from a reception at the Yugoslav Embassy swamped the neighbouring Gnesins’ Institute Hall, in use as a studio. Additionally, Yudina complained, the premises smelt overpoweringly of naphthalene. ‘Furthermore, both pianos have gone out of tune [. . .] making it impossible to record such transparent music as Stravinsky’s.’²⁹ Yudina informed the Melodiya Studios that she would wait for the Conservatoire halls to become available, and she demanded that the recording should be in stereo (a novelty). She needed to consult Stravinsky on various details but was unable to do so before embarking on the recording, just before the New Year.

Only later did she discover that the printed scores of Stravinsky’s Sonata and Serenade contained errors. Yudina was distraught – how could the fastidious Igor Fyodorovich permit such misprints? Stravinsky passed on a message via Suvchinsky: ‘A good musician knows everything and can play with misprints, it’s not important.’³⁰ It transpired that Stravinsky was more disturbed by stylistic discrepancies and her fast tempi in the outer movements. Yudina admitted to playing quicker than the metronome markings. ‘Yudina often took it upon herself to override a composer’s instructions and to effect quasi-compositorial decisions, which only someone of her calibre has the right to,’³¹ noted the pianist and writer Susan Bradshaw. Yudina’s version of the Serenade’s final Andante absolutely convinces as a flowing allegretto, while the extremely slow speed of the Sonata’s second movement suggested a semiquaver – rather than a crotchet – pulse.

In July 1961 Yudina attended London’s Royal Ballet production of Firebird in Moscow and fell in love with the work. It was to be the second (after Petrushka) of Malegot’s triple bill of Stravinsky’s ballets, and at Yudina’s prompting Orpheus (1948) was chosen as the third – a first Soviet performance! The exhibition about Stravinsky’s life was scheduled to coincide with the composer’s visit at the end of May 1962. Yudina had accepted curatorship because of her direct contact with Stravinsky and having access to unique material. Back in August 1961, Suvchinsky had sent her Stravinsky and Robert Craft’s Dialogues, which she had devoured impatiently. She proposed to the Leningrad journal Sovetskaya Muzyka that it should be translated and published. ‘I’ll lend them my copy on condition they don’t scold Webern, Robert Craft or dodecaphonic music.’³²

Yudina’s summer of 1961 was devoted to her family. Her sister Anna came to stay to escape the city’s oppressive heat. They got on each other’s nerves. ‘Anna is ill, weak, capricious and stubborn, altogether unfortunate – it’s difficult to find the right approach to her.’³³ And Anna abhorred Maria’s chaotic lifestyle. Her room ‘overflowed with books and scores from Paris and the USA’. Yet she possessed no decent clothes – not even essential underwear. Maria’s ‘debts, taxis, worries, secretaries’ were incomprehensible to Anna, while Anna’s scorn of her fifteen-year-old cat Nellichka was highly distressing. Yudina exclaimed, ‘I have no intention of chasing her away at the end of her distinguished cat’s life.’³⁴ Nelli had given birth to more than a hundred kittens, Yudina was proud to tell, and shared her desk, food and bed.

On 31 July news came of her eldest sister Flora’s sudden death in an accident in Bogoroditsk, a small mining town near Tula, where she had worked as a doctor. For Yudina, Flora’s funeral was as moving as Pasternak’s. Her former patients ‘prayed openly, not caring if they were observed. The miners and her doctor-colleagues carried her coffin for two kilometres to the cemetery, where there were many heartfelt speeches!’³⁵ A month later Yudina was burying her former classmate, the legendary pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, recently in semi-disgrace. Acknowledging him as ‘great, honest, and true to himself in his own world’, she wept copiously and at his funeral played Saltykov’s arrangement of Mozart’s Lacrimosa.

At the end of August, Suvchinsky wrote proposing that Yudina should go to Helsinki, as Stravinsky would be there between 10 and 14 September: ‘I.F. said he would be terribly happy to see you.’³⁶ Yudina expressed astonishment to Blazhkov – Suvchinsky’s letter was ‘naïve to the point of madness!’³⁷ Instead, she borrowed money to send a telegram to Stravinsky in Helsinki. It was returned, however, for he had already left! She borrowed more money to telegraph Paris. She upbraided Suvchinsky for his tactlessness: ‘Excuse me, this was rubbing salt in the wound. Or as they say, dear Pyotr Petrovich, “your elbow may be close, but you cannot bite it!” Surely you didn’t think I could just up sticks and go to Helsinki?’³⁸ Suvchinsky had assumed – wrongly – that Shostakovich could easily help Yudina gain permission to travel. ‘You and you alone could help Igor Fyodorovich resolve the many questions he has.’³⁹ Suvchinsky also overestimated the time needed to obtain an exit visa! Stravinsky better understood the realities when he protested: ‘Nice people!? This is the country those Soviet obscurantists want to invite me to! But they wouldn’t give Yudina a passport to come and see me in Helsinki. Thank you. I shan’t go there.’⁴⁰

For her part Yudina worried about her appearance. ‘Even if I was entitled to go to Helsinki for one day, I am so badly dressed that it’s unthinkable!’⁴¹ Yet when Suvchinsky and his wife sent her a sartorial New Year present, Yudina thanked them ‘for the luxurious gloves and scarves – for me, the old work-horse! Such elegance doesn’t suit me. Please never again spend money on such things [. . .] they don’t like me – the dislike is mutual!’⁴²

In late July Blazhkov received a letter from Stockhausen expressing the wish to perform in Moscow with the pianist David Tudor and percussionist Christoph Caskel. Blazhkov asked Yudina to help. She immediately contacted Shostakovich, who instructed Stockhausen to approach him officially through the Composers’ Union. Stockhausen wrote to Yudina, explaining his convictions: ‘The feeling never forsakes me that my music can acquire a homeland in Russia [. . .] A deep kinship links me to people like you, in whom tenderness and steadfastness are closely intertwined [. . .] It would be the devil’s doing, if we cannot slowly and patiently transform the frost and bestial hate between peoples into love.’⁴³

Stockhausen’s visit never materialized; however, in September it was rumoured that Messiaen was in Moscow. Yudina recalled: ‘Young musicians rushed around in agitation, and we kept ringing the Union of Composers!’⁴⁴ It proved a false alarm! However, another mythical composer did visit – Varèse’s colleague Vladimir Usachevsky, pioneer of electronic music. He and Yudina met and indulged in long discussions. She helped ‘smuggle’ him into the Scriabin Museum, which had been closed after the ceiling collapsed. ‘He made a serious impression,’ she informed Suvchinsky. Usachevsky was added to her list of correspondents who sent journals and scores, as did the ‘sympathetic’ German musicologist, Fred Prieberg, a specialist in the Nazis’ repression of music.

Nearer to home Yudina discovered (through Blazhkov) the Kiev composers Valentin Silvestrov and Leonid Grabovsky, both students of Boris Lyatoshinsky. And through her conductor friend, Roman Matsov, Yudina learnt of a young Estonian composer and sound engineer, Arvo Pärt. Without having heard a note of his music, Yudina became convinced of his importance – ‘one day he will become like Shostakovich’.⁴⁵ She informed him of her overwhelming desire ‘to play for people in the language and tensions of our epoch [. . .] This is why, dear Arvo Pärt, I strove and still strive to see, hear and play your music.’⁴⁶

At the end of October Yudina was scheduled to perform Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with Matsov. As she confessed to Pärt, ‘when I was rushing down to Tallinn [. . .] I had a premonition of impending catastrophe – then the accident occurred – three splashes in my adored concerto by the adored Stravinsky’. She hoped he would obliterate these errors from his sensitive ‘tonmeister’s ears!’⁴⁷ Suvchinsky consoled her by telling her of Stravinsky’s own memory lapse at the first performance. In his view, the second movement contained the most tragic music that Stravinsky had ever composed. ‘You will agree that Stravinsky is one of the rare composers who has the right to write religious music. In some mysterious way he addresses “The Other World”. It’s not a question of encapsulating emotions of religious character, but a genuine fact, when the Divine and musical creators come face to face.’⁴⁸

At a solo recital on 19 November at Leningrad’s Small Hall of the Philharmonia Yudina placed Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations next to Stravinsky and Krenek. She also performed Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta and Webern’s Variations for the first time to wild acclaim, and had to repeat both the Volkonsky and Webern. Yudina’s hands were sore – she had cut her fingers opening a tin of cat food, and she couldn’t play anymore. The audience wouldn’t let her go – so she recited verse for her encore. As she told Lyublinsky, the ‘lovely, sympathetic Irina Semyonova (the hall administrator) was frightened to death when I read two unpublished poems by Zabolotsky and Pasternak!’⁴⁹ Unpublished verse was by implication censored. While some welcomed Yudina’s recitations, others criticized her for bringing trouble on herself and others. This foray into poetry led to a complete severance of her relations with the Leningrad Philharmonia.

