Music to Die For, Soviet Style

In her web profile, an accomplished American string player has described her major field of study at the Juilliard School as “Soviet Style Butt Kickings.”  The humor of this is somewhat displaced by the probability that her teacher at the Yard is an émigré from the former USSR who uses an aggressive pedagogical approach, the kind that uses fear as a twisted inspirational tool. The kind of approach that supposedly hones your survival skills in a “safe environment,” allowing you to successfully “take on the world” – but only if you’ve survived the classroom skirmishes without mortal wounds to your self-confidence. 

The above has nothing to do with my own experience in Bloomington as a chamber music student of the wonderful Rostislav Dubinsky, who immigrated to the US in the mid-1970s, and who was always kind and encouraging, even when we were in need of a figurative butt-kicking! He had then (1989) just published his book Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker's State. Recalling his post-war tours with the Moscow-based Borodin Quartet, Dubinsky told us once that “Bulgaria was like America for us.”  Of course he was referring to a sense of ‘Western’ freedom, not to the oppression offered by ‘Stalinskiya tip rukovoditeli,’ political or professional leaders of the “Stalin type,” who to this day – whether it’s in America, Bulgaria, or somewhere else – think that intimidation gets the best results. Among musicians it’s conductors who seem to favor this MO.

During a break at yesterday’s quartet rehearsal, we were looking at a little pamphlet on the enjoyment of classical music published in Bulgaria ‘po vreme na Komunism.’  In it was the famous story of Lenin listening to a Beethoven piano sonata, complete with a portrait of the leader in rapt concentration on the music and the following quotation:

"I know nothing more beautiful than the "Appassionata" and I could listen to it every day. Wonderful, immortal music. I always think, with perhaps a naive, childish pride, how can man create such wonders?" [Listen to Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata here.]

 Even in Bulgaria, so long under the Soviet shadow, it is well known that Lenin's thoughts on the "Appassionata" did not stop here. Our first violinist easily recalled the rest from memory:

 ". . . but I cannot listen to music too often. It affects my nerves and makes me want to say sweet nothings and stroke the heads of men who live in a dirty hell and can still create such beauty. But these days you can't go around stroking people's heads lest your hand be bitten off. You have to smash them over the head—smash them without mercy—even though in theory we are against every form of oppression of mankind . . . ours is a hellish task." 

There it is: a classic model for Soviet-Style Butt-Kicking Musicians. This English translation of Lenin's words in taken from a January 1949 Time magazine article on the celebrations of the 25^th anniversary of Lenin’s death (January 21, 1924).

 

Stalin also had a favorite piano piece, and a favorite pianist. When he died on March 5, 1953, he is said to have been listening to the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major as performed by Maria Yudina. Her recording of this work had been made ten years earlier at Stalin’s request, with a single copy pressed for his personal use. When he later sent her a generous fee, she wrote him a thank-you letter that could have been her death-sentence. Read the astonishing story in the youtube description when you listen to Yudina play Mozart for Stalin, here. 

In an excerpt from Stormy Applause, Dubinsky offers another musical perspective on Stalin’s death: the Borodin Quartet was required to perform music by Tchaikovsky at the Great Leader’s funeral before playing at the funeral of composer Sergei Prokofiev, who had died on the same day. (Prokofiev had become “Stalin’s final victim.”) 

 Over and over again, we played Tchaikovsky's Second Quartet. Everything began to appear unreal, repeating itself as if in a strange dream. And again, people walked in, heads bare, looking at the coffin with the same expression of grief and humility.Toward evening, I fell asleep with my violin in my hands. Alexandrov nudged me. I fell asleep once more and he nudged me again.''Don't fall off the chair,'' he whispered. ''We have to play now.''

…The third and final day came. We still had had nothing to eat. Contact with the outside world was maintained only by those who could make their way back after going out into the streets. They said that people kept coming and coming. …Late in the evening, we put mutes on our instruments and began Tchaikovsky's ''Andante Cantabile.'' [Listen here.] We played quietly, without vibrato, the way Russian folk songs are sung. The delicate sound of the quartet drowned in the incessant noise of the slowly moving crowd.