Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was an influential Soviet pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

.

Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Nevel

Nevel

Nevel is a town and the administrative center of Nevelsky District of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located on Lake Nevel southeast of Pskov. Population:...

, Russia. She studied at the Petrograd Conservatory

Saint Petersburg Conservatory

The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...

 under Anna Yesipova

Anna Yesipova

Anna Yesipova was a prominent Russian pianist. Her name is cited variously as Anna Esipova; Anna or Annette Essipova; Anna, Annette or Annetta Essipoff; Annette von Essipow; Anna Jessipowa.Yesipova was one of Teodor Leszetycki's most brilliant pupils...

 and Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev

Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev

Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev was a Russian/Soviet pianist, composer and pedagogue.Nikolayev was born in Kiev in 1878. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Sergei Taneyev and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov...

. She also briefly studied privately with Felix Blumenfeld

Felix Blumenfeld

Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld was a Russian composer, conductor, pianist and teacher.He was born in Kovalevka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire , the son of Austrian Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld and the Polish Marie Szymanowska, and studied composition at the St...

. Her classmates included Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

 and Vladimir Sofronitsky

Vladimir Sofronitsky

Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky was a Russian pianist, best known as an interpreter of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, whose daughter he married.-Biography:Vladimir Sofronitsky was born to a physics teacher father and a mother from an artistic family...

. Though primarily known for her interpretations of Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 and Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, she was a keen champion of contemporary composers including works of her good friend Shostakovich. Yudina was also a highly regarded champion of J. S. Bach's music. Some have claimed that Yudina's way of playing Bach foreshadows the style of Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould

Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...

.

Yudina was one of the few Soviet artists who openly opposed the Communist regime, resulting in her being banned from teaching or performing on stage on several occasions. She can also be considered one of the great Christian thinkers of Russia in the twentieth century (among her friends was the philosopher Pavel Florensky

Pavel Florensky

Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was a Russian Orthodox theologian, philosopher, mathematician, electrical engineer, inventor and Neomartyr sometimes compared by his followers to Leonardo da Vinci.-Early life:Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882, into the family of a railroad...

).

After her graduation from the Petrograd Conservatory, Yudina was invited to teach there, which she did until 1930, when she was thrown out of the institution because of her religious convictions and vocal criticism of the Soviet leadership. After being unemployed and homeless for a couple of years, Yudina was invited to teach the graduate piano course at the Tbilisi State Conservatory

Tbilisi State Conservatory

Tbilisi State Conservatoire is the State Conservatoire of Georgia, located in the capital Tbilisi.-History:The Tbilisi Conservatoire was founded on 1 May 1917. It was formally recognised by the Russian Musical Society as a conservatoire later that year. A rival conservatoire was also founded in...

 (1932–1933). In 1936, upon Heinrich Neuhaus

Heinrich Neuhaus

Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus was a Soviet pianist and pedagogue of German extraction. He taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1922 to 1964. He was made a People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1956...

's suggestion, Maria Yudina joined the piano faculty of the Moscow Conservatory

Moscow Conservatory

The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

, where she taught until 1951. In 1944-1960, Yudina taught chamber ensemble and vocal class at the Gnessins Institute

Gnessin State Musical College

The Gnessin State Musical College and Gnessin Russian Academy of Music is a prominent music school in Moscow, Russia...

 (now Gnessin Russian Academy of Music). In 1960, Maria Yudina was thrown out of the Gnessins Institute because of her religious attitudes and her advocation of modern Western music. She continued to perform in public, but her recitals were forbidden to be recorded. After an incident during one of her recitals in Leningrad, when she read Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

's poetry from the stage as encore, Yudina was banned from performing for five years. In 1966, when the ban was lifted, Maria Yudina gave a cycle of lectures on Romanticism at the Moscow Conservatory.

Yudina has the distinction of being Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's favorite pianist. One night, Stalin heard a performance of Mozart's

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 Piano Concerto No. 23

Piano Concerto No. 23 (Mozart)

The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major is a musical composition for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was finished, according to Mozart's own catalogue, on March 2, 1786, around the time of the premiere of his opera, The Marriage of Figaro...

 on the radio performed by Yudina and asked for a copy. It was a live broadcast so officials woke up Yudina, drove her to a recording studio where a small orchestra had quickly been assembled, and made her record the concerto in the middle of the night, a single copy was pressed from the matrix and then presented to Stalin (the matrix has survived and the recording has been available on CD). It is said that he broke out in tears after hearing only the first notes of Yudina's playing. Despite the recognition from Stalin the pianist remained an uncompromising critic of the Stalinist regime with unprecedented impunity. She was awarded the Stalin Prize and donated its monetary portion to the Orthodox Church for "perpetual prayers for Stalin's sins". She died in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 in 1970.

Yudina's playing was marked by great virtuosity, spirituality, strength and intellectual rigor. However, her playing was also very individual in style and tone. Sviatoslav Richter

Sviatoslav Richter

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter was a Soviet pianist well known for the depth of his interpretations, virtuoso technique, and vast repertoire. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Childhood:...

 said of her playing:

"She was immensely talented and a keen advocate of the music of her own time: she played Stravinsky, whom she adored, Hindemith, Krenek and Bartok at a time when these composers were not only unknown in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 but effectively banned. And when she played Romantic music, it was impressive – except that she didn't play what was written. Liszt

Liszt

Liszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...

's Weinen und Klagen was phenomenal, but Schubert's B flat major Sonata, while arresting as an interpretation, was the exact opposite of what it should have been, and I remember a performance of the Second Chopin Nocturne

Nocturne

A nocturne is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night...

 that was so heroic that it no longer sounded like a piano but a trumpet. It was no longer Schubert or Chopin, but Yudina."

The art of Yudina represents a whole epoch in the Russian cultural history. Unlike other fellow musicians, Yudina always tried to go beyond her personal comfort zone, making friends and collaborating with famous writers, artists and architects.

Among her friends were Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

 (who did the first reading of his novel Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago

-Original creation:*Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, published in 1957**Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, a fictional character and the main protagonist of the book Doctor Zhivago-Adaptations:There are several adaptations based on the Doctor Zhivago book:...

 at Yudina's apartment as early as February 1947), Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...

, Pierre Suvchinsky

Pyotr Suvchinsky

Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky, later known as Pierre Souvtchinsky , was a Ukrainian artistic patron and writer on music. The heir to a sugar fortune, he took piano lessons from Felix Blumenthal and initially hoped to become an operatic tenor. He was the patron and co-publisher of the Saint Petersburg...

, Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

 and many others.

Thanks to efforts of Yudina's friends in Russia, particularly Anatoly Kuznetsov

Anatoly Kuznetsov

Anatoly Vasilievich Kuznetsov was a Russian language Soviet writer who described his experiences in German-occupied Kiev during WWII in his internationally acclaimed novel Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel...

, Yudina's letters and writings were published in the late 90s-early 00s. There were several attempts to complete the set of Yudina's recordings. Most of her recordings released on LPs in Russia are hard to obtain.

In literature

Yudina has been slanderously portrayed as a cynical and promiscuous deviant in an autobiographical novel by the Russian philosopher Aleksei Losev

Aleksei Losev

Aleksei Fedorovich Losev , a Russian philosopher, philologist and culturologist, one of the most prominent figures in Russian philosophical and religious thought of the 20th century.-Biography:...

, whose advances she refused.