Testimony - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Solomon Volkov (ч. 4)

Here's a man who listened to much more music than he needed to. I can't say anything as kind about myself. Glazunov always had a review ready, and not an overly severe one at that. Why should I do any less?

Plutarch was a great man, his parallel biographies are a marvelous thing. And now my own life seems better and more attractive through various kinds of parallels. In these pleasant surroundings I swim like a sardine in oil. Much honor, but little use.

Did Glazunov restrain himself consciously ? Or was it just difficult to pr�voke him? I know of only a few times when Glazunov grew so angry that everyone noticed. Once I was involved, another time Prokofiev.

The incident of Prokofiev happened when I was still very young.

But it was talked about later too, and the story became imbued with portent and considered almost symbolic, though as far as I'm concerned nothing particularly symbolic happened. Glazunov simply got up and left the hall during a performance of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite.

It was well known that Glazunov hated Prokofiev's music. But I'm ready to argue that in this case there was no demonstration intended.

For Glazunov had listened, without leaving his seat or letting any expression cross his impassive face, to hundreds upon hundreds of works that were alien to him. What was the explanation, then?

A very simple one-The Scythian Suite was too loud for Glazunov and he feared for his hearing apparatus. The orchestra was trying too hard. After the premiere, the percussionist presented Prokofiev with the broken skin of the kettledrums.

And there's one other aspect, a very important one. Glazunov would never have left a concert hall during a performance-even if his life 27

were in danger-unless he was sure that this would not upset the composer in the least. And Glazunov, undoubtedly, was right.

Prokofiev, as you know, got over his lack of success with Glazunov easily. He even put the occasion on his list of successes, so to speak. In this sense our reactions to the opinions of our Conservatory mentors differed radically.

Once, Prokofiev was showing his assignments in orchestration to Rimsky-Korsakov. This was always done in front of the entire class.

Rimsky-Korsakov found a number of mistakes in Prokofiev's work and grew angry. Prokofiev turned to the class triumphantly-there, the old man is mad. He thought that it somehow increased his esteem.

But as he later told it, his friends' faces remained serious; he didn't find support in this instance. And by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly.

Prokofiev set himself at odds with the Conservatory almost from the very beginning. He was thirteen when he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory. I was also thirteen, but I entered the Petrograd Conservatory, which was no longer the same place. In general, it's a question of discipline and character and a fix on the past and the future.

This . may in part explain why Glazunov lost his temper a second time. It had to do with me, but he wasn't attacking me, he was def ending me.

I hope I will be understood. I'm not bragging; on the contrary, this story shows me in a rather comic light and Glazunov as a highly decent man, while in the story with Prokofiev, it's Prokofiev who comes off well and Glazunov who looks a little silly.

But that seems to be my fate. Compared to me, Prokofiev always made more of a splash and seemed more interesting. Prokofiev always struck the more effective pose, so to speak, and took care with the background, wanting his almost classical profile to look as attractive as possible against it.

So the story that had to do with me took place five years later than the "Prokofiev" one. My teacher, Steinberg,• told me about it. Stein-

*Maximilian Oseyevich Steinberg (1 883-1946), composer and teacher, son-in-law of Rimsky-Korsakov. For over forty years he was a professor at the Petersburg (later Petrograd and then Leningrad) Conservatory. Shostakovich studied composition with Steinberg from 1919 to 1930. The relations between teacher and student deteriorated as Shostakovich became more and more independent of Steinberg's teaching.

berg was present when they were going over the lists of scholarship recipients for the following year at the Conservatory. This was an important event, much more important than exams, so the entire staff was there.

This was a period of terrible famine. The gist of the scholarship was that its possessor was able to receive some groceries. In a word, it was a question of life and death. If you're on the list, you live. If you're crossed off, it's quite possible that you may die.

Naturally, they tried to pare the lists as much as possible. The longer the list, the less likely the government was to give the Conservatory anything at all.

My name was on the list, which was in the hands of Glazunov's assistant on . administrative and organizational affairs. The list was a long one and they kept shortening it. The discussion was polite. Each professor def ended the candidacy of "his" student, and they were all irritable, but they tried to control themselves. The atmosphere was charged.

The storm broke when they finally got to my name. It was the last one on the list. The assistant suggested dropping me. "This student's name says nothing to me." And Glazunov erupted. They say that he was a wild man and that he shouted something like, "If the name says nothing to you, then why are you sitting here with us at all ? This is no place for you!"

Well, I'll omit the praise that he heaped on me since he shouted it out in a frenzied state. But this time his anger worked for me and I retained the scholarship. I was saved.

But these outbursts were very rare in Glazunov. And perhaps it's too bad that they were so rare. So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense.

As I reminisce about this major Russian musician and great Russian man I become agitated. I knew him and I knew him well. And today's generation virtually doesn't know him at all. For today's young musicians, Glazunov is like some Slavic wardrobe from Grandfather's furniture.

I appreciate Glazunov's greatness, but how can I make others understand it? Especially the young. The young students pass the bust of Glazunov in the Leningrad Conservatory every day, and they don't even turn their heads-I've watched.

The bust stands, but there is no love or understanding. You can't force love, the saying goes. And what's a bust or a monument, when you think about it ? When they erected a monument in Moscow to "the best, the most talented" Mayakovsky,"' as Stalin proclaimed him, a wag said, "You call that a monument? Now, if he were seated on a horse, then you'd be talking!" Must Glazunov be put on a horse? So that the students trip on the hoofs ? Memory slips through one's fingers like sand.

A man dies and they want to serve him up to posterity. Serve him, so to speak, trussed up for our dear descendants at the table. So that they, napkin tucked under chin and armed with knife and fork, can dig in to the freshly deceased.

The deceased, as you know, have the inconvenient habit of cooling off too slowly; they're burning hot. So they are turned into aspics by pouring memories over them-the best form of gelatin.

And since deceased greats are also too large, they are cut down. The nose, say, is served separately, or the tongue. You need less gelatin that way. And that's how you get yesterday's classic as freshly cooked tongue in aspic. With a side dish of hoofs, from the horse he used to ride.

I'm trying to remember the people I knew without the gelatin. I don't pour aspic over them, I'm not trying to turn them into a tasty dish. I know that a tasty dish is easier to swallow and easier to digest.

You know where it ends up.

I think Pushkin wrote, "Oblivion is the natural lot of anyone who is not present." It's horrible, but true. You have to fight it. How can it be? You're no sooner dead than forgotten.

*Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1 930), Futurist poet, one of the leaders and symbols of "left" art in Soviet Russia. With Meyerhold and Sergei Eisenstein, he supported Soviet power from the beginning, and wrote talented, innovative poetry that praised state trade, the secret police, and the first trials. Increasing creative difficulties led to his suicide. After his death his popularity began to decline, but Stalin's personal intervention assured Mayakovsky's role as official poet number one. Boris Pasternak said: "Mayakovsky was introduced forcibly, like the potato in the reign of Catherine the Great. That was his second death. This one was not his fault."

Take Miaskovsky, * for example. He wrote a number of symphonies, it seemed that the air was filled with them. He taught others, but now Miaskovsky is not played. He's forgotten.

I remember Miaskovsky used to tell his students: "What you have there isn't polyphony, it's muchyphony." Of course, he himself gave muchyphony its due, but he is forgotten unjustly.

And Ronya Shebalin? t He left a lot of excellent music, for example a fine violin concerto. And many of his quartets are fine. But is it possible to hear a work by Shebalin on the concert stage today? Oblivion, oblivion.

What about Misha Sokolovsky ? * He was a marvelous director, I'd go so far as to call him a genius. He created a wonderful theater, he was adored, idolized. Everyone said that Sokolovsky was a director of genius. And now he's forgotten.

It's so unfair. People suffered, worked, thought. So much wisdom, so much talent. And they're forgotten as soon as they die. We must do everything possible to keep their memories alive, because we will be treated in the same way ourselves. How we treat the memory of others is how our memory will be treated. We must remember, no matter how hard it is.

•Nikolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (1881-1950), composer, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory for thirty years. He composed twenty-seven symphonies-an unparalleled output among musicians of the last century and a half-and holds an honorable position in the history of modern Russian music as head of the "Moscow" school of composition. In 1 948, with Shoitakovich and Prokofiev, he was branded a composer of "anti-people formalist tendencies."

tVissarion (Ronya) Yakovlevich Shebalin (1 902-1963), composer, a student of Miaskovsky and a friend of Shostakovich (who dedicated his Second Quartet to Shebalin). He was head of the Moscow Conservatory, but was ousted in 1948 at Stalin's request as another representative of

"anti-people formalist tendencies."

* Mikhail Vladimirovich Sokolovsky (1901- 1 941), theater director, creator of the Leningrad Theater of Young Workers (TRAM), an avant-garde collec;tive close to the aesthetics of the early Brecht and Piscator, in which Shostakovich worked in the late 1 920s and early 1 930s (see p.

1 12). In 1 935, Sokolovsky left the theater under duress; so0n afterward, TRAM was shut down.

During World War II, Sokolovsky went to the front with the People's Volunteer Brigade and died near Leningrad (as did Shostakovich's student Fleishman).

3 1

S.RAVINSKY is one of the greatest composers of our times and I truly love many of his works. My earliest and most vivid impression of Stravinsky's music is related to the ballet Petrouchka. I saw the Kirov Theater of Leningrad production many times, and I tried never to miss a performance. (Unfortunately, I haven't heard the new edition of Petrouchka for a smaller orchestra. I'm not , sure that it is better than the earlier one.) Since then this marvelous composer invariably has been at the center of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and I made my own transcriptions as well.

I recall with pleasure my performance in the premiere of Les Noces in Leningrad, extraordinarily well per.formed by the Leningrad Choir under the direction of the outstanding choirmaster Klimov. One of the four piano parts-the second piano-was entrusted to me. The numerous rehearsals turned out to be both pleasant and beneficial for me. The work amazed everyone by its originality, sonority, and lyricism.

I also performed the Serenade in A. At the Conservatory we often played the piano concerto transcribed for two pianos. My student days 32

hold another memory of a work by Stravinsky-the excellent opera The Nightingale. Of course, my acquaintance with it was made under

"fatal" circumstances: during an exam on reading scores. I'm a little angry with the opera for that. It was like the Spanish Inquisition-a cruel sight. But I managed somehow and conquered The Nightingale.

Stravinsky gave me a lot. It was interesting to listen to him and it was interesting to look at the scores. I liked Mavra, I remember, and L'Histoire du soldat, particularly the first parts; it's too boring to listen to the work in its entirety. It's fashionable now to speak disparagingly of Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress, and that's a shame. The work is deeper than a first glance would lead you to believe. But we've become lazy and lack curiosity.

I have special memories of the Symphony of Psalms. I transcribed it for four-hand piano as soon as I got my hands on the score, and showed it to my students. I must note that it has its problems in terms of construction. It's crudely worked out, crudely. The seams show. In that sense the Symphony in Three Movements is stronger. In general, Stravinsky often has this problem; his cons�ruction sticks out like a scaffolding. There's no flow, no natural bridges. I find it irritating, but on the other hand, this clarity makes it easier for the listener. That must be one of the secrets of Stravinsky's popularity.

I like his violin concerto, and I love his mass-that's marvelous music. Fools think that Stravinsky began composing more poorly toward the end. That's calumny and envy speaking. To my taste, it's just the reverse. It's the early works I like less-for instance, Sacre du printemps. It's rather crude, so much of it calculated for external effect and lacking substance. I can say the same for Firebird, I really don't like it very much.