Yudina was to encounter similar difficulties in Moscow, where she also read poetry in her encores. This was more acceptable in the informal surroundings of the Scriabin Museum, where she performed concerts in memory of Yavorsky on 28 November and 17 December, and astonished her listeners with poems by Pasternak and Zabolotsky as well as Webern’s Variations and Stravinsky’s Serenade. An unrepentant Yudina accepted the consequences: ‘With the reading of Zabolotsky’s poem “Yesterday Reflecting Upon Death” and Pasternak’s poem “Lessons of English” a stop has been put to my concert life.’ She wished this to be recorded in the archives, ‘so future generations understand Soviet Cultural History’.⁵⁰

In the Soviet Union, Stravinsky’s eightieth birthday celebrations started with a concert of his works at the Leningrad House of Composers on 10 January 1962. Yudina put together the programme herself, and played in two works, the Concerto for Two Pianos with Derevyanko and the Duo Concertante with the violinist Viktor Pikayzen. The Septet of 1953, the Elegy for viola solo, the Pribaoutki, and the neo-classical Octet for winds (1923/53) were performed by Leningrad musicians. The hall was packed and the concert declared a triumph,⁵¹ even if Yudina was struggling on her feet with double pneumonia. ‘Sweat poured from me as if I was working in open fields in July or had typhoid fever [. . .] All this in honour of Igor Fyodorovich!’⁵²

On 27 January Yudina performed Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds in Moscow with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky with the BSO [Radio Orchestra] with ‘their wonderful winds’. The performance was transmitted on radio, and a studio recording for Melodiya was made with the same forces on 5 and 6 May. Shortly afterwards, Yudina and Pikayzen recorded the Duo Concertante, which she defined as ‘unrivalled in difficulties in terms of balance and texture’.⁵³ On 9 February she participated in a concert of Volkonsky’s works, where his Suite of Mirrors with García Lorca texts was premiered. Yudina played Musica Stricta and was specifically asked not to give encores that evening: ‘I agreed – I didn’t want to complicate Volkonsky’s life.’⁵⁴ Notwithstanding its ‘brilliant triumph’, his Suite of Mirrors was proscribed, and Volkonsky’s works were no longer performed.

On 22 February Yudina was in Lvov (L’viv) performing Stravinsky’s Sonatas for one and for two pianos – the latter with Drozdova, and three days later Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with Matsov. Her return journey took her through Kiev where she finally met Blazhkov and his wife Galya Mokreyeva. She wrote to him of the strong impression this brief meeting made, ‘particularly for the sadness which dominated your image, behaviour, and sparse words, dear Igor Ivanovich’.⁵⁵ Knowing how reactionary Kiev was, Yudina tried to get Blazhkov work outside it. She invited him to conduct Hindemith’s Four Temperaments for piano and strings, which she planned to perform and record. But by mid-June, as Yudina informed Suvchinsky, ‘our Igor Blazhkov and his wife Galya have been deprived of work – because of Galya’s article [on young Ukrainian composers] in the Polish journal Ruch muzyczny, and their presumed advocacy of “avant-garde music”’.⁵⁶ Blazhkov could only conduct in provincial towns, Mokreyeva was dismissed from her teaching job. Yudina convinced them to move to Leningrad, where Blazhkov found work at Malegot and by the autumn of 1964 was working as Mravinsky’s assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mokreyeva enrolled at the Leningrad Conservatoire to write her doctoral thesis on Stravinsky.

After various recitals and a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, ‘Emperor’, Piano Concerto in Yaroslavl with Yuri Aranovich (a very talented conductor, although ‘retrograde in choice of repertoire!’), Yudina could devote herself to creating the Stravinsky exhibition. In the autumn of 1961, in Leningrad, she had discovered Stravinsky’s niece, Kseniya, daughter of his deceased brother, Yuri. Kseniya had last communicated with Stravinsky in 1947, the year before her mother’s death. She now wrote to Uncle Igor in November 1961: ‘We still live on Kruykov Canal but in the apartment that belonged to [the conductor] Napravnik, just opposite your family’s home.’⁵⁷ Kseniya helped Yudina with the exhibition through contributing material from the family archive.

On 12 March Suvchinsky wrote to Yudina, suggesting Stravinsky’s Russian visit should be postponed until his eightieth birthday celebrations were over. ‘Igor Fyodorovich has become very nervous and shows no restraint in his judgements or conversations. His view is: I want to see Yudina and young people, but my invitation is from officials, so I won’t be allowed to see them. I have no wish to argue with these musical “obscurantists”.’⁵⁸ Only now did Suvchinsky understand Yudina’s problematic relationship with the Union of Composers. ‘How can Stravinsky be divided with official Soviet composers?’ he wrote. ‘Remember that I.F. despite his apparent rationality does not possess an intellectual nature. He is emotional and sensitive. It takes nothing to offend him, and that puts an end to any possible discourse.’⁵⁹ Nevertheless by late March, Stravinsky’s visit had been confirmed for the second half of September. Suvchinsky informed Yudina, ‘it is due to you that he understands the full significance of this journey’.⁶⁰

In the meantime, the Stravinsky triple bill was premiered at Malegot on 29 March 1962. Yudina wrote to Suvchinsky, ‘I am as exhausted as if I had danced the roles of Firebird, Kashchei and the Angel of Death myself.’ She found Petrushka over solid, and Orpheus still unready – Firebird was the most promising. Yudina expounded her criticisms concerning ‘the dullness of orchestral phrasing, the lack of fantasy in the choreography, and unsuitable costumes’.⁶¹ The co-creator of the Exhibition, Kira Liephart, agreed that the Firebird’s finale ‘was static, ugly and dark until the last moment, by which time the audience has forgotten what preceded it’.⁶² Yudina had contacted the choreographer Georges Balanchine in New York through his brother, the composer Andro Balanchivadze, her former piano student from Leningrad days. Balanchine duly sent photos of his productions of Orpheus, Agon and Monumentum pro Gesualdo. Zagursky, Malegot’s director, was infinitely grateful to Yudina: ‘If it were not for you, we would never have staged Orpheus. Whatever the production’s shortcomings, we now have some inkling of Stravinsky’s later compositions.’⁶³ He assured her that new and better sets and costumes were being commissioned for Firebird from Tatiana Bruni.

