Maria Yudina Great pianist Country: Russia

Biography of Maria Yudina

Maria Yudina, the renowned Russian pianist, was more than just a musician. In her youth, she attended a philosophical circle in her hometown of Nevel, where she met Mikhail Bakhtin and maintained a friendship and correspondence with him throughout her life. She then studied at the Petrograd Conservatory, spending her final year in the piano class of Professor L. Nikolaev, alongside Vladimir Sofronitsky and Dmitri Shostakovich. Despite the challenges of balancing her musical studies with her studies at the Historical and Philological Faculty of Petrograd University, Yudina managed to excel in both fields. In 1921, she graduated from the conservatory, sharing the prestigious Anton Rubinstein Prize with Sofronitsky.

However, her true hardships began in 1930 when she was dismissed from the conservatory, where she had been teaching piano, due to her "religious views." During the 1920s, the militant atheists of the Soviet Republic were actively eradicating any traces of religion from people's consciousness. And here was a conservatory educator openly expressing radical thoughts about how any culture, any sphere of human activity, is empty without religious roots, and providing examples to support her argument. Was it permissible to entrust the musical education of Soviet students to politically immature individuals? From 1932 to 1934, Yudina worked at the Tbilisi Conservatory, and in 1936, she moved to Moscow and began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory. However, after 15 years, she was expelled from there as well. At a time when all Soviet musicians were explicitly instructed to expose the decadent music of bourgeois composers, all these formalist-modernists, Soviet pianist Maria Yudina admired the compositions of Stravinsky, corresponded with Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, showed an unhealthy interest in Schoenberg's dodecaphonic music, Webern, Hindemith, and others. And for some reason, she performed works by Shostakovich and Prokofiev that were incomprehensible to the people.

In 1960, Yudina was expelled again, this time from the Gnessin Institute. And how could she not be? During her concerts, she would come back for an encore holding a large cross and recite poems from "Doctor Zhivago" at a time when Boris Pasternak's name was condemned by the entire Soviet population. After the death of Anna Akhmatova, Yudina arranged a requiem service for her, which was reported by "Voice of America." "When I told her about it," recalled the famous theater figure Viktor Novikov, "she crossed herself and said, 'Thank God, finally my name will be associated with Anna Andreevna's name...'" Yudina's behavior in the conditions of Soviet reality was a true act of civil courage. Of course, until the 1990s, none of the publications about Yudina and her work, including the fundamental collection "Maria Veniaminovna Yudina" from 1978, mentioned this. She expressed her views with rare fearlessness. Yudina had two distinctive traits: she never lied and was completely indifferent to what is known as external glamour. She usually appeared on stage in a plain, almost monk-like black dress and wore sneakers due to her painful feet.

The persecution of this dissident pianist suddenly subsided during the war years. Those who had previously criticized Yudina for her "lack of ideas and political blindness" suddenly began to sing her praises, acknowledging her art as "politically correct" and "relevant." This metamorphosis could not have happened without a very serious and weighty reason. Dmitri Shostakovich detailed this reason in memoirs published abroad. One day, a phone call came to the Radio Committee that struck fear into the hearts of all the officials there. It was Stalin calling. He said that the day before, he had listened to Yudina's performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 on the radio and asked if there was a record of the concert. "Of course, there is, Joseph Vissarionovich," they replied. "Good," said Stalin. "Send me that record to my dacha tomorrow."

As soon as the phone was hung up, the leaders of the Radio Committee fell into a wild panic. The problem was that there was no such record, and the concert was broadcasted live from the studio. "But nobody dared to say 'no' to Stalin," Shostakovich recounts. "No one knew what the consequences would be. Human life meant nothing. All they could do was to go along with it." Yudina was urgently summoned, an orchestra was assembled, and they recorded the concert overnight. Everyone trembled with fear, except Yudina, as Shostakovich writes, who was calm as a sea knee-deep. The conductor was so scared that he couldn't perform, and they had to send him home. Another conductor was called in, but the same story repeated: he trembled and disrupted the orchestra. Only the third conductor managed to complete the recording. It was a unique case in the history of sound recording - three conductors being replaced. By morning, the recording was finally ready. The next day, a single copy of the record was urgently made, which was sent to Stalin.

But the story did not end there. After some time, Yudina received an envelope containing 20,000 rubles - a huge sum of money at that time. She was informed that it was done by personal order of Comrade Stalin. And then she wrote a letter to Stalin: "Thank you, Joseph Vissarionovich, for your help. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your sins against the people and the country. The Lord is merciful, He will forgive. And I will donate the money for the restoration of the church I attend."

It's hard to believe. To say such things to the leader... "Her words sounded unbelievable," Shostakovich writes. "But she never lied." Shostakovich concludes his account of this incredible story with the following: "Nothing was done to Yudina. Stalin remained silent. It is said that the record of the Mozart concerto stood on his phonograph when they found him dead."