Still, Stravinsky is the only composer of our century whom I would call great without any doubt. Perhaps he didn't know how to do everything, and not everything that he did is equally good, but the best delights me.

It's another question as to how Russian a composer Stravinsky is. *

*Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( 1 882-1971) lived primarily outside Russia after 1908, and in 1914 moved abroad permanently-first to Switzerland, then to France, and finally to the U.S.A.

For many years, Stravinsky's music was not performed in the Soviet Union at all. In 1 962 the aged composer visited Leningrad and Moscow. The visit was accompanied by maximal official pomp, and Premier Khrushchev received the composer. Stravinsky's visit to the U.S.S.R. was a signal for his "rehabilitation" after several decades of sanctioned attacks, However, the question of Stravinsky's "Russian roots" is still an awkward one for Soviet criticism.

He was probably right not to return to Russia. His concept of morality is European. I can see that clearly from his memoirs-everything he says about his parents and colleagues is European. This approach is foreign to me.

And Stravinsky's idea of the role of music is also purely European, primarily French. My impressions of contemporary France were mixed. I personally felt that it was quite provincial.

When Stravinsky came to visit us, he came as a foreigner. It was even strange to think that we were born near each other, I in Petersburg and he not far from it.

(I don't know if anyone's paid any attention to this, but both Stravinsky and I are of Polish extraction. So was Rimsky-Korsakov. And we all belong to the same school, even though we expressed ourselves, so to speak, differently. Sollertinsky also came from a Russified Polish family. But that's just an aside. I don't think this has any serious import.) The invitation to Stravinsky was the result of high politics. At the very top it was decided to make him the number one national composer, but this number didn't work. Stravinsky hadn't forgotten anything-that he had been called a lackey of American imperialism and a flunky of the Catholic Church-and the very same people who had called him that were now greeting him with outspread arms.

Stravinsky offered his walking stick instead of his hand to one of those hypocrites, who was forced to shake it, proving that he was the real lackey. Another kept hanging around, but didn't dare come up to him. He knew that he was at fault, so he stayed in the foyer the whole time, just like a lackey.* "Lackey, stay in the foyer, I'll deal with your master," as Pushkin once said.

I assume that all this disgusted Stravinsky so much that he left earlier than planned. And he did the right thing. He didn't make the mistake of Prokofiev, who ended up like a chicken in the soup.

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined toward friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything other than himself and his music. I hate being patted on the head. Prokofiev didn't like it either, but he allowed himself to be quite condescending to others.

*The references are to Boris Mikhailovich Yarustovsky (191 1-1978) and Grigori Mikhailovich Shneyerson (b. 1 900), musicologists who were both apparatchiks directing Soviet culture. ·

I doubt that a final summing up of Prokofiev's music is possible now. The time hasn't come for it yet, I imagine.

It's quite strange, but my tastes keep changing, and rather radically.

Things that I liked quite recently I now like less, considerably less, and some I don't like at all. So how can I speak of music that I heard for the first time several decades ago? For instance, I remember Shcherbachev's piano suite, Inventions, written long ago, in the early twenties. At the time it seemed rather good to me. I recently heard it by chance on the radio. There's no inventiveness there at all.

And it's the same with Prokofiev. So many of his works that I liked once upon a time seem duller now.

A new period seemed to begin in his work just before his death, he seemed to be feeling his way along new paths. Perhaps this music would have been more profound than what we have, but it was only a beginning and we don't know the continuation.

Prokofiev had two favorite words. One was "amusing," which he used to evaluate everything around him. Everything-people, events, music. He seemed to feel that "amusing" covered Wozzeck. The second was "Understood?" That's when he wanted to know whether he was making himself clear.

Those two favorite words irritated me. Why the simple-minded cannibal's vocabulary ? Ellochka the Cannibal, from Ilf and Petrov's story,* had a third vocabulary word in her arsenal: "homosexuality." But Prokofiev managed with just two.

Prokofiev was lucky from childhood, he always got what he wanted.

He never had my worries, he always had money and success and, as a result, the personality of a spoiled Wunderkind.

Chekhov once said, "The Russian writer lives in a drainpipe, eats woodlice, and sleeps with washerwomen." In that sense, Prokofiev was never a Russian, and that's why lie was stunned by the turn his life took.

Prokofiev and I could never have had a frank talk, but I feel that I know him, and I can imagine very well why that European man pref erred to return to Russia.

Prokofiev was an inveterate gambler and, in the long run, he always

•nya 11£ (Ilya Amoldovich Fainsilberg; 1 897-1937) and Yevgeny Petrov (Yevgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1 903-1 942); popular satirists and collaborators. Sentences and jokes from their novels The Twelve Chairs and The'Golden Calf are widely quoted in Soviet life; several characters from these novels have taken on the aura of folklore.

won. Prokofiev thought that he had calculated perfectly and that he would be a winner this time too. For some fifteen years Prokofiev sat between two stools-in the }Nest he was considered a Soviet and in Russia they welcomed him as a Western guest.

But then the situation changed and the bureaucrats in charge of cultural affairs started squinting at Prokofiev, meaning, Who's this Parisian fellow ? And Prokofiev decided that it would be more profitable for him to move to the U.S.S.R. Such a step would only raise his stock in the West, because things Soviet were becoming fashionable just then, they would stop considering him a foreigner in the U.S.S.R., and therefore he would win all around.

By the way, the final impetus came from his cardplaying. Prokofiev was deeply in debt abroad and he had to straighten out his financial affairs quickly, which he hoped to do in the U.S.S.R.

And this was where Prokofiev landed like a chicken in soup. He came to Moscow to teach them, and they started teaching him. Along with everyone else, he had to memorize the historic article in Pravda

"Muddle Instead of Music." * He did look through the score of my Lady Macbeth, however. He said, "Amusing."

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off.

There was a period when Prokofiev was frightened out of his wits.

He wrote a cantata with words by Lenin and Stalin-it was rejected.

He wrote songs for solo, chorus, and orchestra, also praising Stalinanother failure. Meyerhold began work on Prokofiev's opera Semyon Kotko-and he was arrested. And then, to top it off, Prokofiev ran over a girl in his Ford. It was a new Ford and Prokofiev couldn't handle it. Moscow pedestrians are undisciplined, plow right under cars.

Prokofiev called them suicidal.

Prokofiev had the soul of a goose; he always had a chip on his shoulder.

Prokofiev had to swallow many humiliations, and somehow he man-

•The sadly famous editorial article in Pravda "Muddle Instead of Music" Uanuary 28, 1 936), inspired by Stalin, attacked Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth and began the broad government campaign against formalism in various fields of literature and art (sec Introduction).

aged. He wasn't allowed abroad, his operas and ballets weren't produced, any clerk could give him orders. And the only thing he could do was give them the finger in his pocket.

A characteristic example is the orchestration of Prokofiev's balletsto this day the Bolshoi does not use his orchestrations. Even accepting the fact that orchestration was not Prokofiev's forte (I made corrections when I performed his First Piano Concerto at a very young age) and that orchestration was always work for him, and hard work, which Prokofiev always tried to palm off on someone else, the Bolshoi treated his ballets barbarically. It should be known that their production of Romeo and Juliet has Pogrebov as Prokofiev's co-composer. The Stone Flower too. A striking man, that Pogrebov, a percussionist and hussar of orchestration. He orchestrated with hellish speed and solidity.

For a while he was taken with the idea of writing an opera based on a Leskov story, that is, a Prokofiev Lady Macbeth. He wanted to show me up and prove that he could write a real Soviet opera, without the crudity and naturalistic touches. But he dropped the idea.

Prokofiev was always afraid that he was being overlooked-cheated out of his prizes, orders, and titles. He set great store by them and was overjoyed when he received his first Stalin Prize. This naturally did not further our relationship, or improve the friendly atmosphere, so to speak.

The animosity was revealed during the war. Prokofiev wrote several weak opuses, for instance the 1 94 1 Suite and "Ballad of the Boy Who Remained Unknown." I expressed an opinion of these works that was commensurate with their worth. Prokofiev did not remain in my debt for long.

In general, he scanned my works without a close reading, but he voiced rather definitive-sounding opinions on them. In his lengthy correspondence with Miaskovsky, Prokofiev makes quite a few disparaging remarks about me. I had an opportunity to see the letters, and it's a shame they haven't been published. It must be the will of Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson.* She probably didn't want Prokofiev's harsh judgments made public. I was not the only one he criticized in

•Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson-Prokofieva (1915-1968), Prokofiev's seoond wife. The correspondence between Prokofiev and Miaskovsky was published after Shostakovich's death. As was to be expected, it was bowdlerized.

his letters, there were many other composers and musicians.

Personally, I don't see why his sharpness should be an obstacle to their publication. After all, they can use ellipses. Say, if Prokofiev wrote "that idiot Gauk,"* they could print it as "that . . . Gauk."

I'm rather cool about Prokofiev's music now and listen to his compositions without any particular pleasure. I suppose The Gambler is the opera of his that I like the most, but even it has too many superficial, random effects. Prokofiev sacrificed essential things too often for a fl.ashy effect. You see it in The Flaming Angel and in War and Peace.

I listen and remain unmoved. That's how things are now. Once it was different; but this was a long time ago. And then my infatuation with Mahler pushed Stravinsky and certainly Prokofiev into the background. Ivan lvanovich Sollertinsky insisted that Mahler and Prokofiev were incompatible.

Everyone knows about Sollertinsky now, every idiot, but this is not the kind of popularity that I would have wished for my late friend; they've turned him into a laughingstock. It's the fault of Andronikov t and his television appearances in which he depicts Sollertinsky as some kind of fool.

Actually Sollertinsky was a great scholar who knew over twenty languages and dozens of dialects. He kept his diary in ancient Portuguese to keep it safe from prying eyes. Naturally, he was fluent in Ancient Greek and Latin.

And what do people remember about him now? That his tie was askew and that a new suit on him looked old in five minutes. Andronikov's nonsense made him ludicrous.

We were introduced three times and it was only on the third time that he remembered me, which is strange considering his prodigious memory. When something interested Sollertinsky he remembered it instantly and forever. He could glance at a page of Sanskrit and recite it from memory. Obviously, I didn't interest him very much the first two times.

That's understandable. The first time we met on the street and the

*Alexander Vasilycvich Gauk (1 893-1 963) conducted the premieres of Shostakovich's Third Symphony and two of his ballets. He headed the best orchestras of the Soviet Union.

t lrakli Luarsabovich Andronikov (b. 1908), literary historian, whose "oral stories" became extremely popular on radio and television; in them he brilliantly imitates the celebrities he knew, including Sollertinsky.

s_econd time under truly ridiculous circumstances-at an exam on Marxism-Leninism. We were both taking the exam. He went in first and came out and scared all of us, saying that the questions were unbelievably hard. We almost died of fright.

There were a lot of us there, guinea pigs. We had only the vaguest notion of the science we were being tested on, and Sollertinsky announced that they wanted to know about Sophocles as an example of a materialistic tendency. He was just joking, of course. But we didn't even know in which ceµtury Sophocles had lived.

By the way, about Marxism-Leninism. Somewhere in the mid 1920s the conductor Gauk and his wife, a ballerina (Elizaveta Gerdt), were made Honored Artists of the R.S.F.S.R.,* a title that was considered an honor in those days and bestowed on only a few people. Gauk and his wife gave a series of receptions to celebrate. People came, ate and drank, and while they were at it, congratulated theiF hosts.

At one of the soirees, Sollertinsky and I were among the guests.