On 30 April Yudina wrote to Stravinsky, rejoicing that he had overcome his hesitations. His ‘non-arrival’ would have caused misery to Soviet Russians and implied ‘a slithering backwards’. Yudina told him how she adored Firebird: ‘Even if it’s an early composition, it is eternal. This is often true of creative genius; in Bach’s cantatas, one can be completely overwhelmed by “Christ lag in Todesbanden” (Cantata no. 4) and prefer it to Actus Tragicus (Cantata no. 106). Over time, one perceives genius in different dimensions – in Pasternak’s words: “You are hostage to Eternity/And captive to time.’’’⁶⁴ Yudina hastened to reassure Stravinsky that ‘by the time of your arrival in Moscow the Malegot productions will have improved’.⁶⁵

In July Yudina learnt that she was not allowed to travel to Poland, where she had been invited to the Warsaw Autumn Festival. She held Volkonsky responsible: by sending the score of Musica Stricta to the festival committee, he implied another pianist could perform ‘her piece’.⁶⁶ She was disappointed not to meet Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and other of her ‘modernist’ correspondents. On the other hand, it gave her more time to prepare the Malegot exhibition, which with Zagursky’s retirement had been reduced to a few stands illustrating Stravinsky’s ballets and operas. Yudina had in mind a grandiose Le Corbusier-type ‘scenario’, representing Stravinsky throughout his lifetime. At this point, Yevgeniya Vykhodtseva, director of the Leningrad House of Composers, agreed to take on the exhibition to coincide with Stravinsky’s visit to Leningrad. Yudina submitted a detailed plan of the exhibits – scores, photographs, letters, reproductions of relevant works of art and of opera and ballet productions. She created the accompanying text exclusively from the composer’s own words, using Chronicle of a Life and Dialogues. The exhibits were to be arranged chronologically, occupying twelve glass cases in the main hall, and two in the second room. Extra material would be mounted on stands and the walls.

Work was interrupted for a three-week vacation in August with her half-sister Vera’s small daughters Anya and Lyusya at a seaside resort in Latvia. She adored her nieces but looking after them was a responsibility; ‘dangers abounded everywhere – the sea, boats on the river, unknown people [. . .] and answering for their outward appearance – children will get wet and dirty’.⁶⁷ Now under pressure of time, Yudina spent September assembling vast amounts of material for the exhibition. She complained that her contract hadn’t provided an adequate expense budget, and Vykhodtseva treated her ‘like a flunkey’.⁶⁸ Penniless as usual, Yudina had to borrow money to cover travel costs between Moscow and Leningrad, make international phone calls, buy and post expensive Soviet art books in exchange for Stravinsky scores, photos and catalogues.

Until the very eve of departure on 21 September, Stravinsky hesitated about his Soviet trip. In Robert Craft’s words, ‘Yudina was more responsible than any other individual for Stravinsky’s decision to go to the USSR. In the tense days in Paris just before the trip he said again and again, “I can’t let Yudina down.”’⁶⁹ Crowds of musicians, artists and officials gathered at Sheremetyevo Airport to welcome Stravinsky, amongst them Tikhon Khrennikov, Karen Khachaturian, Tatiana Bruni-Balmont, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, as well as Yudina and Stravinsky’s niece, Kseniya. As the latter recalled nerves were on edge – the plane was thirty minutes late. ‘And now Igor Fyodorovich comes out of the aircraft smiling, stops on the gangway, takes off his hat and waves it in greeting. He’s wearing a black coat, dark glasses – behind him his wife, Vera Arturovna and Robert Craft.’ Kseniya was pushed forwards through a sea of journalists and photographers towards Stravinsky. ‘We embraced and kissed three times. I introduced Yudina and she fell heavily on her knees in front of him and started to kiss his hands. Uncle was frightfully embarrassed and tried to lift her up (she was a bulky woman!), and he himself kissed her hands.’⁷⁰ Craft observed the general excitement at this long-anticipated moment. ‘For Yudina it must fulfil a lifelong dream. That is why the atmosphere is like a child’s birthday party, why everyone is bursting with relief!’⁷¹

Yudina herself was in a feverish state of excitement, travelling back and forth four times between Leningrad and Moscow. During the days she attended several of the Moscow rehearsals for Stravinsky and Craft’s concerts, but was not included in the composer’s scheduled meetings or sightseeing tours. Khrennikov wanted to show off the country’s ‘new achievements’; Yudina’s proposed visits to Zagorsk^* and the Andrei Rublyov Museum in the restored Andronnikov Monastery smacked of religion and old Russia. An invitation to tea with Mikhail Alpatov, Lina Prokofieva and her son Oleg was likewise ignored. Robert Craft put it succinctly: ‘Yudina was a great nuisance to Khrennikov and company, and this was embarrassing for Stravinsky. Such passionate Christianity pouring out of a Jewish intellectual at the most unseemly moments, together with outspoken criticisms of the regime was awkward and incongruous beyond description.’⁷² Even when Stravinsky was taken to the Scriabin Museum to see the ANS electronic instrument,⁷³ Yudina was excluded. ‘Neither was there room for me in the car when they visited Archangelskoye,’ she lamented to Suvchinsky.⁷⁴

The Malegot triple bill was to take place at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, with its enormous, cavernous hall totally unsuited to ballet. There was a new inexperienced conductor in charge, and her beloved Orpheus (for which she felt responsible) was unrecognizable. Yudina was justifiably anxious, and devised a plot with Kseniya whereby Stravinsky would arrive late and miss Orpheus – the first item. The plan backfired, as Stravinsky got to the theatre well before Kseniya. Furthermore he preferred Orpheus to the other productions, even if it was musically turgid! The festive crowd scenes in Petrushka were reduced to minuscule proportions. Kseniya observed Stravinsky growing ever gloomier. When she asked what he thought about Petrushka, he retorted, ‘They should be ashamed. Why couldn’t they learn the piece properly? I understand that Orpheus is for them a new ballet, but Petrushka has been around for 50 years.’ Firebird produced an even worse impression – at the apotheosis, Ivan Tsarevich and the Tsarevna descended what appeared to be an aeroplane gangway, and ‘the wonderful ballerina Safronova as the Firebird looked like а tiny fluttering dragonfly. As soon as the last notes died away, Uncle got up and gasped – “Let me out of here, the quicker the better.”’⁷⁵ The concerts with orchestra were more successful. As a conductor, Stravinsky relished speaking Russian to an orchestra for the first time in his life! Indeed, to Craft’s astonishment Stravinsky seemed to get more Russian by the minute!

To the horrified Union of Composers’ officials, Yudina’s behaviour smacked of the pre-revolutionary Russia that Bolshevism had tried to eradicate. Kseniya observed, ‘every time she met him, Yudina tried to kiss Uncle’s hand. This wasn’t just being eccentric – she was a person way ahead of her times in art, but in displaying her feelings and adoration she was a daughter of her age.’⁷⁶ Yudina in turn was frustrated by Khrennikov’s entourage – Karen Khachaturian, admittedly always affable, was in constant attendance. On the two occasions she visited Stravinsky at his hotel suite in Moscow, her attempts to start a serious conversation got nowhere.

