Confronting memory and repression, I knew that however hard I wanted my piano hunt to celebrate all that is magnificent about Siberia, much of what I was looking for was tied up with a terrifying past. I needed to heed the warning I was given by a brave Russian journalist early on: you have to know why you’re ignoring things you don’t want to hear, what should be remembered, and why people fall silent and try to forget. [loc. 3130]
Sophy Roberts is a travel journalist, who accepted a challenge to find her friend -- Mongolian pianist Odgerel Sampilnorov -- one of the 'lost pianos' of Siberia, a piano that might better withstand the harsh climate of the Mongolian steppe than the modern instrument Odgerel is playing. Roberts explores the importance of piano music in Russian culture, the fashion for European music, and the ways in which pianos (both European- and Russian-built) migrated east with settlers, exiles and artists. Along the way she covers the history of Russia, and especially of Siberia, through the places she visits and the people she meets.
The book is divided into three sections: 'Pianomania: 1762-1917' (culminating in the horror of the Romanovs' execution); 'Broken Chords: 1917-1991' (gulags, Decembrists, Stalin); and 'Goodness Knows Where: 1992-present' (Siberia's far east; competitive birdwatching). Roberts talks to musicians, teachers, tuners, and a retired Aeroflot engineer who's building a concert hall. She encounters a Siberian tiger, and travels by car, train, bus, sleigh and boat. ('I mostly travelled Siberia in winter, not summer. The main reason for this was a dangerous allergic response to the region’s mosquitoes – as vicious as the Siberian legend suggests, that they were born from the ashes of a cannibal.') En route, she recounts the experiences of earlier travellers, and traces the histories of the pianos she does find:
Given the Bechstein’s date, which was before a railway looped south beneath the lake, the piano may have taken a number of different routes. It could have travelled the rutted road running along the craggy south coast. It could also have crossed the lake by boat in summer, or by sledge in winter, or travelled on the Baikal, a British-built icebreaker. The ship, made of parts transported to Russia in pieces, sometimes took up to a week to make the winter crossing – from port to port, less than fifty miles – carrying twenty-five Trans-Siberian Railway cars on her specially designed deck. [loc. 1615]
I was fascinated by the depictions of pre-1917 Siberia, far from the cultural centres of Moscow and St Petersburg and yet with a vivid cultural life of its own. The vast expanses of landscape traversed by Roberts made me feel claustrophobic in my small city life. And my interest in Russian history reignited: this book inspired me to read about the horrific Siege of Leningrad.
I regret two things about reading this book: firstly, that I let it languish unread for so long (purchased August 2021); and secondly, that it has reignited my fascination with Russia at a time when travel to that country (which would profit a monstrous regime) is especially ill-advised.
The book has a website which is a thing of beauty, with video clips and photos, and music played by Odgerel Sampilnorov.
Fulfils the ‘frozen’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.
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