Good food and many compliments. Then Sollertinsky stood, glass in hand, and gave a toast congratulating the hosts on such a high honor and hoping that they would pass the test and be confirmed in their titles.

Gauk panicked: "What test ?" Now it was Sollertinsky's turn to be surprised. What, didn't his dear hosts know that first you had to pass a test on Marxism-Leninism? You didn't get the title until you'd passed.

Sollertinsky spoke with such seriousness that the Gauks didn't suspect a thing. They were both in a state of panic, for a test on Marxism-Leninism was no joke.

We calmly finished eating and drinking and departed, leaving the gloomy couple at the empty table.

Gauk was a rare specimen of stupidity; we used to call him "Papa Gauk," which sounded like popugai [parrot]. It's thanks to Gauk that the manuscripts of my Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies are lost.

And he replied to my feeble objections with: "Manuscripts ? So what ?

I lost a suitcase with my new shoes, and you're worried about manuscripts."

•The Russian SoViet Federated Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the U.S.S.R.

Sollertinsky never prepared his jokes, he improvised. I was present at many of his improvisations, for we spent a lot of time together. He often took me along when he lectured. I sat quietly, waiting for the lecture to be over, when we would go for a walk. We strolled down Nevsky Prospect or went to drink beer at the People's House. It had marvelous attractions, including a roller coaster.

Well, at one of his lectures Sollertinsky was talking about Scriabin, whom he didn't like very much. He shared my opinion that Scriabin knew as much about orchestration as a pig about oranges. Personally, I think all of Scriabin's symphonic poems-the "Divine," and the

"Ecstasy," and "Prometheus"-are gibberish.

Sollertinsky decided to have some fun and to amuse me. And with a tremor in his voice he declared from the stage, "In the brilliant constellation of Russian composers-Kalafati, Koreshchenko, Smirensky, and others-Scriabin was if not first, then far from the last." And went on.

I almost choked on my laughter, but no one else noticed. Sollertinsky pronounced the names with such grandeur.

By the way, about Kalafati, Koreshchenko, et al. (there is no composer by the name of Smirensky). Once Glazunov asked me to sort out his sheet music, that is, to put all the Beethoven together, the Brahms, the Bach, and then file them all under "B." And the Glinka and Gluck under "G," and so on.

I came to his house and began going through the music. And I saw that under "I" were obviously misfiled a number of composers whose names began with many different letters.

They included Kalafati, Koreshchenko, and Akimenko, as well as Ivanov. I asked Glazunov why all these composers were under "I" and he said, "Because they are all insignificant composers."

Once at a lecture I heard Sollertinsky field a question from the audience: Was it true that Pushkin's wife had been a mistress of Nicholas II? Sollertinsky, without pausing to think for a second, replied, "If Pushkin's wife, Natalya Nikolayevna, had died eight years later than she had, and if Nicholas II had been capable of performing sexual intercourse at the age of three, then in that case, what my respected questioner is asking could have taken place."

As soon as I got home I made a point of checking Sollertinsky's 40

dates. He hadn't made an error, they were exactly right. Sollertinsky had a prodigious memory, containing masses of numbers.

But the idiocy of his listeners could give pause even to Sollertinsky.

He lectured at the Conservatory and there was always a question period afterward. Sollertinsky was invariably brilliant. One time a huge lummox rose and asked, "Tell me, who is Karapetian ?" Sollertinsky thought. A sensation-Sollertinsky didn't know the answer.

He said, "He must be a fifteenth-century Armenian philosopher.

I'll find out by our next class, comrade.,, The student rose at the next lecture and asked, "Tell me, who is Karapetian ?" "I don't know."

"I'm Karapetian," the student announced. The class tittered. Sollertinsky said, "Ah, now I know who Karapetian is. He's a fool."

This Karapetian was a tenor and had a reputation in his own right.

He was doing Eugene Onegin at the Opera Studio, singing the wellknown couplets of Triquet. The performance was under way, everything was going well, but when he was cued, Karapetian didn't open his mouth. The conductor started over but Triquet kept silent.

They rang down the curtain and the conductor attacked Karapetian backstage. "What's the matter, did you forget your words ?" "No, the tune."

(Much later I was at a performance at the Yerevan Opera House and a good-looking man came up to me: "Don't you recognize me?

Karapetian.")

The lecturing tired Sollertinsky's vocal cords and he decided to see a teacher to help his voice. As usual, the vocal teacher performed his magic with disastrous results. Sollertinsky's voice was ruined and he became hoarse.

Once Sollertinsky was handed a note from the audience. He opened it, smiling, and read, "Enough wheezing." Sollertinsky shut up and left the stage.

Composers had a great fear of Sollertinsky, who was famous for his wit. Asafiev,* for instance, never did recover from Sollertinsky's re-

*Boris Vladimirovich Asaficv (1 884-1 949), musicologist and composer. It would be no exaggeration to say that Asaficv is the most important representative of Russian thought on music throughout the country's musicological history. (His work is only now becoming known in the West.) Unfortunately, high scruples were not among the character traits of this brilliant scholar and critic. It is important to stress Asafiev's significance because the reader of this book might easily come away with an inaccurate picture of his impressive accomplishments. Some of the best 41

mark about one of his ballets that had been given a lush production:

"I'd be happy to watch, I just can't stand listening."

Once I was at the Philharmonic, where they were playing Stravinsky's Nightingale. Sollertinsky came on with a brief introduction.

He began listing musical works dealing with China and said, "Well, there's also Gliere's Red Poppy, forgive the expression." Gliere was sitting next to me and turned color. He went backstage in the intermission and said, "Why do you apologize for mentioning Red Poppy ?

My composition isn't a swear word, you know."

The Red Poppy, staged by Lopukhov* at the Kirov Theater, was immensely popular. Gliere wasn't a bad fellow, but he was a mediocre composer. Yet his ballet stayed on the boards endlessly, for decades. In the fifties they changed the name to The Red Flower, when it was discovered that in China the poppy was the raw material for opium and not the symbol of revolutionary fervor that Gliere had thought.

Another of Gliere's works that has unflagging popularity is "Hymn to a Great City." I shudder every time I get off the Red Arrow Express at the Leningrad Station because Gliere's composition blares from every loudspeaker. The travelers duck their heads and walk faster.

Sollertinsky was mostly right _in his attitude toward Western music.

He never tried to run ahead of progress, as Asafiev did, and therefore he didn't have to change his opinions as often as Asafiev. Sollertinsky's love of Mahler speaks for itself. In that sense he opened my eyes.

Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer.

Mahler and Berg are my favorite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, or Krenek and Milhaud, whom I liked when I was young but cooled toward rapidly.

It's said that Berg's Wozzeck influenced me greatly, influenced both my operas, and so I am often asked about Berg, particularly since we have met.

It's amazing how lazy some musicologists can be. They write books pages ever written about Shostakovich belong to Asafiev, though the two men's relationship varied at different times. Shostakovich could not forgive Asafiev for the position he took in l 948, when he allowed his name to be used in an attack on the "formalist" composers. Shostakovich told me that he destroyed his correspondence with Asafiev. Asafiev used the pseudonym "Igor Glebov" for his critical pieces; whence the references in this book to "lgors and Borises."

*Fyodor Vasilyevich Lopukhov (1 886-1 973), avant-garde choreographer, produced Shostakovich's ballets Bolt and Bright Stream.

that could cause a cockroach infestation in their readers' brains. At least, I've never had the occasion to read a good book about myself, and I do read them rather carefully, I think.

When they serve coffee, don't try to find beer in it. Chekhov used to like to say that. When they listen to The Nose and .Katerina lzmailova they try to find Wozzeck, and Wozzeck has absolutely nothing to do with them. I liked that opera very much and I never missed a performance when it played in Leningrad, and there were eight or nine performances before Wozzeck was removed from the repertory. The pretext was the same one they used with my Nose-that it was too hard for the singers to stay in condition and they needed too many rehearsals to make it worthwhile; and the masses weren't exactly beating down the doors.

Berg came to Leningrad to see his Wozzeck. Musically, Leningrad was an avant-garde city, and our production of Wozzeck was one of the first, I think right after the Berlin production.

It was known beforehand how pleasant a man Berg was because the critic Nikolai Strelnikov told everyone. Strelnikov wrote innumerable operettas and was sure that he was a great opera composer manque. I can imagine how he bored Berg in Vienna, for in Leningrad he practically ran him to the ground. He dragged Berg to a rehearsal of one of his operettas and then told everyone how Berg had praised him. And really, Berg turned out to be exquisitely polite. Everyone liked Berg; he was nice and he didn't behave like a visiting guest star. He was rather shy and kept looking behind him.

We later learned the cause of his shyness. Berg had been terrified of coming to Leningrad. He didn't know what awaited him and he feared that there would be some sort of scandal with Wozzeck. And there was more. Just before the premiere he received a telegram from his wife begging him not to enter the opera house because she had learned that they would throw a bomb at him.

You can imagine his condition. He had to go to the rehearsal and he kept waiting for the bomb. And the officials who greeted Berg seemed quite grim. That's why he kept looking around. But when Berg realized that there probably wouldn't be any bomb he grew bolder, even asking to conduct his own work.

A composer · conducting his own work usually looks ridiculous.

There are a few exceptions, but Berg didn't add to the list. As soon as he started waving his arms, the wonderful Maryinsky Theater orchestra disintegrated, each member pulling in his own direction.

It did not bode well, but the situation was saved by Vladimir Dranishnikov, the theater's chief conductor. He stood behind Berg and signaled the orchestra. Berg didn't notice a thing because he was so engrossed in the process of conducting.

The premiere of Wozzeck went brilliantly. The composer's presence added to the excitement. But why had he been welcomed so coldly? I learned the reason later. It turned out that the singer who was supposed to play Marie developed angina. In any other country they probably would have postponed the premiere, but not here. How could we fall flat on our faces in front of foreigners ?

It only appears that we despise foreigners and everything foreign.

Morbid contempt is the reverse face of morbid adulation. And contempt and adulation coexist in one soul. A good example of that is Mayakovsky. In his poems he spat on Paris and America, but he pref erred to buy his shirts in Paris and .he would have been willing to climb under a table to get his hands on an American fountain pen.

And it's the same with musicians. We all talk about having our own school, but the performer who is the most highly regarded here is one who's made a name for himself in the West. I'm still surprised that the pianists Sofronitsky and Yudina* gained such unheard-of popularity with almost no appearances in the West.

So this business with Berg was typical. They ordered the singer to sing despite her throat problems. And she sang even though her career as a singer was in jeopardy. It's no joke singing with a sick throat.

Berg didn't notice anything amiss there either. Shaporin t gave a re-

*Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky (1901-1961) and Maria Veniaminovna Yudina ( 1 899-1 970), pianists, who with Shostakovich were students of Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev ( 1 878-1 942), a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. Shostakovich dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to Nikolayev. The creative path of Sofronitsky and Yudina is unusual in many ways. Both consciously set themselves against the Soviet musical establishment and became the objects of a cult following among Soviet audiences. Biographical facts of Sofronitsky's life include his marriage to the daughter of Alexander Scriabin (he is considered the best Russian interpreter of that composer); numerous subsequent romantic and scandalous entanglements; and an addiction to drugs and alcohol, which led to his death. Yudina's life was dominated by religious principles, which overshadowed her entire performing career. She actively promoted avant-garde music in the Soviet Union in those years when such music was officially frowned upon. Recordings by both Sofronitsky and Yudina, now issued in great numbers in Russia, are sold out immediately.

tYuri Alexandrovich Shaporin (1 887- 1 966), academically traditional composer and pedagogue, widely beloved for his gentleness.

ception in his honor after the premiere, and Berg said little, mostly praising the production and particularly the singers.