On 4 October Stravinsky and his party flew to Leningrad – an emotional homecoming to the city where he had spent the first thirty years of his life. Yudina was frantically busy, rehearsing the Septet and getting the exhibition ready – she and her collaborators finished mounting it literally half an hour before the opening on 6 October. Five hundred guests came to view the Stravinskyana, which filled walls and glass cases in several rooms. Craft saw the occasion ‘as Yudina’s night of glory. She escorts Igor Stravinsky through the exhibit, listens to the Octet sitting by his side, receives him “humbly” on stage at the end.’⁷⁷ The Conservatoire students performing the Octet were ‘excellent, but their tempi erratic and the Octet finale is played faster than we ever supposed possible [. . .] For the Septet Yudina steps forward to the piano, an instrument she plays with skill and control, although the music, the Gigue anyway, makes little sense here and cannot have pleased the audience, no matter how earnest their applause [. . .] Her own stage behaviour might have been learned from Klemperer. She will not bow or smile and our most energetic applause is acknowledged by a trifling nod.’ Craft somewhat cruelly compared Yudina’s profile to ‘Bach without his wig. Full face in the street with her cane and handbag, from which she is forever pulling books, jars of honey, sweets, poems by Pasternak – she looks like (and is) a Doctor of Philosophy.’⁷⁸

The Leningrad Composers’ Union offered Stravinsky a unique possibility of meeting their young composers in the Red Salon of the Philharmonic’s Grand Hall. Boris Tishchenko, a postgraduate student of Shostakovich, recalled: ‘As people were gathering, Yudina’s vast figure could be seen moving through the crowd. She trod on Gusin, the chief editor of the Soviet Composers’ publishing house and waved in front of his face a smallish book, loudly proclaiming: “This is a revelation – The Dialogues of Igor Fyodorovich with Craft! It is brilliant, and urgently needs to be published here.” At the time we read the Dialogues in [samizdat] copies typed out by enthusiasts. The book was indeed published, but eleven years later and then in truncated form.’⁷⁹

Stravinsky himself made an indelible impression. He started the meeting by saying, ‘I want to shake every young composer’s hand.’ He recounted stories of Debussy, his work with Ramuz on the Histoire du Soldat, and his early life in emigration. He spoke of dodecaphonic music and answered questions on Boulez and the serialization of components like rhythm and dynamics. Stravinsky recommended dodecaphonic technique as a discipline, explaining its role in musical development. When Yudina made a public plea for the publication of the Dialogues, Stravinsky raised himself from his armchair and proclaimed, ‘They will be translated!’ Yudina described to Suvchinsky how ‘Everyone was awestruck, myself included. At the end, when everybody had dispersed, I pronounced spiritus fiat ubi vult^* – I.F. smiled and answered “Ubi, ubi . . . in Leningrad!”’⁸⁰

Stravinsky’s concert at the Leningrad Philharmonic, a uniquely symbolic occasion, made an even more profound impression. Before conducting his works, Stravinsky turned to the audience, pointing to the back of the hall: ‘When I was very small, I came here with my mother and sat over there. And Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky came out to conduct his Sixth Symphony. It was his last concert ever.’⁸¹ These words encapsulated the intense concentration of Russia’s musical traditions.

The whole visit passed as in a delirium for Yudina – she only slept two hours every night. Immediately after the exhibition, she travelled overnight to Moscow, and next day performed Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with Matsov and the Radio Orchestra. She had hoped for more time with Stravinsky: ‘Once in Leningrad Igor Fyodorovich invited me to lunch, but there, and at the dinner after his Leningrad concert it was impossible to direct the discussion along essential lines.’ She quoted the words of a favourite proverb: ‘food flowed down the moustache without falling into the mouth!’⁸² Yet she described Stravinsky’s conversation to Fred Prieberg ‘as spiritual, full of humour, the unexpected and profound, an amazing fusion of the great and the touchingly childish’.⁸³

Yudina was at the airport with Igor Blazhkov to see the Stravinskys off on 11 October. This time they weren’t allowed to accompany the guests to the aircraft; Khrennikov pointedly asked for ‘people to be shooed away’. As soon as she could draw breath Yudina wrote to the Suvchinskys: ‘I am returning to life as if after typhoid fever, a stormy sea passage, or fantastic dreams from which one cannot be woken. Yes, it was the real, tangible Stravinsky, the great Master – he himself – the darling Igor Fyodorovich, witty, loving, such an old, close friend!’⁸⁴ Stravinsky as conductor impressed her; ‘his hands of genius stimulated artistic pride in the orchestral musicians’. Best of all was his Firebird in Leningrad. ‘Here he was at the height of his powers. Orpheus came alive at the first concert and was magnificent; yet at the rehearsals I.F. seemed more dead than alive.’⁸⁵ She had searched in vain for meaningful contact: ‘I.F. was surrounded by an enormous retinue, an impenetrable “barbed wire” barrier. Add to this a legion of photographers and journalists, lots of tedious, pushy people, phoney artists, women with bouquets and the worst kind of brash musicians with presumptuous, stupid questions.’⁸⁶ Stravinsky’s wife, Vera Arturovna, produced the impression of one ‘tired out and exasperated’ by the visit. Yudina confessed to Suvchinsky, ‘I was unable in all sincerity to come to love Vera A. We are so different.’⁸⁷ Robert Craft was ‘an abstract person’, whom Yudina dubbed ‘Mr. Number’. She valued his precision (and not much more) as a conductor. ‘I was alien to Number-Craft!’⁸⁸

A note of disillusionment – later to crystallize into a feeling of mortal offence – crept into this first account to Suvchinsky. She felt the exhibition had not been sufficiently appreciated and as she shouldered all the expenses herself, she now had massive debts to repay. The Stravinskys were showered with ‘ostentatious, garish objects, which produced in them a childish glee’.⁸⁹ Yudina gave what she could: homemade jam and honey, and a rare book or two from her library. Suvchinsky gently explained the nature of Stravinsky’s genius: ‘It is easy to love I.F. too much or too little. One must always exclude any psychology in relations with him. The very highest level of his creative personality, and the bewildering contradictions of his nature (seismically opposed in his susceptible perception of certain things, and complete paralysis in others) must condition one’s contacts with him. First and foremost he is to be loved as a miracle.’⁹⁰ Suvchinsky reassured Yudina that ‘I.F. was thrilled by his stay in Moscow and Leningrad. I have your photo with him and Lina Prokofieva [. . .] I.F. spoke with enormous fervour about your playing. “Her fingers are a miracle!”’⁹¹ Ultimately Yudina had to understand that the right conditions for ‘meaningful’ contact were impossible during an official tour.

Even before Stravinsky’s departure, the New York City Ballet and its founder, Georges Balanchine, had arrived in Moscow. Their visit occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which unfolded between 16 and 28 October. Despite the high level of international tension, Muscovites gave the warmest reception to Balanchine and his company. Yudina saw as many performances as possible – she was ‘mad about Balanchine’s productions of Prokofiev’s Prodigal Son and Bizet’s Symphony’ and loved Martha Graham’s choreography of Webern’s music – particularly the miraculous arrangement of Bach’s six-voiced Ricercar. She told Blazhkov that ‘Balanchine – the person and artist – is in his way as much a genius as Stravinsky.’⁹²

Yudina was now possessed by a wild dream of working for Balanchine’s company, and wrote offering her interpretations of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Schumann’s Kreisleriana or Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion as suitable subjects for choreography.⁹³ Yudina saw the Diabelli Variations ‘as a Synthesis [. . .] a mysterious mountain chain, The Milky Way.’⁹⁴ With its infinite variety and contrasts it constituted a ‘Universum’. Nevertheless some of the imagery she proposed hardly seemed conducive to choreography. Variation 14 (Grave e maestoso), for instance, was the Pergamon Altar: ‘Its bars like slabs of frieze, where horses’ hooves, tails, hair, shoulders, distorted by the horrors of battle spill over into each other.’ Then the C minor thirty-first Variation was Passion Music, followed by the E flat major fugue – a dazzling Gloria. In the final thirty-third Variation, the Minuet theme is transcended, becoming ‘a hymn to all living things Praising the Lord.’ Yudina reminds us ‘everything has been praised thirty-two times – this is the Amen.’⁹⁵ She didn’t mention the humour in the work, in which she herself revelled, as in the twenty-second Theme and Variation, with its reference to Leporello’s aria (Notte e giorno faticar) from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

It is not recorded whether Balanchine even considered her proposals, which in any case were totally unrealistic for a Soviet citizen labelled as ‘Nevyezdnaya’ (‘forbidden to leave’). All in all Yudina and Balanchine met a few times. She travelled to Leningrad to see more of his ballets, but without a spare kopeck was unable to follow him to Tbilisi, despite the possibility of concerts arranged by Andro Balanchivadze.

Before 1962 was out, Yudina was due to play Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon (1942–3) for speaker, piano and string quartet in Leningrad, and Hindemith’s Four Temperaments in Ordzhonikidze (the former Vladikavkaz). She herself postponed the Schoenberg concert, as she had found no adequate translation of the text based on Byron’s verse. She even asked Akhmatova to translate it, a request she made when they met again in Moscow. Yudina was not a devoted admirer of her poetry, but at this meeting ‘felt crushed by Akhmatova’s majesty, the force of her spirit and destiny’.⁹⁶

Yudina felt inspired that Hindemith’s Four Temperaments had been written for Balanchine. She learnt it in ten days, practising until her fingers were cracked and bandaged. However, the concert in Ordzhonikidze was cancelled because of bad weather conditions. In recompense she attended the premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony in Moscow, a vocal setting of Yevgeni Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar and other poems. Stunned by the composer’s ferocious indictment of anti-Semitism and people’s sufferings under Stalinist repression, Yudina immediately wrote to Suvchinsky: ‘Shostakovich has once more become close, our own kith and kin [. . .] He elevates Yevtushenko’s poems to enormous new heights, although in themselves they are marvellous in their rigour and universality [. . .] I rejoiced, and kissed Shostakovich’s hand, but he withdrew it; then we embraced as in old times. There is truth and absolute innovation of language here, just as with your Boulez, and there is truth in the archaic forms which encompass the highest human values.’⁹⁷ While understanding her point of view, Suvchinsky confessed that Shostakovich’s music drove him to despair: ‘He is both a hero and a victim,’ he wrote to Yudina. ‘All the fundamental problems in contemporary art and aesthetics are interwoven into his music and his fate.’⁹⁸

Yudina started to pen a letter to Shostakovich in 1963. After assuring him that ‘flattery and falsehood are not my particular sins’, she explained that ‘Kissing the hand that wrote the 13th Symphony was a Symbol of Love connecting the whole human race.’ Shostakovich’s unique ability to empathize with suffering deserved the gratitude ‘of those who died unable to endure torture, the Jews to whom you have always been metaphysically linked in a mysterious way, the Russian people’s endless Christian patience, which you narrate [through music], and with whom I am forever attached through the Church’. She thanked the composer ‘in the name of the late Pasternaks, Zabolotsky, the tormented and afflicted – Meyerhold, Mikhoels, Karsavin, Mandelstam, and the hundreds and thousands of nameless “Ivan Denisovichs” (one can never count them all) – of whom Pasternak said “they were tortured alive”. You yourself know this – they all live inside you. We are consumed in the pages of your score, which you have given to us, your contemporaries and to future generations.’ Yudina felt saddened that they had grown apart. ‘You presumably don’t wish to know or see me.’⁹⁹

At the end of January 1963 Yudina spent a congenial ten days in Tbilisi with her young colleagues Drozdova, Derevyanko, Snegirev and Nikulin, playing two-piano repertoire, including Bartók’s sonata for two pianos and percussion. She also performed recitals and Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds. Back in Moscow on 4 February, she played Brahms’ First Piano Concerto in a studio performance with Rozhdestvensky and the BSO (Radio Orchestra). She longed to perform it for a ‘live audience’. Such an opportunity arose in late May with the BSO and Matsov. She asked Alexei Lubimov to turn pages at the rehearsal. However, she felt so unwell that she was unable to perform that evening, despite entreaties from Matsov and Lubimov.¹⁰⁰ The Radio recording was transferred to Maria Grinberg.

Yudina’s next engagements took her to Khabarovsk, where she performed Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto with Matsov. Bad flying conditions caused delays; Yudina spent forty-eight hours stuck in Novosibirsk Airport. She arrived on 24 February just in time for an afternoon orchestral rehearsal, and then went straight to the concert. ‘Let others say how I played; I gave Khabarovsk musicians an excellent example of responsible professional behaviour.’¹⁰¹ At her solo recital, Yudina presented twentieth-century ‘classics’ – Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Hindemith. She met with students at the Khabarovsk Musical High School, an invitation accepted on condition she would not play, but only talk about contemporary music. She could hardly have foreseen such a shocking outcome – the director of the School, Comrade Mirsky, wrote an open letter of complaint, dated 7 March, to the newspaper Izvestiya, copied to the Ministry of Culture and signed by twenty-five high school teachers. Yudina was accused of anti-Soviet sentiment. She spoke ‘predominantly of foreign composers – Berg, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, calling them geniuses [. . .] There was no mention of Sviridov, whom the Soviet people had put forward for the Lenin Prize!’ She did not want to speak about Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony. Yudina named Volkonsky a genius but did not illustrate his music – no doubt she avoided playing ultramodern composers, ‘in order not to expose her extremely subjective views on contemporary art’.¹⁰² The invective continued in this vein for several pages. Her insinuation that Khabarovsk citizens were behind the times was insulting – it was a mere eight hours’ flight to Moscow, and they read the main newspapers on the same day! ‘We are united in our fundamental love for REALISTIC ART, in our wish to educate young musician-citizens to love the Motherland!’ Yudina’s greatest sin had been reciting Pasternak’s poems with ‘the ulterior aim to subvert Soviet youth, through promoting abstract art and sabotaging the realistic position of Soviet Art’.¹⁰³ These accusations were in sharp contrast with the lively discourse with her audience at her last Siberian concert on 28 February at Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where the subject of Fantasy was discussed – ‘not just Volkonsky’s Fantasia Ricercata, but creative imagination, cybernetics and cosmonauts’.¹⁰⁴

Back in Moscow, Yudina wrote to Alexander Kholodilin, head of the music section of the Ministry of Culture, denying Comrade Mirsky’s accusations. Yet she underestimated the negative impact of the Khabarovsk teachers’ letter. Now the state concert agencies, Mosconcert and Rossconcert, were instructed not to employ her, and Yudina was denied official concert platforms for the next three years.

This sudden removal from concert life coincided with Yudina’s move to her cooperative apartment on Rostovskaya Embankment across the river from the Kiev Station. She had chosen the flat on the top floor – the ninth, with ‘the sky over my head’. She would miss ‘the snow, the frost, the flame in the stove, the silence, the constellations’ at Solomennaya Storozhka.¹⁰⁵ The Khabarovsk denunciation left a festering wound: ‘I am at an all-time low, with no state assistance, without funds, a woman suffering serious illness as a result of her labours and her lack of material funds.’ At least she was not imprisoned or exiled – ‘This is no longer the fashion!’¹⁰⁶

Yudina’s time was divided between church attendance and playing concerts at Scientific Research centres, for literary events and at funerals. She got to know Moscow’s young ‘dodecaphonists’ – Edison Denisov and Nikolai Karetnikov. She played the former’s Variations (1961) before its official world premiere. Karetnikov, however, didn’t like her interpretation of his Lento Variations (1960) and asked for the Radio recording to be destroyed.¹⁰⁷ In October 1963 she met and was charmed by the avant-garde composer Luigi Nono when he visited Moscow. Although a convinced member of the Italian Communist Party, he found official Soviet music obnoxious. And in January 1967 at Denisov’s apartment she at last met Pierre Boulez, on tour in Moscow with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Yudina apparently monopolized the conversation – to the chagrin of Volkonsky, acting as interpreter between her and Boulez!

Fortunately throughout this period the Melodiya Studios were always open to Yudina. In 1960 a new recording producer, Valentin Skoblò, was allocated to her. He was warned she was a difficult artist, so was justifiably nervous when she arrived to record Shostakovich and Hindemith piano sonatas. Yudina sensed his anxiety, and claiming to be tired, spent the session putting Skoblò at his ease. In reality, he found Yudina easy to work with, despite her being totally uncompromising. She preferred using whole ‘takes’, performing whole movements with full emotional impact, repeating the process as often as needed. This system produced better results than ‘patching up’ errors.