I sat and said nothing, partly because I was· young and mostly because my German wasn't very good.

However, it turned out later that Berg had . remembered me. I learned just recently that he had heard my First Symphony in Vienna and seemed to like it. Berg wrote me a letter about it.

They tell me that he sent the letter via Asafiev. I never received the letter and I never heard a word about it from Asafiev, which says that much more about the man.

Berg, it seemed to me, left Leningrad with relief. "So fly off . . . the sooner the better," as Pushkin wrote. But Berg left two legends behind. The source of one legend was a critic and fan of Scriabin. Berg supposedly told him that he owed everything as a composer to Scriabin. The other legend came from a critic who didn't care for Scriabin.

Supposedly Berg told him that he had never heard a note by Scriabin.

Over forty years have passed, but both men still repeat with a thrill what Berg said to them. So much for eyewitness accounts.

But there's no reason to be upset that they lie about Berg. He's a stranger, a visitor, you're supposed to lie about him, for foreigners lie about us (I don't mean Berg personally). What hurts is that here they lie about their own Russian musicians.

Lately I've been thinking about my relationship with Glazunov.

This is a special topic that's very important to me. As I see, it's also popular among those who are becoming interested in my humble self.

They're writing about our relationship. Quite a bit, and it's all wrong.

And perhaps, therefore, it would be a good idea to spend some time on this point. Because Glazunov is, after all, one of the major figures of Russian music whom I've met.

Glaz.unov played an important role in my life. But the scribblers who like the theme are painting saccharine pictures. There are lots of them by now. People bring me magazines or books with some new story about Glazunov and me. It's getting so that there's no point to them any more.

It's like Glazunov and the famous choreographer Marius Petipa and Glazunov's ballet Raymonda. They worked on it and worked on it. The ballet was produced and was very successful. One day the composer and the choreographer ran into each other. Glazunov asked Pe-45

tipa, "Tell me, do you know the plot of Raymonda? What's the plot ?"

Petipa replied, "Of course . . . " Then he thought and said, "No, I can't remember. Can you ?" Glazunov said, "No."

And it's so simple. When they worked, they created pretty pictures.

Glazunov thought about the music, Petipa dreamed about the pas, and they forgot about the plot.

And the pictures that depict Glazunov and me obeying the popular ditty and "marching through life with a song" are also pointless. Probably the authors of such sentimental stories would like everything in life to be pretty and edifying and touching-you know, this century and the century past. Or as a schoolchild wrote about Chekhov, "He had one foot in the past and with the other he welcomed the future."

And this nonsense has a glorious tradition in Russia-for how is cultural history written here? Everyone embraces everyone else, everyone blesses everyone else. They write sweet notes on laurel wreaths:

"To my conquering student from his conquered teacher," as Zhukovsky wrote to Pushkin. And then there's always: "And descending into the grave, he gave his �lessing." Quotes from Pushkin's famous poem ring in my ears.

And naturally, they forget to add that before "old man Derzhavin" *

noticed Pushkin, he asked the servant, "Where's the can around here?"

I think the can is indispensable to this -historic scene. It adds the missing realistic touch that makes it possible to believe that this event, found in all the primers and textbooks, really took place.

On the other hand, the can should not take up the entire stage.

"The dawn of a new age" and all the sentimental tripe is vile. But digging around in shit is also vile. What choice is there?.

I choose the truth. And perhaps it's hopeless and a mistake, because the truth always brings problems and dissatisfactions. Insulted citizens howi that you've hurt their most noble feelings and didn't spare the finest strings of their exalted soul.

But what can you do? "I walk out onto the road alone," as the poet+ said. As you know, nothing good came of his walking out alone.

*In the poem, the great poet Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) visits young Pushkin's lycee and predicts a glorious future £or him.

tThe poet is Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814-1841), who was killed in a duel that was the inevitable result or a chain or events and circumstances which included a confrontation with Tsar Nicholas I. Shostakovich quotes Lermontov's most famous lyric poem ironically.

The whole point is that it only seems that you're alone when you go out. A wise man reminds us, "Man is not alone. Someone is always watching him." It's like that with the road. You walk and someone's already lying in wait for you.

I love Glazunov and that's why I'm telling the truth about him. Let anyone who doesn't know better lie about Glazunov. They can take their laurel wreaths with sweet messages and shove them. For them, Glazunov is fiction, the Bronze Horseman. They see only the horse's hoofs.

My good relationship with Glazunov developed on an excellent basis-alcohol.

You must not think that Glazunov and I used to sit around and drink and eat. After all, he was over fifty and I was thirteen when our paths crossed. We could hardly have become drinking partners. And I must add that Glazunov didn't simply enjoy drinking. He suffered from incessant thirst. Some people have such unfortunate constitutions.

Of course, under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been a problem. Why not drink to slake thirst? You just stop at the store and buy a few bottles, particularly since I think that Glazunov couldn't have managed more than two bottles at a time, his health wouldn't have permitted it.

But here enter those extreme, abnormal circumstances, also known as that "unforgettable year 1 9 1 9," or "military communism."

Those two words say little to the young generation now, but they meant a great deal, including the complete absence of an opportunity to drink and eat. No, no, not even on the day of your former saint, because there was a complete and total disappearance of food, and .of wine and liquor products because of a strict ban on alcohol.

Now when I think back I just don't want to believe that year ever existed. It's unpleasant to remember. And it must be because so many don't like to think about it that I haven't seen any references to the sorry circumstances of our lives back then. All the memoirists must have amnesia caused by malnutrition.

All right, let's put the food problem aside and concentrate on the vodka. For many its disappearance was a tragedy, and for Glazunov the sad fact constituted a catastrophe.

How did other people react to this? Life dictates its laws and you 47

must obey. Let's bear up, comrades, and so on. Probably Glazunov tried to march in step with the times. He probably thought, Well, I can't drink, so I won't. And he went an hour without a drink, two hours. He probably went outside to breathe some fresh air. The air in Petrograd was wonderful then-pine- and fir-scented, since most of the factories were shut down, thus reducing the air pollution considerably. And he saw that life couldn't go on like this, because he was suffering too much.

You know that you have to find the cause for any disease and then beat the hell out of it with a log. That's the advice all the healers in Russia gave from time immemorial. And now we hear the same valuable advice from our physicians.

Glazunov realized that the cause of his distress was the absence of the precious liquid. And therefore he had to get hold of some. Even without a log, since logs in those unforgettable and highly romantic days were also in short supply. (Firewood was invaluable then, people even gave logs as birthday presents. You could certainly bring a bundle as a present, in fact such a valuable gift was quite welcome.) A joke's a joke, but this was serious, they didn't have what could be called the last solace in life. And without it, as Zoshchenko used to say, speech grew difficult, breathing irregular, and nerves frazzled.

Since there was no vodka, you had to get raw alcohol, that was obvious even to a child. But there was no alcohol. It was given out in only two cases: as medical aid for the wounded and for scientific defense experiments. And the last of the cologne had been consumed long ago.

I'm coming to the gist of the story. Glazunov met my parents and they talked about this and that, when . it came out that my father had access to state alcohol.*

Glazunov had lost a lot of weight by then and looked peaked. His face was yellow and unhealthy, with a myriad of tiny lines under the eyes. It was obvious that the man was suffering. And so they came to an agreement: Father would help Glazunov out with alcohol. He would get it for him, from state reserves.

While I studied at the Conservatory I often ran errands for Gla-

•Shostakovich's father worked at the Institute of Standards, which was concerned, among other matters, with establishing a universal metric system iii Russia. He was assistant to the manager and had broad powers, and therefore he had access to "scarce" materiel and products.

zunov, delivering letters to various places-offices, the Philharmonic.

But I particularly remember his other letters, the ones he asked me to deliver to my father, because I knew that they contained the usual request for alcohol. "Dear Dmitri Boleslavovich, could you please spare

. . . " and so on.

Why did I take note of these occasions? Because I wasn't a child any more and I understood everything. And first and foremost, I knew that this was serious.

In those days every person had some sort of shady business going.

You had to survive somehow, and everyone was walking close to the edge. But in this case Father could have got into a real mess. Alcohol was worth its weight in gold, even more. Because what was gold?

Only metal. They were planning to build toilets out of it, as Lenin promised, and no one had really planned to abolish alcohol. It was like life itself, and people caught in business involving alcohol were deprived of their lives.

Back then it was called being sentenced to the "highest measure of punishment," which, translated," meant "to be shot." And people used to joke then, "Anything but the highest measure. I'm allergic to the highest measure." In those heroic times there were a lot of synonyms for the simple word "shoot," including "expend," "send to the left,"

"send to Dukhonin's staff," "liquidate," and "lay down." There were many more. It's amazing that there were so many expressions for a single ugly, unnatural act. Why were people afraid to call it by its name?

For no matter what you call it, it's still shooting. And Father was risking his life then. It must run in the family-taking risks.

I worried about Father, I really did. It was a good thing that I wasn't asked to take the alcohol to Glazunov, for I could have dropped the bottle or done so many other stupid things. And what if I had been caught?

Glazunov used to come to our house for it. It was done with the greatest conspiratorial air possible. When I think about it now my heart rate goes up, it's like watching a frightening movie. Sometimes I dream about Glazunov's visits.

Later, much later, when my father was no longer alive and Glazunov lived abroad, rumors started around Leningrad about this whole 49

business. I must have carelessly told someone and I never did lack well-wishers. People began saying things like, "Well, naturally he's got no talent. He bought Glazunov with alcohol. And all his excellent grades at the Conservatory were lubricated with alcohol. What a fraud, and a composer to boot!"

They suggested taking away my diploma, but nothing came of it.

All right, go ahead, kick me, I won't say a word, I thought then. But now I'd like to say the following in my defense: I studied honestly and worked honestly. I was lazier at first and less so later. And there were no stories about me like the ones about the legendary Anatol Liadov.

As a youth, Liadov played the violin and gave it up, then he played piano and dropped that too. He paid little attention to his composition studies. For instance, he would be assigned to write a fugue and he knew ahead of time that he wouldn't do it. And he would tell his sister, with whom he lived, "Don't give me dinner until I've written the fugue." Dinnertime would roll around and the fugue would be unwritten. "I won't feed you because you haven't completed the assignment. You asked me to do that yourself," Liadov's sister, a kind woman, would say. "As you like," our marvelous young man would reply.

"I'll dine with Auntie." And leave.

I wrote my Conservatory fugues honestly; Glazunov didn't let composers off lightly on the exams, though he was more liberal with performers. He always gave them high marks. A talented person could get a 5+ [A+] without much effort.

But composition was another matter. He could be very fussy and could argue long and hard about whether a student should get a 3 or a 3- or perhaps a 2+. A teacher was overjoyed if he managed to get his student an extra half grade. And I'd like to show that I had trouble with him too, despite the notorious alcohol.

There was an examination on the fugue. Glazunov gave the theme and I had to write a fugue with a stretto. I sat and puffed over it, I was soaked with perspiration, but I couldn't do the stretto. You could kill me, but it didn't work. I thought there was a catch in it, maybe there wasn't supposed to be a stretto. So I handed in the fugue without one, and I received a 5-. I was hurt. Should I go and talk to Glazunov? That wasn't done, but on the other hand, it looked as though I hadn't passed well enough. I went to see him.