Alexei Lubimov was one of two outstanding students of Anna Artobolevskaya at the Central Music School who got to know Yudina in his teens. Yudina responded to his insatiable curiosity about contemporary composers and music in general. He would turn pages for Yudina, run errands for her, befriended sick people at her behest, and gave a home to one of Nelli’s kittens. Yudina took him with her to meet Stravinsky at the airport, and lent him scores of contemporary music. Thus he copied out by hand Webern’s Variations (unavailable even in specialist libraries), and also made a copy of Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta, which he started performing with Yudina’s blessing. Soon Alexei was performing works by John Cage, Stockhausen and Boulez, which she had studied but never actually performed.

A few years later, the fourteen-year-old pianist Yevgeni Koroliov appeared at Yudina’s home at Artobolevskaya’s behest. She asked who his favourite composer was. When he answered ‘Bach’ she invited him to play for her regularly, while suggesting their meetings should remain ‘secret from everybody’. They both took delight in such complicity. Yudina was impressed with Yevgeni’s capacity for polyphonic comprehension and foresaw he would become a superlative Bach player. She was convinced that both Alexei and Yevgeni had a brilliant musical future, and in this she was not mistaken.

For Yudina, 1963 and 1964 proved to be years rich in recordings. Just before going to Khabarovsk, she recorded Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with her erstwhile partners. Her next LP was a Mozart programme – the sonatas in D major K.284 and A major K.331, the Adagio in B minor K.540 and the A minor Rondo K.511, both in intensely moving interpretations. In 1964 Yudina returned to Bartók, recording selected pieces from Books 5 and 6 of Mikrokosmos. She suggested to Lubimov dividing the task – each would record seven or eight pieces, and additionally the two-piano version of Chromatic Invention, no. 145. The issued LP excluded Alexei’s contribution except the Chromatic Invention. The same year Yudina recorded Berg’s Piano Sonata. Her interpretation attempted to provide unity to this expressionist work. But in so doing, she ignored the various sections within the one-movement construction and flattened out the tempo changes. She also fulfilled her promise to Jolivet, recording three pieces from the cycle Mana.

In 1965 she joined forces with the clarinettist Lev Mikhailov in recording Berg’s Four Pieces for clarinet and piano and Bartók’s Contrasts, where they were joined by the violinist Viktor Pikayzen. The same year she recorded both sets of Schubert Impromptus (Op. 90 and Op. 142) as well as Schubert – Liszt’s Am Meer in a dramatic and moving interpretation, and various of her beloved Brahms’ later piano pieces. Two major achievements in her discography date from 1967 – Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition and Bach’s Goldberg Variations BWV 988.

Yudina’s health now started to decline. On 24 November 1963 she was rushed to casualty with a double hernia of the intestine. Afterwards she wrote to Suvchinsky, ‘The operation took place at night under local anaesthetic. It lasted 3½ hours. Throughout I recited poetry to the four surgeons, and indulged in lively conversations to accompany the “score” of this difficult operation. This time I nearly didn’t pull through!’¹⁰⁸ She was amazed by the surgeons’ ‘virtuoso skills, the doctors’ and nurses’ devotion, worthy of “heroes and martyrs”’.¹⁰⁹ Surgery became a new passion of hers; through Suvchinsky she ordered specialized medical books from Paris, which she then translated into Russian for the doctors. During her six-week stay in hospital, Yudina read Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett and copied out poems by Pasternak and Zabolotsky for her new medic friends. She befriended a twenty-two-year-old girl, Tamara Andrukhovich, with chronic heart disease. Yudina appointed herself Tamara’s godmother and became involved in her care. When Tamara died four years later, Yudina arranged her funeral with all religious honours.

The critic Leonid Gakkel believed that Yudina’s impecunious existence was a relic of the ‘cultivated’ poverty of Petrograd in the 1920s.¹¹⁰ The now inbuilt habit of borrowing money to pay back ever-increasing debts caused a crisis in her relations with Mikhail Bakhtin. His wife Alyona declared that Yudina ‘had outlived her day’. They had a meeting in Moscow; afterwards Yudina was mortally offended: ‘I am overwhelmed by deep Rilkean sorrow, Mahlerian resignation, the silence of Mignon [. . .] All that we lived through together, where has it gone?’¹¹¹ If Alyona had led the attack, ‘Mikh Mikh’ had not risen to Yudina’s defence. ‘Why did you acquiesce silently as this Requiem was pronounced on me – in my living presence?’¹¹² The quarrel was resolved two years later, when in June 1964 Bakhtin sent a peace offering – his newly published book based on his thesis, François Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a wonderful inscription to Yudina. His subsequent money loan helped pay for the funeral of their mutual friend Boris Zalesky, who had died in July after a debilitating illness.

In late 1966, Yudina informed Suvchinsky, ‘The state of disgrace has been removed from me – for three and a half years I have had no real concert activity, although I played lots of unpaid concerts – for Khlebnikov, Favorsky and Akhmatova [. . .] I sold my books. I have worn the trainers, bought for 4 roubles to wear at the Hermitage bicentenary event, throughout the year, come rain come shine! They have become notorious.’¹¹³

Her rehabilitation started with an invitation to give some lectures at the Moscow Conservatoire in the spring of 1966. The young professor of piano, Vera Gornastaeva, was the initiator of this reconciliation, and assisted at a preliminary meeting with the Vice-Principal and Dean of the Piano Faculty, Mikhail Sokolov:

Yudina addressed herself exclusively to me. The Vice-Principal’s and Dean’s words didn’t enter her consciousness. In a kind of polyphonic Theatre of the Absurd all voices were incoherent. ‘We would like to agree the themes of the lecture recitals, and ask you to discuss only musical topics,’ the Vice-Principal said blandly. ‘Yes only music, nothing excessive, you understand,’ the Dean added. ‘And I always told your teacher Neuhaus, Thomas Mann was a false prophet!’ Yudina addressed me threateningly. ‘What do you mean, a false teacher?’ I mumbled in amazement. ‘Any deviation from the agreed themes could have unpleasant consequences,’ the Vice-Principal continued in a polite tone. ‘The main thing is to be absolutely specific, talk about musical and stylistic problems.’ ‘Thomas Mann is an Antichrist,’ Yudina thundered [. . .] ‘like Adrian Leverkühn he sold his soul to the devil – a teacher with a diabolical concept.’ The Dean interrupted, suggesting that Yudina analyse the programmed works. Leaving Thomas Mann aside, Yudina agreed: ‘I won’t repay your good action with a bad one.’¹¹⁴

The lecture series, entitled ‘Romanticism – Origins and Parallels’, was publicized chiefly by word of mouth. Nevertheless the Small Hall of the Conservatoire was brimful of students and musicians. As Bakhtin noted, Yudina upheld the Romantic tradition in her literary interpretation of music, rich in associations and imagery. And this despite the fact that her idols Bach, Stravinsky and Bartók, did not belong to the Romantic movement. For Yudina, Romanticism was a larger synthesis of literature, architecture, painting, philosophy and music, illuminated by the divine creative force. She told Bakhtin:

I spoke of some 80 names, from Orpheus to Alban Berg, with Goethe and Shakespeare at the centre – I read Blok’s and Pasternak’s brilliant analysis of Shakespeare’s tragedies [. . .] and Goethe on Nature and Eckermann’s Conversations [. . .] I unmasked Adorno’s helpless, flowery interpretation of Beethoven’s Op. 111. In compensation, I quoted parts of Phaedo, speaking of the Platonic realm of the world beyond the grave. And Dante’s Paradiso gave the answer to why there is no third movement in Op. 111 – after all everything has been said on earth, the action is transferred to a different sphere of reality. Professor Kretzschmar in Mann-Adorno’s Faustus reduces the last sonata to ‘those chains of trills!’ And then what? Is there nothing more to say? While I – with God’s help – tell them, ‘Trills a background? Yes – the golden background in ancient Russian icons – suspended beyond earthly existence.’¹¹⁵

In the distilled utterances of the late Brahms Intermezzi she spoke of the elegiac nature of sorrow as something ‘always exalted, purified from the everyday, accidental, subjective and hermetic, yet averting dejection, overcoming despair’. In the world of Russian songs, Pushkin was best represented through Shostakovich’s superb setting of Stanzas (from the Four Pushkin Romances). On such themes Yudina opened a window onto a world that had been denied to the younger generation after some forty years of ideological censorship.

In her last decade Yudina embarked on her literary activity. Her first publication in 1965 was her translation from German of Felix Weingartner’s Interpreting Beethoven Symphonies – work taken on for money. She collaborated, and argued, with the ‘unbearable’¹¹⁶ editor Pavel Vulfius, with whom she also started translating Stravinsky’s Diaries, something she felt it was her divine right to do. To Yudina’s mortification, the music publishers Muzgiz preferred to give the contract to another translator. Although she completed her translation of Joseph Szigeti’s memoirs, With Strings Attached, they were never published.

Yudina now wrote a series of reminiscences and articles, the first of which was dedicated to Shostakovich’s sixtieth birthday. She lamented that ‘cautious editors eliminated Tyutchev, Andrei Rublyov, Lenin, Michelangelo, some theoretical analysis, Yevtushenko, gratitude for “the Hymn to Russian Women” in the 13th Symphony’.¹¹⁷ It was published in 1965 in this mangled version. Early in 1969 she responded to Alexander Tvardovsky’s proposal to publish her memoirs in the renowned literary journal Novy Mir by sending a list of twenty-one subjects – a summa summarum of her extraordinary life. However, Tvardovsky himself was being harassed and was forced to resign as the journal’s chief editor in 1970. Nevertheless, Yudina did write memoirs of her most extraordinary friends, as well as penning such serious articles as ‘Six Intermezzi of Brahms’ and ‘Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition’. For the most part what she wrote was only published after her death or following the fall of the Soviet Union.

On 11 November 1966 Yudina made an official comeback to concert life with a recital at the Tchaikovsky Hall, playing Beethoven’s Op. 111, two sets of Schubert Impromptus and Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition. On 4 December a second recital in the same hall included Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Chopin’s 24 Preludes. The following year Yudina set about learning Bach’s Goldberg Variations aged sixty-eight, having been inspired by Andrei Volkonsky’s numerous performances. She first performed the work on 15 October at the Tchaikovsky Hall. Yudina marked in the margins of her score the association with the opening of Psalm 84: ‘How lovely is Your dwelling place, Lord Almighty.’ The Beatitudes, particularly ‘Blessed be the Pure in Heart’, provided the defining sentiment in her view, while the Trinity in its various guises determined Bach’s use of three voices throughout the work. Three was also the number of minor key variations, profound meditations on Christ’s crucifixion. The fifteenth Variation represented the Stations of the Cross – its G minor key associated in mood with the Bass aria ‘Komm süsses Kreuz’ from the St Matthew Passion, while images of Golgotha permeated the twenty-fifth Variation.

In May 1967 Yudina wrote to her dear friend VEES, saying she was considering an invitation from the Alma-Ata Institute of Arts, for a decently paid position involving six trips a year, each of ten days’ duration, teaching chamber music, giving lectures and concerts.¹¹⁸ She did not accept – it was now beyond her strength. On 7 February 1968 Lyublinsky died unexpectedly from a heart attack. A grief-stricken Yudina dedicated her next Moscow concert to his memory. In fact, the programme had already been chosen. She believed that ‘there is nothing random in serious events. One could not have invented a more suitable funereal offering, which reflected Lyublinsky’s tastes and illuminated our perception of Death. The grandiose Diabelli Variations [. . .] Shostakovich’s Second Sonata, which I performed at a concert attended by Lyublinsky during the Siege of Leningrad. And most importantly, the world premiere of Stravinsky’s Orpheus in Leopold Spinner’s piano arrangement.’¹¹⁹ Orpheus stood as a memorial to ‘a Hero’s demise and apotheosis’.

As Yudina was about to go on stage she told the Philharmonia’s director, Diza Kartysheva, that she was dedicating the concert to Lyublinsky’s memory. ‘That doesn’t concern us,’ Kartysheva replied. ‘Speaking is forbidden [. . .] Else I’ll lose my job.’¹²⁰ When Yudina finished playing, the audience remained glued to their seats: ‘I repeated the brilliant, indescribably bitter, wonderful Aria of Orpheus. Then when I came out for the last bow, I addressed the audience: “Today I gave my promise not to speak, although there are many things one should say.’’’ The mortified Kartysheva complained to Yudina’s secretary, Serafima Bromberg, ‘What she said was worse than what she didn’t say.’¹²¹

Yudina’s curiosity about people and literature remained unquenchable. She was happy to renew contact with Nadezhda Mandelstam, the poet’s widow, soon to move back from Pskov to Moscow. She also made ‘new friends’ amongst dissident writers, forced to publish in samizdat. She got to know Andrei Sinyavsky, and early in 1965 she wrote to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose literary works she admired so much. They met several times; Solzhenitsyn was shocked to learn that the disgraced Yudina was without concerts, and asked Shostakovich to use his influence on her behalf. Anna Akhmatova suggested that his wife Natalia Reshetovskaya, an amateur pianist, could ask Yudina for piano lessons, and in this way they developed a warm relationship.

Later Yudina got to know the young mathematician, Natalia Svetlova, who was to become Solzhenitsyn’s second wife. Svetlova came to see Yudina in 1967 on return from a trip to Poland, bearing greetings from a nun she had met. Now the Mother Superior of a convent outside Warsaw, the nun had enjoyed a friendship and shared spiritual interests with Yudina some fifty years earlier in Petrograd. When Yudina discovered that Natalia was not baptized she introduced her to Christianity and stood as her godmother. Natalia was a highly intelligent and interesting conversationalist, and also helped Yudina with practicalities like shopping. This friendship came to an abrupt end when Yudina discovered that Natalia was in a relationship with Solzhenitsyn, and was soon to bear his child. A complicated situation arose where the writer’s first wife Natalia refused to give Solzhenitsyn a divorce, and in this was manipulated by the KGB. Yudina was unaware of this side of events, but as divorce went against her Christian beliefs in this instance she reluctantly severed contacts with the writer and his new wife.¹²²

In these years Yudina became increasingly involved in the Church. Her confessor, Father Nikolai Golubtsev, died in September 1963. She now took moral guidance from many priests, including the brilliant preacher, arch-priest Vsevolod Shpiller, and Father Alexander Kulikov, both of whom served at the Nikolo-Kuznetsk Church in Moscow. She was also friendly with Father Nikolai Vedernikov, and Gerasim Prokofiev from Peredelkino. She revered the great religious thinker and preacher, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Anthony Bloom), whom she met on visits to Moscow from London. He in turn introduced her to Tatiana Fogd-Stoyanova, a Slavist living in Amsterdam who became a close friend. In 1966 she got to know Father Alexander Men’, a young, erudite priest with a remarkable personality. In his view Yudina resembled ‘an old German musician from another age [. . .] toothless, with ardent eyes burning in her large head, her pastor’s white collar and black robe [. . .] For all her eccentricities, she was uniquely intelligent, she understood everything from half a word, was interested in everything and “remained young in spirit”.’¹²³

Yudina told Father Men’ that through her playing she offered a theological understanding of the world, the spirituality ‘behind the face of music’. Yudina herself fostered the ambition to take a Master’s degree in divinity at the Moscow Theological Academy at Zagorsk, and contacted its director, Metropolitan Filaret. Filaret informed her that women were excluded from the courses. ‘My dearest, your knowledge will remain with you, your talents are well known. I invite you to perform for the Academy, play some Bach and reveal your perception of this great composer and Church-loving Christian.’¹²⁴ This was not at all what Yudina had in mind. She hoped to give a whole series of talks and concerts at the Academy. Her only lecture recital took place on 16 October 1966. ‘Almost all the professors, students and seminarians attended [. . .] I was terribly nervous before the talk, but once I started to speak, I felt inspired by the Divine spirit.’¹²⁵