Glazunov and I began looking it over and it turned out that I had incorrectly copied down the theme. I got a note wrong. That's why I couldn't do the stretto. That miserable note changed everything. If I had written it down correctly, I could have done all kinds of stretti. At a fourth, or a fifth, or an octave. I could have written canon by augmentation or diminution or even retrograde canon. But only on the condition that I had the theme copied correctly, and I had made a mistake.

But Glazunov didn't change my grade, instead he scolded me.

I remember his lecture, word for word, to this day: "Even if you had mistaken that note, young man, you should have realized that it was a mistake and corrected it."

I studied honestly at the Conservatory, working harder than many others. I didn't pretend to be a genius and I attended all the classes.

Being a diligent student wasn't easy in those days. The times were hard, even the teachers didn't make much effort. For instance, Nikolayev, my professor, was a refined man, more than refined, in fact, and his tastes were recherche as well. Consequently he couldn't allow himself to appear at the Conservatory bundled up in rags. But it was cold at the Conservatory, there was no heat, so Nikolayev came up with this solution-he came late. The students would tire of waiting and leave. But I sat and waited.

Sometimes another stubborn student, Yudina, and I would get fourhand transcriptions from the library and play to pass the time.

Yudina was a strange person, and very much a loner. She gained immense popularity, first in Leningrad and then in Moscow, primarily because of her distinction as a pianist.

Nikolayev often said to me, "Go and listen to how Marusya plays."

(He called her Marusya and me Mitya.) "Go and listen. In a fourvoice fugue, every voice has its own timbre when she plays."

That seemed astounding-could it be possible? I would go and listen, hoping, naturally, to find that the professor was wrong, that it was just wishful thinking. Most astounding was that when Yudina played, each of the four voices really had its own timbre, difficult as that is to imagine.

Yudina played Liszt like no one else. Liszt is a very verbose composer. In my youth I played a lot of Liszt but then I cooled toward 5 1

him completely, even from the point of view of sheer pianism. My first solo recital had a mixed program, but my second was all Liszt. But then I grew tired of Liszt-too many notes.

Yudina was wonderful at those Liszt pieces that didn't have quite so many notes, for instance, "Les Cloches de Geneve," which I think is his best piano work.

Once Yudina stung me rather badly. I had learned Beethoven's Moonlight and Appassionata Sonatas and I performed them often, particularly the Appassionata. And Yudina said to me, "Why do you keep playing them? Take on the Hammerklavier. "

I was hurt by the mockery and I went to Nikolayev, who agreed to let me learn the Hammerklavier. Before bringing it to Nikolayev, I played it for Yudina several times, because she had a marvelous understanding of Beethoven. I was especially impressed by her performance of Beethoven's last sonata, opus 1 1 1 . The second part is extremely long and extremely boring, but when Yudina played I didn't seem to notice.

It was thought that Yudina had a special, profoundly philosophical approach to what she played. I don't know, I never noticed that. On the contrary, I always thought that much of her playing depended on her mood-the way it is with every woman.

Externally, there was little in Yudina's playing that was feminine.

She usually played energetically and forcefully, like a man. She had powerful and rather masculine hands with long, sturdy fingers. She held them in a unique way so that they resembled an eagle's claws, to use a trite metaphor. But of course, Yudina remained a woman and all the purely feminine feelings played an important role in her life.

When she was young, she wore a floor-length black dress. Nikolayev used to predict that when she was old she would appear on stage in a diaphanous peignoir. Luckily for her audience, Yudina did not follow his prophecy, she continued wearing her shapeless black dress.

I had the impression that Yudina wore the same black dress during her entire long life, it was so worn and soiled. But in her later years, Yudina added sneakers, which she sported summer and winter. When Stravinsky was in the U.S.S.R. in 1 962, she came to the reception for him in her sneakers. "Let him see how the Russian avant-garde lives."

I don't know if Stravinsky saw, but I doubt that her sneakers had the desired effect on him.

Whatever Yudina played, she played "not like everyone else." Her numerous fans went wild, but there were some interpretations that I didn't understand and when I asked about these I · usually got the reply, "I feel it that way." Now, what kind of philosophy is that ?

I showed Yudina my works; I was always curious to learn her opinion. But in those days, it seemed to me, she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about them, she was mostly interested in the new piano music from the West. It was Yudina, after all, who introduced us to the piano music of Krenek, Hindemith, and Bart6k. She learned Krenek's Piano Concerto in F minor and it made a great impression on me in her interpretation. When I looked over the music in my older years, it didn't have the same effect.

In those days, I remember, I enjoyed playing second piano for Yudina and then going to the orchestra rehearsals. This was, if memory serves, around 1927, when the performance of new music was still permitted. The conductor Nikolai Malko* treated Yudina very rudely.

He blatantly mocked her and her eccentricities, and used to say,

"What you need is a good man, Marusya, a man." I remember being shocked that Yudina, who raised her hackles over the least trifle, didn't seem to get angry with Malko. Personally, I wouldn't have let it go.

Later Yudina must have changed her mind about my music, because she played quite a bit of it, particularly the Second Piano Sonata.

There's a recording of it, and everyone seems to think it's the best interpretation of the sonata. I think that Yudina plays my sonata badly.

The tempos are all off and there's a free, shall we say, approach to the text. But perhaps I'm wrong, I haven't heard the recording in a while.

In general, I didn't like seeing Yudina-whenever I did I got embroiled in some unpleasant and confused story. Strange things kept happening to her. Once I ran into Yudina in Leningrad at the Moscow Station. "Ah, hello, hello. Where to ?" "Moscow,'' I said. "Ah, how good, how handy. I have to give a concert in Moscow but I can't possibly go there. Please, go in my place and please give the concert."

•Nikolai Andreyevich Malko (1 883-1961), conductor who led the premieres of the First and Second Symphonies, as well as other works by Shostakovich. He emigrated in 1 929 and did much to promote Shostakovich's symphonies abroad. On a bet with Malko, Shostakovich arranged Vincent Yownans's fox trot ''Tea for Two," called "Tahiti Trot" in Russia. For more information see SolomonVolkov, "Dmitri Shostakovich and 'Tea for Two,' " The Musical Quarterly, April 1 978, pp. 223-228.

I was naturally taken aback by this unexpected proposal. I said,

"How can I go in your place? I don't know your program. And this is rather strange. Why should I play in your place? What's your program anyway?"

Yudina told me her program. "No, I can't. How could I? That would be rather strange." And I ·hurried into my compartment.

From the window of the train, I saw Yudina wandering alpng the platform, probably looking for another pianist who was going to Moscow and who would agree to her odd proposal.

Yudina, as far as I know, always drew overflow crowds. She deserved her fame as a pianist completely. But they also used to say that she was a saint.

I was never a crude antireligionist. If you believe, then believe. But Yudina apparently did believe that she was a saint, or a female prophet. Yudina always played as though she were giving a sermon. That's all right, I know that Yudina saw music in a mystical light. For instance, she saw Bach's Goldberg Variations as a series of illustrations to the Holy Bible. That's also excusable, though it can be terribly irritating at times.

Yudina saw Mussorgsky as a purely religious composer. But Mussorgsky isn't Bach, after all, and it's a rather controversial reading, I think. And then there was the business of reading poetry at her concerts. Either you play or you read poetry, not both. I realize that she read Pasternak and at a time when he was banned. But nonetheless, the whole thing reminded me of a ventriloquist's act. And naturally, the result of the famous readings-between Bach and Beethoven, I think-was another huge scandal in the series of Yudina's scandals.

There was just too much deliberate hysteria in Yudina's behavior.

Too much, really. She came to see me once and said that she was living in a miserable little room where she could neither work nor rest.

So I signed a petition. I went to see various bureaucrats, I asked a lot of people to help, I took up a lot of people's time. With great difficulty we got an apartment for Yudina. You would think that everything was fine. Life could go on. A short time later she came to me again and asked for help in obtaining an apartment for herself.

"What? But we got an apartment for you. What do you need another one for?"

"I gave the apartment away to a poor old woman."

Well, how can anyone behave that way?

It was the same with money, she was always borrowing from everyone. And after all, she was paid rather well; first she had a professor's salary and then a professor's pension. And Yudina made quite a few recordings and radio appearances, but she gave her money away as soon as she got it and then her phone would be disconnected for nonpayment.

I was told the following story about Yudina. She went and asked for a loan of five rubles. "I broke a window in my room, it's drafty and so cold, I can't live like that." Naturally, they gave her the money. It was winter out there.

A while later they visited her and it was as cold in her room as it was outside and the broken window was stuffed with a rag. "How can this be, Maria Veniaminovna? We gave you money to fix the window." And she replied, "I gave it for the needs of the church."

What is this? The church can have various needs, but the clergy doesn't sit around in the cold, after all, with broken windows.

Self-denial should have a rational limit. This behavior smacks of the behavior of yurodivye. Was Professor Yudina a yurodivy? No, she wasn't. Then why behave like one?

I can't wholly approve of such behavior. Naturally, Yudina had many unpleasant incidents in her life, and one can sympathize, of course. Her religious positions were under constant artillery and even cavalry attack, so to speak. For instance, she was kicked out of the Leningrad Conservatory even before I was.

It happened this way. Serebriakov,* the director then, had a habit of making so-called "raids of the light brigade." He was a young mannot even thirty-and it was easy for him to get around the entire Conservatory. He checked to see that everything was in order in the institution that had been entrusted to him.

The director received many denunciations of Yudina, and he must have written some himself. He realized that Yudina was a first-class pianist, but he wasn't willing, apparently, to risk his own position.

*Pavel Alexeyevich Serebriakov (1909-1977), pianist, for many years rector of the Leningrad Conserv�tory, which he ran using police methods. Serebriakov was called "the best Chekist (Cheka agent) among the pianists and the best pianist among the Chekists." In 1 948 he dismissed Shostakovich from his professorship at the Conservatory.

One of the charges of the light brigade was made specifically against her.

The cavalry rushed into Yudina's class and demanded of Yudina: Do you believe in God? She replied in the affirmative. Was she promoting religious propaganda among her students? She replied that the Constitution didn't forbid it.

A few days later a transcript of the conversation made by "an unknown person" appeared in a Leningrad paper, which also printed a caricature: Yudina in nun's robes surrounded by kneeling students.

And the caption was something about preachers appearing at the Conservatory. The cavalry trod heavily, even though it was the light brigade. Naturally, Yudina was dismissed after that.

For some reason, our papers like to print caricatures involving priests, monasteries, and so on. And most often it's done quite unconvincingly and not to the point. For example, when Zhdanov* was berating the poet Akhmatovat in Leningrad after the war, he described her like this for some reason: "Either a nun or a slut." And then he added, "Rather, both a slut and a nun, who mixes fornication with prayer." It's a nice turn of phrase, but meaningless. I for one could never get Zhdanov to tell me precisely what he meant by it. Did Akhmatova misbehave in some way? He did hint at something in one of his speeches in Leningrad. He said that Akhmatova had "shameful ideas on the role and calling of woman." What did that mean? I don't know either.

But there were certainly enough caricatures of Akhmatova in those days, trying to depict her simultaneously as a whore and a nun. I remember they drew me as a monk once, in the magazine Sovetskaya muzyka. Now, what kind of monk would I make? You see, I drank and smoked and was not without other sins. And even read prepared

•Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov (1 896- 1 948), Communist Party leader. The term "Zhdanovisrn" is well known in the West. It refers to the harsh regimentation of literature and art in postwar Russia. It is not clear whether or not Zhdanov was merely carrying out Stalin's orders in his "aesthetic" pronouncements, but as a result of them Zhdanov acquired so much prominence that Stalin began envying him. It is now thought that Stalin had Zhdanov killed and then cast blame for his death on the Jewish doctors.

tAnna Andreyevna Akhmatova (Gorenko; 1 889-1 966), poet. She maintained her popularity from prerevolutionary years until her death, despite extremely formidable pressures against her.

All kinds of tactics (short of arrest and physical extermination) were used on Akhmatova: total literary ostracism; a vicious and insulting campaign in the official press; and the exile and murder of people close to her. A great part of Akhmatova's legacy, including her poem Requiem, about the "great terror," has still not been published in the Soviet Union. Shostakovich and Akhmatova had many creative bonds, and this connection was particularly strong in the late years.

speeches about works of genius by composers I couldn't stand. And so on. But nevertheless, the Composers' Union put me down as a monk too. Yet despite our appearance in cartoons in similar garb, Yudina and I couldn't always find a common language.

I remember I had a lot of problems when I was young-I dried up as a composer, and I had no money, and I was sick. In general, I had a very gloomy outlook on life. And Yudina suggested, "Let's go see the bishop, he'll help. He'll definitely help. He helps everyone." And I thought, All right, let her take me to the bishop, maybe he will help.

We got there. A rather well-fed, good-looking tnan sat before me, and a bunch of women were making a spectacle of themselves in front of him, throwing themselves at his hand to kiss it. There was a bottleneck near his hand, each of the ladies wanted to be first. I looked and saw that Yudina was in ecstasy, and I thought, No, I won't kiss his hand for anything. And I didn't.

The bishop gave me a rather sympathetic look, but I didn't give a damn about his sympathy. He didn't help me at all.

Nikolayev's other favorite student was Vladimir Sofronitsky, whom Nikolayev called Vovochka. Nikolayev adored him and this is how their lessons went. Vovochka would play Schumann's Symphonic Etudes in class. Nikolayev would say, "Marvelous, Vovochka! Next time prepare Liszt's sonata, please."

A cult sprang up around Sofronitsky almost immediately. Meyerhold dedicated one of his finest productions to him, The Queen of Spades. Sofronitsky's reputation grew constantly and his popularity peaked just before his untimely death. But I don't think that Sofronitsky's life was a very happy one; it had everything in it-alcohol, drugs, complicated involvements and relationships. He might drink a bottle of cognac before a performance and collapse; the concert would be canceled, of course. Sofronitsky never toured abroad, although I think he did go to Warsaw once and once to France. In 1 945 Stalin ordered Sofronitsky to go to Potsdam for the conference. They dressed him in a military uniform and took him there. When he came back he said nothing about it; I don't think many people know about the trip.

But once Sofronitsky showed me how President Truman played the piano.

Sofronitsky was like Yudina in that you never knew what to expect from him. In 1 921 they were graduating from the Conservatory and 57

both were playing Liszt's B Minor Sonata. Their recitals were a sensation, all of Petrograd was there. Suddenly Nikolayev came out on stage and said, "Student Sofronitsky is ill and begs your indulgence." I was rather surprised. Sofronitsky played brilliantly, as was expected, but after the examination I went up to Nikolayev and asked what that was all about. If you're sick, don't play. And if you do play, then why announce that you're sick. For sympathy?

Nikolayev told me, I remember, that Sofronitsky went on with a high fever. To tell the truth, I don't set much store by that.

Sofronitsky and I played together several times, performing Nikolayev's Variations for Two Pianos. Nikolayev thought himself a composer but he really didn't have much basis for thinking this. We played the Variations and laughed to ourselves. We laughed, but we played.

Sofronitsky liked to tell this story about Glazunov. A messenger rushed up to him: Hurry to Glazunov's, he has to see you urgently.

Sofronitsky dropped what he was doing and raced to Glazunov's house. He got there, was taken in to see Glazunov, who was napping in his armchair, his head lolling on his fat stomach.

Silence. Glazunov opened one eye and stared at Sofronitsky for a long time and then, his tongue moving slowly, asked, "Tell me, please, do you like the Hammerklavier?" Sofronitsky replied readily that of course, he liked it very much. Glazunov was silent for a long time. Sofronitsky stood and waited until Glazunov muttered softly, "You know, I can't stand that sonata." And went back to sleep.

Things like that happened to me too. You could say that I'm a student of Glazunov's. In my day Glazunov taught only chamber music at the Conservatory and naturally I studied with him. He had his own style of teaching, which would have looked bizarre to a stranger.

We went to his office on the first floor. Bulky Glazunov sat at his desk and we played. He never interrupted. We finished the piece (perhaps it was a Schubert trio) and Glazunov muttered to himself, without rising from his desk, quietly and briefly. It was hard to tell exactly what he was saying and most of the time we didn't know.

The trouble was that I was at the piano and my friends were next to me. Glazunov remained at his desk, that is, at a considerable distance from us. He never stood up or came closer and he spoke so soft-58

ly. It seemed wrong to ask him to repeat himself and it also seemed wrong to move closer to him. It was a strange situation.

So we would repeat the work from beginning to end, guessing at changes. There was never any objection to our initiative. After the repeat performance Glazunov gave another speech, even softer and even shorter, after which we left.

At first I was extremely put out by this method of instruction, and particularly surprised by the fact that Glazunov never left his desk and came over to us, not even to glance once at the music. But with time I worked out the secret of his strange behavior.

This is what I noticed. During the lessons Glazunov sometimes leaned over with a grunt toward his large director's desk, remained in that position for some time, and then straightened out with some difficulty.

Interested, I increased my observations of our beloved director's actions and came to this conclusion: Glazunov really did resemble a large baby, as so many people liked to say. Because a baby is always reaching for a nipple and so was Glazunov. But there was an essential difference. And the difference was that first of all, Glazunov used a special tube instead of a nipple, a rubber tube if my observations were correct, and second, instead of milk he was sipping alcohol.

These are not my conjectures, these are facts that I determined and confirmed through repeated observation. Without this fortification, Glazunov was incapable of giving the lesson. That's why he never rose from his desk and that's why his instructions to the class grew more indistinct and shorter.

You might get the impression that there was nothing to be learned from Glazunov. You would be mistaken. He was an excellent pedagogue, but first one had to learn how to learn from him. I think I mastered that art, I learned the secret. And so I have every right to call Glazunov one of my teachers. In order to really study with Glazunov you had to meet with him as often as possible, catch him wherever possible-at concerts, at people's houses, and naturally, at the Conservatory.

First and foremost, at the Conservatory, for Glazunov spent almost all his free time there. This is hard to believe now, but he was present at every single Conservatory examination, without exception. He even 59

went to the exams of the percussionists, and often Glazunov was the only outsider there.

What did I learn from Glazunov? Many things, many essential things. Of course, I could have learned more from him, but I was only a boy, diligent and hard-working but still a boy. There's much that I regret now.

Glazunov's erudition in music history was outstanding for those days. He knew, as few others did, the wonderful music of the great contrapuntalists of the Flemish and Italian schools. It's only nowadays that everyone is so smart and no one doubts the genius and viability of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music. But in those days, let's be frank, the picture was completely different, that music was hidden beneath seven seals. Even Rimsky-Korsakov felt that music began with Mozart, and Haydn was dubious; Bach was considered a boring composer. What, then, of the pre-Bach period? For my comrades it was nothing but a desert.

Glazunov delighted in Josquin des Pres, Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, and Gabrieli, and willy-nilly, I began to find delight in them too, even though at first I thought their music difficult and boring. It was also very interesting to listen to how Glazunov evaluated this music, for he never limited himself to general delight, he truly knew and loved these composers. And it seemed to us that he could always distinguish between the general "style of the era" and the individual composer's insights, the truly marvelous examples of musical genius.

For today all the old music is praised indiscriminately. Before, they didn't know any old composers and forgot them all. Now they've remembered them all and praise them all. They write "the forgotten ancient composer" -perhaps he's a justly forgotten ancient composer who should never have been remembered?

It's terrifying to think how much terrible contemporary music will someday fall into the category of "ancient." And excerpts from Ivan Dzerzhinsky's opera The Quiet Don (based on the forgotten novel by Nobel Prize-winner Sholokhov-a fact too embarrassing to be remembered!} will be performed with the subtitle "once forgotten." It would be better if they played only the things that didn't become forgotten, I think that would be more logical. Let them spare the innocent listen-60

ers. Actually, it's the listeners' own fault; people shouldn't try to pass themselves off as experts. It's always the snobs who fall for the bait first.

But when Glazunov talked about ancient music, there wasn't a whiff of snobbery. He never resorted to generalities, he evaluated this music as he did any other, with full responsibility for his words and with complete seriousness, which spread to those around him. And so we learned to imbue seemingly simple labels with exact meaning.

For instance, if Glazunov called a composer a "master," we remembered it for life, because there was a great deal of mental effort behind that brief description. We were witnesses to that effort and to the_ best of our ability we tried to do the same ourselves, that is, to come to the same conclusions as Glazunov, to recreate his mental processes.

When Glazunov said after listening to, say, a Schumann symphony,

"technically not irreproachable," we also understood what was meant, we didn't need any long explanations.

This was a period of verbosity, an ocean of words. They depreciated before your eyes. Glazunov reestablished the value of the simple word.

It turned out that when a professional, a master, spoke about music simply, without fancy words and curlicues, it made a powerful impression, much more powerful than the flood of pseudo-musical eloquence of Igor Glebov, in the real world Boris Asafiev.

This was a good education for me because it was then that I began to appreciate the power of a brief word about music, the power of a simple, uncomplicated, but expressive opinion, and the importance of such an opinion for professionals in a prof essjonal milieu. As I recall, Glazunov made the word "worthless" very expressive.

It became quite popular in the Conservatory, thanks to Glazunov, where previously, in imitation of Rimsky-Korsakov, professors said

"not very pleasing" about poor compositions. In Glazunov's day they used the more concise and simple "worthless." And the appellation wasn't reserved for music; the weather might be worthless, or an evening spent visiting, or even a pair of new shoes that pinched.

Glazunov spent all his time thinking about music and therefore, when he spoke about it, you remembered for life. Take Scriabin, for instance. My attitude toward him was greatly influenced by one of 61

Glazunov's favorite thoughts: that Scriabin used the same methods in writing his symphonies that he did in his piano miniatures. This is a very fair assessment of Scriabin's symphonies. Glazunov also suggested that Scriabin had religious and erotic fixations, with which I agree completely.

I remember quite a few musieal opinions that Glazunov gave on a variety of subjects, such as: "The finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is like the cathedral of Cologne." Honestly, to this day I can't think of a better description of that amazing music.

Many other comments that Glazunov carelessly tossed off have been useful: for instance, on "excesses" in orchestration, an important issue on which one must have one's own opinion and be firm. Glazunov was the first to convince me that a composer must make the performers submit to his will and not the other way around. If the composer doesn't need a triple or quadruple complement of brass instruments for his artistic vision, that's one thing. But if he starts thinking about practical matters, economic considerations, that's bad. The composer must orchestrate in the way he conceived his work and not simplify his orchestration to please the performers, Glazunov used to say. And for instance, I still feel that Stravinsky was mistaken in doing new orchestral editions of Firebird and Petrouchka, because these reflected financial, economic, and practical considerations.

Glazunov insisted that composing ballets was beneficial because it developed your technique. Later I learned that he was right about that, as well.

Glazunov gave me a good piece of advice once regarding the symphonic scherzo as part of a symphony. He felt that the main object of the scherzo was to interest the listener and everything must serve that goal-melody, rhythm, and texture. Everything must be attractive in the scherzo, and most important, unexpected. That was good advice and I told my own students something like it.