Yudina was exceedingly offended that Filaret did not contact her again. In a letter to him she did not hide her disappointment: ‘On the exterior Maria Veniaminovna is like a bag of calamities, insults, defamations, constantly spat upon and repudiated.’ She proceeded to thank him – without intended irony – ‘for this Blow – which is perhaps the greatest Gift’.¹²⁶

On 18 May 1969 Yudina played her last ‘official’ concert in Moscow, performing Brahms’ Second Piano Quartet at the Small Hall of the Conservatoire with members of the Beethoven Quartet – they recorded it later that year. Her last full recital took place on 25 May in Tallinn, replacing a planned performance of Messiaen’s piano concerto Le Réveil des Oiseaux, which the conductor Matsov had to cancel. Yudina substituted with a marathon programme: Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition and Stravinsky – Spinner’s Orpheus, each a work of symbolical significance – starting with spiritual contemplation in Bach, moving through the greatest Russian national music, and ending with the beloved Greek classics.

A month later, as Yudina walked out of the Melodiya Studios, she was knocked down by a car and taken to hospital with multiple fractures. Her first thought was about the driver – he shouldn’t be prosecuted, it had all been her fault – although this was not the case. Three fingers of her right hand were seriously injured, but with therapy and willpower she regained partial use of them. As Drozdova observed, she managed to rearrange her fingerings and record Three Pieces from Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky in Kamensky’s version for piano in December 1969. At her last public appearance in October 1970, in memory of the artist Ivan Yefimov, she performed extracts from Stravinsky – Spinner’s Orpheus and Hindemith motets with the soprano Lydia Davydova.

In her last, seventy-first, year Yudina clung to what was dearest to her, the spiritual leaders in the Church and her family. Her sister Vera and her nieces were a source of joy, just as her elder sister Anna was a cause for worry. After an operation she moved in with Yudina; her death in March 1970 left Yudina desolate. As Anna was dying, Yudina baptized her (such action by a layman/woman was legitimate in extremity). At her funeral she conducted the Christian prayers (others claimed a Rabbi took the service), and later erected a cross by the graveside.

Yudina also made friends with her neighbours, the pathologist Leonid Tsypkin and his wife, agnostic Jews from Minsk. She invited them to concerts and attempted to bring them closer to the Christian Church. Tsypkin started writing in the 1970s, not seeking publication either officially or in samizdat. He was to achieve posthumous fame when his remarkable novel Summer in Baden Baden was published in the West, a week before his death. Amongst his other works a fictional story, ‘Ave Maria’, is a clinically observed and ‘truthful’ account of Yudina’s last illness and funeral. A new friend, the music teacher Oleg Chernikov, helped Yudina in her final move from her ninth-storey apartment to a one-room ground-floor flat in the same building on Rostovskaya Embankment, just three months before she died. He was struck by her poverty, and by the number of homeless cats she fed. Yudina didn’t bother to lock her front door – ‘I have nothing here to take.’ Her only possessions were books and scores – and the notorious park bench.¹²⁷ Once Chernikov sorted out an angry phone call demanding that Comrade Yudina pay outstanding fees for her piano hire – otherwise the instrument would be removed immediately.

Early in November 1970 Yudina was admitted to hospital. A diagnosis of diabetes had been given a couple of years back; she didn’t talk about it, and was unable to provide herself with the required regime – the special diet alone, she quipped, made it ‘an illness of the rich’. The wards were full and Yudina was placed in a corridor. Delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness, she received the last rites from Father Nikolai Vedernikov, while remaining comatose. When Olga Florenskaya-Trubachyova visited, Yudina had regained lucidity, greeting her with the words ‘And Death too is a Feat!’ She entrusted to Olga the exact details of how the funeral should be conducted and her body dressed. Then Yudina was moved to a comfortable ward and seemed to be improving. Her death on the evening of 19 November was caused by an error in medication.

At the Moscow Conservatoire a notice appeared on a piece of paper pinned to a poster advertising a concert of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto to be performed by Oleg Kagan, Natalia Gutman and Yelizaveta Leonskaya. A vigil was kept by Yudina’s body at the Nikola-Kuznetsk Church, where the Orthodox funeral rites were held on the morning of 24 November. Father Vsevolod Shpiller led the prayers, accompanied by a choir of three male voices. After the religious service, the body was moved to the vestibule of the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire for a civil ceremony at 1 p.m. Friends and colleagues – Viktor Pikayzen, Stanislav Neuhaus and Maria Grinberg – provided the music. Volkonsky’s group ‘Madrigal’ sang ancient liturgical works, and Sviatoslav Richter played Rachmaninov, recalling that Yudina had said this was the only composer he knew how to play! Representatives from the Conservatoire and the Gnesins’ Institute expressed their appreciation of Yudina’s work; no mention was made of her dismissals. As her nephew Yasha Nazarov remembered, the ceremony ended sensationally with the sudden appearance of a large wooden cross, held aloft as her open coffin was carried out of the building.¹²⁸

At the Vvedensky Cemetery (also known as ‘The German Cemetery’) Yudina was buried in the grave of her former fiancé, Kirill Saltykov, and his parents. At the entrance gates the mourners gathered and processed to the grave, quietly singing, with the priest at their head. Tired of waiting, the gravediggers had vanished; the priest started the burial service. When the gravediggers reappeared they were tipsy, and it was getting dark. The remnants of the church candles re-emerged from people’s pockets; the singing continued under the light of their flickering flames. As the coffin was lowered into the grave, it was obstructed by a protruding stone, which at first resisted the gravediggers’ attempts to remove it. Only when the mourners started singing Yudina’s favourite prayer did the stone crack and the coffin slide into place. The great artist could now rest in peace.

In his funeral oration Father Vsevolod Shpiller had addressed the concept of spiritual beauty, something central to Yudina’s understanding of life. Dostoevsky’s words ‘Beauty will save the world’¹²⁹ implied the healing role of Art. For Yudina, life had a musical form, where the Theme of Man is extended through Variations representing his passage from earthly to eternal life. Nowhere was this more evident than in Yudina’s interpretation of Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata Op. 111. Here the introductory Maestoso is a philosophical questioning, leading to the C minor Allegro con brio ed appassionato, associated with life’s drama – in her case relentlessly driven forward. The few oases of serenity are condensed and short-lived, until the magical unravelling of tension in the last bars, setting up the luminous C major of the Arietta, Adagio molto semplice e cantabile as a transcendental ‘Hymn of Thanksgiving’. The variations, marked listesso tempo (not necessarily observed by Yudina), see a gradual heightening of expression through intensification of time values, leading to a symbolic use of the piano’s opposing registers (heaven and earth), and a long pianissimo sojourn in the seraphic heights. The climax arrives with the ‘trills’ (as it does in the final variation of Op. 109) and a swing into the key of E flat – the key of Gloria. Yudina equated this movement as ‘standing on the threshold of Eternity – at the very mouth of the grave’.¹³⁰ Yet in her 1958 recording, her interpretation represents not so much a condition of serenity, but rather a process of transition towards the transfigured dimension of ‘Socratic Single Night’.

After a life full of great friendships and love, interesting and inspiring events and ‘calamities, insults [and] defamations’ in her words to Metropolitan Filaret, Maria Yudina was now at rest in an undisturbed eternity, close to her vision of God’s Paradise adorned by shimmering trills and golden, filigree embellishments.

* Soviet name for Sergiev Posad.

* ‘The spirit breathes as it wills’ (John 3:8).