Naturally, there was much with which I disagreed then and disagree now. Glazunov once said in my presence that music was written by the composer for himself and, as he put it, "a few others." I am categorically opposed to that statement. And I couldn't possibly agree with him in his attacks against the "recherche cacophonists," which is what he called the new Western composers, beginning with Debussy.

Once, looking over a score of Debussy's (it was "Prelude a l'Apresmidi d'un Faune"), Glazunov noted with deep thought, "It's orchestrated with great taste . . . . And he knows his work . . . . Could it be that Rimsky and I influenced the orchestration of all these contemporary degenerates?"

On Schreker's opera The Distant Peal, which was staged in Leningrad, Glazunov pronounced, "Schrekliche Musik!"

But I must say, to his credit, that even after relegating a composition to the detested "cacophonic style," Glazunov did not stop listening to the work once and for all. He tried to comprehend all music, for he was a composer, not a bureaucrat.

Glazunov liked to recount how he "penetrated" Wagner. "I listened to The Valkyrie the first time, understood absolutely nothing, and didn't like it at all. I went a second time. Nothing again. And a third-the same. How many times do you think I went to hear that opera before I understood it? Nine times. On the tenth, finally, I understood it all. And I liked it very much."

When I heard Glazunov tell this story the first time, I laughed to myself, even though I maintained a serious expression. But now I respect him for it deeply. Life has taught me many things.

In our time Glazunov was going through the same thing with Richard Strauss. He went to see Salome many times, getting used to it, penetrating it, studying it. And his opinion of Strauss began changing-before, Strauss had been on the list of "damned cacophonists."

By the way, Glazunov had always adored Johann Strauss, and this is just one more proof that he was no musical snob. I think that I learned that from him too-it's very important not to be a snob.

In general, however paradoxical this might seem, Glazunov was not dogmatic in music. His dogmatism was more aesthetic. Flexibility was not one of his qualities, which may not be such a bad thing. We've all seen what "flexibility" in questions of art is and what it leads to.

Of course, Glazunov had more than enough inertia, but he was an honest man and he didn't hang political labels on his aesthetic enemies, who, alas, resorted to such unfair practices often.

This is a good place to bring up the polemics between Nemirovich

Danchenko and Meyerhold. Nemirovich didn't understand or like Meyerhold. He began disliking him when Meyerhold was his student.

When the Art Theater opened, their first production was Tsar Fyodor lvanovich, and Stanislavsky wanted Meyerhold to play Fyodor. Nemirovich insisted on Moskvin.

Meyerhold later told me, laughing, that he almost went crazy then with jealousy of Moskvin and hatred of Nemirovich. He laughed, all right, but his dislike of Nemirovich remained forever.

But all that isn't so important, this is: In the many years of polemics, Meyerhold invariably attacked the Art Theater and Nemirovich, using the most varied, and usually unfair, methods. Meyerhold always tried to hang some "current" political label on the old man. But Nemirovich never stooped to that, even though in our conversations Nemirovich always ref erred to Meyer hold with extreme irritation.

N emirovich considered Meyerhold a side-show man, a showoff. He was convinced that Meyerhold was leading the theater down false paths, but he never used the terminology of newspaper headlines or political jargon.

And yet it would have been much easier for Nemirovich to do it than for Meyerhold, for by the time I met Nemirovich it was obvious that the future of the Theater of Meyerhold was threatened, and at the same time, everyone knew that the Art Theater had Stalin's powerful support. In that situation you would think that Nemirovich would be sorely tempted to get rid of his daring opponent once and for all. What could be easier than to publicly accuse Meyerhold of some political crime? Quite simple. In those days everyone did it-or almost everyone.

But Nemirovich shunned as distasteful even the possibility of such an action. The old man couldn't even imagine how it might be possible.

Here is a typical episode. In 1 938, when Meyerhold's theater was shut on Stalin's personal command, an anti-Meyerhold campaign was smeared all over the pages of the press. This wasn't the first such campaign, but it was a particularly vicious one. They printed numerous articles as well as interviews with men of Soviet culture, who were united in their pleasure at an outstanding cultural event like the closing of a theater.

They called up Nemirovich and asked for an interview. The obnoxious newspaper people were sure that the old man wouldn't miss an 64

opportunity to dance on the fresh grave of his opponent. But Nemirovich refused, adding, "And it's stupid to ask me what I think about the closing of the Theater of Meyerhold. That's like asking the tsar what he thinks about the October Revolution."

To return to Glazunov, he did not like my . music, particularly the later music. He lived long enough to see the publication in Pravda and other papers of the article "Muddle Instead of Music." He was in Paris by then and no one from Pravda could come to him for an interview, but I'm certain that the old and sick Glazunov would not have said anything that would please them. There was no vileness in him.

An important circumstance for me personally was the fact that Glazunov never presented his thoughts and pronouncements in an administrative form, that is, what he said never sounded like a "directive from the director of the Conservatory." It is a great misfortune that he was the last director to behave that way. Let's not even mention what went on beyond the walls of the Conservatory, I mean in the field of culture and other areas.

In general, I'm grateful to the Conservatory. I got what I wanted from it. I didn't force myself to study. I can't say that everything went smoothly, for I lived in very difficult material circumstances and I was sickly. And then I had to make a difficult decision-would I be a pianist or a composer? I chose composing.

Rimsky-Korsakov used to say that he refused to acknowledge any complaints from composers about their hard lot in life. He explained his position thus: Talk to a bookkeeper and he'll start complaining about life and his work. Work has ruined him, it's so dull and boring.

You see, the bookkeeper had planned to be a writer but life made him a bookkeeper. Rimsky-Korsakov said that it was rather different with composers. None of them can say that he had planned to be a bookkeeper and that life forced him to become a composer.

It's that kind of a profession. You can't complain about it. If it's too tough, become a bookkeeper or a building manager. Don't worry, no one will force you to keep at the hard work of composing.

I had a period of doubt and despair when I was young. I decided that I couldn't compose music and that I would never write a single note. It was a difficult moment, which I would prefer not to think about. And indeed I wouldn't except for one thing. I burned a lot of 65

my manuscripts then. Imitating Gogol I was, silly young fool. Well, Gogol or no Gogol, I burned an opera then, The Gypsies, based on Pushkin's poem.

It may be because of that business, but I recall my teacher of composition, Steinberg, without any particular joy. He was a dry and didactic person, and I remember him primarily for two things. One was that Steinberg was Rimsky-Korsakov's son-in-law and the other was that he passionately hated Tchaikovsky. Rimsky-Korsakov's family, I must say, did not have a high regard for Tchaikovsky and his treatment was a sore point for them. It was a much sorer point, of course, for Nikolai Andreyevich himself. You don't need to dig around in the archives, just take a look at the works Rimsky-Korsakov composed and everything becomes clear.

Tchaikovsky kept Korsakov from composing, interfered simply by existing. This may sound blasphemous, but it's a fact. Rimsky-Korsakov tensed up because Tchaikovsky was composing next to him and he couldn't write a note. And like the old saying, a disaster came to the rescue-Tchaikovsky died and Korsakov's crisis ended.

For ten years Rimsky-Korsakov couldn't write an opera and after Tchaikovsky's death he wrote eleven operas in fifteen years. And it's interesting that this flood began with Christmas Eve. As soon as Tchaikovsky died, Korsakov took a theme already used by Tchaikovsky and rewrote it his way. Once he affirmed himself, the writing went smoothly.

But the hostility remained. Prokofiev said that he found a mistake in the score of Tchaikovsky's First Symphony-the flute had to play a B

flat. He showed it to Rimsky-Korsakov, who was gratified by this error and said, laughing into his beard, "Yes, Pyotr Ilyich really confused things here, he did."

I've never met a family like Korsakov's, words cannot describe their reverence for his memory. And naturally, Steinberg was no exception.

He and his wife, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, spoke only of Nikolai Andreyevich, they quoted and referred to him alone.

I remember November of 1 941 . It was wartime. I was sitting writing the Seventh Symphony, when there was a knock at the door. I was being called to the Steinbergs', urgently. All right, I dropped my work and went. When I got there I could see that a tragedy had befallen the 66

house. Everyone was subdued and grim, with tear-stained eyes. Steinberg himself was darker than a storm cloud. I thought that he would want to ask me something about evacuation, which was the most important issue of the day. And he did, but I could tell that that wasn't why I was there. Then Steinberg began talking about some composition of his. What composer doesn't like talking about his music? But I listened and I thought, This isn't it, obviously this isn't it.

Finally Steinberg could stand it no longer. He led me to his study, locked the door and looked around. He pulled out a copy of Pravda from his desk drawer and said, "Why did Comrade Stalin name Glinka and Tchaikovsky in his speech? And not Nikolai Andreyevich? Nikolai Andreyevich has more significance for Russian music than Tchaikovsky. I want to write to Comrade Stalin about it."

Here was the story. All the papers had just printed Stalin's speech.

This was his first major speech since the war began and he spoke, in part, about the great Russian nation-the nation of Pushkin and Tolstoy, Gorky and Chekhov, Repin and Surikov . . . and so on. You know, two of every living creature. And of the composers, Stalin singled out only Glinka and Tchaikovsky for praise. This injustice shook Steinberg to the very foundations of his being. Steinberg was seriously consulting me on how best to write to Stalin, as though it could have any meaning.

Years had passed, epochs changed, God knew what was going on, but nothing could shake the sacred enmity of Korsakov's family for Tchaikovsky.

Naturally, this is insignificant, a minor weakness. The main problem . was that Steinberg was a musician of limited scope. He shone in reflected light and therefore his words and opinions didn't elicit particular trust, while whatever Glazunov said elicited trust, primarily because he was a great musician. A living classic, so to speak. (And in my day, he was the only such exhibit at the Conservatory.) But in the final analysis, Glazunov's works could be seen then-as now-in various lights. There was something much more important for us and that was that each student (or pupil, as they were called then) could see for himself Glazunov's marvelous, even unique, abilities as a musician.

First there was his pitch. Glazunov had perfect, absolute pitch. His 67

ear terrified the students. Say there was an exam in harmony and part of it called for playing a modulation on the piano. Steinberg had trained us well for harmony. We could play a given modulation unbelievably fast, in the tempo of a virtuoso Chopin etude.

You went to the exam, Glazunov was there. You played and it was fantastic, you were even pleased yourself. After a pause came Glazunov's mutter, "And why did you allow parallel fifths between the 6/5

chord of the second degree and the 6/4 tonal chord?" Silence.

Glazunov caught all false notes, flawlessly, no matter where they were. Just before he left the country, however, he complained that he was hearing a half tone higher than the actual sound. He thought it was sclerosis. But it might not have been. The pitch to which ins�ruments are tuned might have risen, it's rising all the time, you know.

Anyone who has lived in music for over fifty years notices that. Recording is partly to blame. When you think about it, it's awful. You crank it faster, it sounds higher. Crank slower and it's lower. We're used to that now, but it's nothing less than a mockery of ,the human ear.

The other way in which Glazunov amazed us was with his memory.

Musical memory, naturally. There are many stories about that. I remember some of Glazunov's tricks, and I even tried to imitate them to a degree.

One of his more famous ones went something like this: Taneyev had come to Petersburg from Moscow to show his new symphony, and the host hid the young Glazunov in the next room. Taneyev played. When Taneyev finished and rose from the piano, he was surrounded by the guests, who congratulated him, naturally. After the obligatory compliments, the host suddenly said, "I'd like you to meet a talented young man. He's also recently written a symphony." What was that?

They brought Glazunov from the next room. "Sasha, show your symphony to our dear guest," the host said. Glazunov sat down at the piano and repeated Taneyev's symphony, from beginning to end. And he had just heard it for the first time-and through a closed door. I'm not so sure that even Stravinsky could do Glazunov's trick. And I know for certain that Prokofiev couldn't.

I remember that people said Stravinsky had trouble with pitch when he was studying with Rimsky-Korsakov; but perhaps that was just 68

slander, maybe they were just angry with an insubordinate student.

For such tricks the most important thing a musician needs is a good ear. And daring. These things are usually done on a bet. Sollertinsky used to goad me into recreating Mahler's symphonies that way, and it worked all right.

I managed a more minor bit of hooliganism. I was a guest in the home of a conductor when I was in my early twenties. They turned on the gramophone and played a popular record with a fox trot. I liked the fox trot but I didn't like the way it was played.

I confided my opinion to the host, who suddenly said, "Ah, so you don't like the way it's played? All right. If you want, write down the number by heart and orchestrate it and I'll play it. That is, of course, if you can do it and in a given amount of time. I'm giving you an hour.

If you're really a genius, you should be able to do it in an hour."

I did it in forty-five minutes.

Glazunov naturally knew all his Conservatory students by their last names. That wasn't so surprising, for a memory for faces and names isn't such a rarity. Military men have it. What was more important for us was that Glazunov remembered each of us as a musician. He remembered when and what a student had played, and what the program had been, and how many false notes there had been.

This is not an exaggeration. Glazunov really did remember how many times and exactly where a given student had made mistakes during an examination. And this examination might have taken place three or four years earlier.

And the same applies to composers. Glazunov remembered them all-the talented, the mediocre, the worthless, and the hopeless. And all their compositions-past, present, and future-even if they studied there for twenty years.

Incidentally, some did manage to spend twenty years and more at the Conservatory. Eternal students, we called them. But there weren't many left in my day, they were gradually being smoked out.

But you could apply to the Conservatory as many times as you liked, trying to prove that you weren't retarded. There was one stubborn fell ow champing at the bit to get into the composition department. And Glazunov astounded him. The applicant played a piano sonata, Glazunov. listened to it and said dreamily, "If I'm not mistaken, 69

you applied a few years ago. Then, in another sonata, you had quite a good secondary theme." And with those words, Glazunov sat down and played a large chunk of the old sonata by the hapless composer.

The secondary theme was rubbish, of course, but the effect was enormous.

And Glazunov played the piano well, I must add. In an original manner, but well. He didn't have a real piano technique and he often played without removing his famous cigar from his right hand. Glazunov held the cigar between his third and fourth fingers. I've seen it myself. And yet he managed to play every note, absolutely everything, including the most difficult passages. It looked as though Glazunov's fat fingers were melting in the keys, drowning in them.

Glazunov could also sight-read the most complicated score and make it sound as though an excellent orchestra were playing. In Glazunov's living room there were two good Koch grand pianos, but he didn't use them. Glazunov played on an upright piano that had been pushed into a small, narrow room. Before the Revolution it had been the maid's room, and after the Revolution it turned out to be the only habitable room in the apartment. There was enough wood to heat it, while the rest of his apartment stood cold.

Coming to his house, you could find him dressed in fur coat and boots. The respected Elena Pavlovna, his mother, bustled about, tucking a blanket around the baby. It didn't help, Glazunov shivered piti•, fully.

Elena Pavlovna was about eighty then and sometimes I came across her darning her baby's socks. Of course, the new conditions of life were difficult for Glazunov to bear. He was amazed that singers, despite the cold, had stopped catching colds. That was a miracle, and it gave him comfort.

So Glazunov sat at the piano in his fur coat, in the more or less warm maid's room, and played his works for visiting celebrities. It was an exotic thrill for them and a safety valve for him. Besides, Glazunov apparently thought it wise to maintain friendly relations with major foreign musicians, since, I assume, he had given more than a passing thought-even then-to emigrating to the West. It was there that Glazunov hoped, not without basis, to satisfy his fading needs and desires without risking his life.

A marvelous picture-Glazunov in his fur coat, playing, and a famous guest, also in fur coat, listening. Then some social chitchat, clouds of steam coming from their mouths. Steam came from the mouth of Felix Weingartner, and Hermann Abendroth, and Artur Schnabel, and Joseph Szigeti. So all these visiting celebrities returned home to the West, enriched by unheard-of impressions of a frozen country-darkness and cold.

The celebrities were amazed by Glazunov, and he by them. For instance, Glazunov was awed and astounded by the physical endurance of Egon Petri, which he talked about for a long time. And why not?

Petri played an all-Liszt program, this is one concert, mind you-Don Juan and two sonatas (the B minor and the Dante) . It was a champion performance, the result of good nutrition and a peaceful life for three generations.

Glazunov was an admirer of Liszt, whom he had met in Weimar, I believe. Liszt played Beethoven for him. Glazunov liked to tell about the interpretation and juxtapose Liszt's playing to Anton Rubinstein's.

Glazunov often ref erred to Rubinstein when he spoke of piano timbres and quoted him as saying, "You think that the piano is one instrument. It's really a hundred." But in general, he didn't like the way Rubinstein played, and preferred Liszt's manner.

In Glazunov's telling, Liszt's manner differed vastly from what we are used to imagining as such. When we hear the name we usually picture banging and ballyhoo, gloves tossed in the air, and so on. But Glazunov said that Liszt played simply and accurately and transparently. Of course, this was the late Liszt, so to speak, and he wasn't performing on stage but playing at home, where he didn't have to impress assorted women and young ladies.

The sonata in question, as I recall, was Beethoven's C-sharp minor and Glazunov said that Liszt played it steadily and with control and that the tempos were extremely moderate. Liszt revealed all the "inner" voices, which Glazunov liked very much. He liked to remind us that the most important element in composition is polyphony. When Glazunov sat down to demonstrate something on the piano, he always stressed the accompanying voice and chromatics, the ascending and descending progressions, which gave his playing fullness and life.

Personally, I feel that this is one of the great secrets of pianism, and 71

the pianist who understands this is on the threshold of great success.

A major concert performer once complained to me that it was so difficult to play the war-horses. "It's so hard to find a fresh approach,"

he confided. I immediately had a contradictory reaction to this announcement. First I thought what an unusual person is sitting next to me, because the great majority of performers don't think at all when they play their Pathetique or Moonlight Sonata or their Hungarian Rhapsodies. (The list of works can be enlarged or shortened, it doesn't change the point.) These performers do not play what the composer intended, nor do they demonstrate their own relationship to the work, since their own relationship to it simply does not exist. Then what do they play? Just notes. Basically, by ear. It's enough for one to start and all the rest pick it up. The list of literature played by ear nowadays has expanded to include Prokofiev's sonatas and works by Hindemith, but the essential approach to the music by these stars has not changed as a result.

So while at first I was simply delighted by the self-critical announcement, my next thought was much calmer. And it went something like this: How can you complain that it's hard to find a "fresh approach"? What is it, a wallet full of money? Can you find a "fresh approach" walking down the street-someone drops it and you pick it up? This pianist must have taken Sholom Aleichem's joke seriously.

You know, Aleichem said, "Talent is like money. You either have it or you don't." And I think that the great humorist is wrong here. Because money comes and goes, today you don't have any, tomorrow you do.

But if you don't have talent, then the situation is serious and long-lasting.

Therefore you can't find a fresh approach, it has to find you. A fresh approach to a work of music, as I have seen time and time again, usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to other aspects of life, to life in general-for example, Yudina or Sofronitsky.

But let's return to my pianist friend who naively sought a fresh approach without changing his own life. I didn't want to upset him with my considerations, why upset the man? I had to help him, and I remembered Glazunov's advice about polyphony in playing.

And I said to him, "Why don't you show the polyphonic movement in every piece you play, show how the voices move. Look for the sec-72

ondary voices, the inner movements. That's very interesting and should bring joy. When you find them, show them to the audience, let them be happy too. You'll see, it'll help a lot, the works will come alive immediately."

I remember that I made an analogy with the theater. Most pianists have only one character in the foreground-the melody-and all the rest is just a murky background, a swamp. But plays are usually written for several characters and if only the hero speaks and the others don't reply, the play becomes nonsense and boring. All the characters must speak, so that we hear the question and the answer, and then following the course of the play's action becomes interesting.

And that was my advice to the then already famous pianist, and to my great astonishment, he took it and acted upon it. Success, as they say, was not far behind. He had been considered merely a virtuoso without any particular depth in his playing, but now everyone was proclaiming how intellectual and deep he was. His reputation grew considerably and he even called me to say, "Thank you for a fortunate piece of advice." I replied, "Don't thank me, thank Glazunov."

Glazunov himself loved to sit down at the piano, and once he started playing it was hard to stop him, in fact it was almost impossible. He usually played his own works and he was capable of playing two or three symphonies in a row. I sometimes had the feeling that he went on playing because it was hard for him to get up. That's how sedentary Glazunov was-it was easier to sit and continue playing.

When Glazunov did stand up he invariably mentioned Leopold Godowsky, who always refused to play in company, saying that his fingers stopped moving in a living room. But as soon as he sat down, Godowsky forgot his warning and then it became impossible to drag him away from the piano. I don't know about Godowsky, but as for Glazunov, I was surprised at his childlike desire to play-and to play his own compositions. This trait is common among composers who write by improvising at the piano. This musicmaking holds pleasant memories and associations for them and they readily move their fingers over the keys. The guests are snoring and the hostess is in a panic, but the venerable composer at the piano sees and hears nothing.

But Glazunov, as you know, did not compose at the piano. Here we were in total agreement-for a change-on composing. Glazunov also 73

had to suffer when musical ideas sprang into his head during endless meetings. In fact, many of my acquaintances from the ranks of what are called "creative workers" complain that the most marvelous ideas and concepts come to them during meetings. As a man who has spent many hundreds and perhaps thousands of hours in meetings, I believe them gladly. There must be a special muse-the muse of meetings.

Glazunov usually waited until the composition had formed in his mind and then wrote it down in a final draft. But he did allow for the possibility of corrections or new editions, and so on. Strange, I agree with him about writing only a final draft but not about corrections.

It's strange because if you were to base your opinion of us on these points, you would get the false impression that Glazunov worked hard and that I was free as a bird. Actually, just the reverse is true. Glazunov was and remained a squire when it came to composing and I was a typical proletarian.

It's hard to win the respect of young and rather brazen people, in fact it's almost impossible. But Glazunov earned our respect. His practical knowledge in the important area of musical instruments was invaluable. For too many composers, this area remains terra incognita; they have theoretical textbook knowledge and understanding, but no practical knowledge. Glazunov, for instance, learned to play the violin while writing his violin concerto. You must admit that's a heroic deed.

I know for a fact that Glazunov played many wind instruments, for example, the clarinet.

I always told my students this story. Once Glazunov was in England, conducting his own works there. The British orchestra members were laughing at him. They thought he was a barbarian, and probably an ignoramus, and so on. And they began sabotaging him. I can think of nothing more horrible than an orchestra that has gone out of control at rehearsal. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy. The French horn player stood up and said that he couldn't play a certain note because it was impossible. The other orchestra players heartily supported him. What would I have done in Glazunov's place? I don't know, probably I would have walked out of the rehearsal. But here's what Glazunov did. He silently walked over to the horn player and took his instrument. The stunned musician didn't object. Glazunov "took aim" for a 74