Lost Pianos of Siberia

by Sophy Roberts

Overview

From acclaimed journalist Sophy Roberts, a journey through one of the harshest landscapes on earth—where music reveals the deep humanity and the rich history of Siberia

Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell.

Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood.

How these pianos traveled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is largely a story of music in this fascinating place, fol-lowing Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of different instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802149299
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	138,197
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sophy Roberts is a British writer whose work focuses on remote travel. She began her career assisting the writer Jessica Mitford, was an English scholar at Oxford University, and trained in journalism at Columbia University. She regularly contributes to the Financial Times and Condé Nast Traveler. The Lost Pianos of Siberia is her first book.

Table of Contents

Map of Russia x

Author's Note 1

Part 1 Pianomania • 1762-1917

1 Music in a Sleeping Land: Sibir 11

2 Traces in the Snow: Khabarovsk 38

3 Siberia is 'Civilized': St Petersburg to the Pacific 53

4 The Paris of Siberia: Irkutsk 68

5 Pianos in a Sandy Venice: Kiakhta 92

6 The Sound of Chopin's Poland: Tomsk 108

7 Home in a Hundred Years: Sakhalin Island 127

Part 2 Broken Chords • 1917-1991

8 The Last Tsar's Piano: The Urals 149

9 The End of Everything: The Altai Mountains 176

10 The Moscow of the East: Harbin 190

11 Beethoven in a Red Chum: The Yamal Peninsula 202

12 Music in the Gulag Archipelago: Kolyma 222

13 The Siberian Colosseum: Novosibirsk 235

14 Vera's Mühlbach: Akademgorodok 258

Part 3 Goodness Knows Where • 1992-Present Day

15 A Game of Risk: Kamchatka 283

16 Siberia's Last Piano: The Commanders to the Kurils 304

17 Provenance Regained: Khabarovsk 324

Epilogue: The Orkhon Valley 339

A Brief Historical Chronology 356

Selected Bibliography 360

Acknowledgements 364

Picture Acknowledgements 369

Source Notes 374

Index 419

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Lost Pianos of Siberia:

“The Lost Pianos of Siberia, Sophy Roberts’s melodious first book, reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself…These pages sing like a symphony.”—Wall Street Journal

“A series of intriguing chats on the human condition with a charming friend excited to share specifics of what she’s experienced and discovered. By page 100, I’d settled in, sipping vodka as I read happily on about piano lore, foul-weather adventures, gossipy history, a cast mainly of hospitable locals, and ultimately, as in the best travel books, glad for the fine company of the author.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Across the vast expanse of Siberia, pianos brought culture and consolation. British journalist Roberts makes an engaging book debut with a chronicle of her travels through Siberia searching for pianos… An absorbing history illuminates a bleak landscape.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In this luminous travelogue, journalist Roberts travels through Siberia looking for historically significant pianos… The book is an eccentric meander, but Roberts’s mix of colorful history, rich reportage, and lyrical prose…makes for a beguiling narrative.”—Publishers Weekly

“A richly absorbing account of Siberia over the last 250 years, as Roberts zigzags her way from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east.”—Guardian

“An extraordinary encounter with a wildly fascinating and astonishingly ill-known region... This is a wonderful book.”—Sunday Times (UK)

“What shines through in this book is Roberts' genuine, humane affection for and fascination with the people she meets in Siberia.”—Times Literary Supplement (UK)

“Marvelous… a masterful example of modern historical travel writing.”—Independent (UK)

“The fabled pianos of Roberts’s debut are as much a reason for diversion as they are a fixed end point. The book’s richness is in its tangents.”—Financial Times

“A modern-day Freya Stark.”—Tatler (UK)

“A sparkling debut by an outstanding and gifted author. A brilliant guide to Russia of the past and the present, set around an extraordinary search for the heart, soul and lost keyboards of centuries gone by.”—Peter Frankopan

“An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history and Russian culture ...Lost Pianos is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure and a strange forgotten story all wrapped into this one fascinating book.”—Simon Sebag-Montefiore

“A masterpiece of modern travel literature with words that sing from its pages. A definitive exploration of Russia's wild east.”—Levison Wood

“What worlds this book traverses! From gilded recital halls to the haunts of Siberian tigers; from remote penal colonies to volcanic islands in the Bering Sea: I felt as if I had travelled through places I had only dreamed of, following these magical instruments through landscapes and histories so full of tragedy and hope.”—Daniel Mason

“This is an amazing journey, the ultimate quest for the oddest objects—pianos—in the most unlikely place—Siberia. But Sophy Roberts makes it much more than that, an elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.”—Paul Theroux

"An extraordinary, cadenced journey into music, exile and landscape.”—Edmund de Waal

“Sophy Roberts’s extraordinary quest demanded courage, patience, erudition and a sympathetic imagination. This original challenge has inspired a travel book of rare quality.”—Dervla Murphy

“One of those magical books that captures the imagination and draws you into the beauty and majesty of Siberia. It is full of wonderful stories about human endurance through adversity and the transformative power of music in the most remote and forgotten outposts of this vast territory. A book to savour and remember.”—Helen Rappaport, author of The Last Days of the Romanovs

“Absolutely intoxicating. Such vivid detail, rich atmosphere, heartbreak, and elegance. Sophy Roberts melds research and personal experience to trace the paths of political prisoners, convicts, and conscripts determined to find beauty in exile, and track down the regal pianos now scattered in villages, museums, and storehouses across the largest country on earth. Some cherished and some neglected, these pianos tell of the musical colonization of a continent, and their stories sing."—Jonathan C. Slaght, author of Owls of the Eastern Ice

From the Publisher

03/02/2020

In this luminous travelogue, journalist Roberts travels through Siberia looking for historically significant pianos, which she sees as symbols of civilization, refinement, and artistic freedom amid vast, frigid wildernesses and primitive settlements scarred by Russia’s bloody revolutions and barbaric gulags. Her quest also serves as a vehicle for her to investigate Siberia’s dramatic past. Episodes include mid-19th-century noblewoman Maria Volkhonsky’s journey into political exile, piano in tow, with her liberal Decembrist husband; the disappearance of a piano in the Ekaterinburg house where Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II and his family; the somber picaresque of musicians and dancers incarcerated in Soviet prison camps, performing in the Arctic wastes; and the fate of a concert grand used by the Leningrad Philharmonic during its exile during WWII. The instruments often elude Roberts, but her quest sometimes achieves inspiring musical fruition, as when she arranges for a family of piano technicians in Novosibirsk to truck a resonant upright 2,000 miles to a pianist in Mongolia. The book is an eccentric meander, but Roberts’s mix of colorful history, rich reportage, and lyrical prose—“You can hear Siberia in the big, soft chords in Russian music that evoke the hush of silver birch trees and the billowing winter snows”—makes for a beguiling narrative. (June)

Publishers Weekly

04/01/2020

A journey ignited by a search to bring a piano to Mongolia, this work is history mixed with travelog. Journalist Roberts travels across Siberia, mainly near the trans-Siberian railway, though she also explores isolated towns that contribute to an intimate portrait of a part of the world that has long held the public imagination, though is little understood, and even less visited. Aside from some setbacks, including being detained by border guards, Roberts tracks down numerous pianos, both Russian and foreign-made, and ties the pianos, and Siberia, to Russia's history from Tsarist times, through the overthrow of the Romanov's, the USSR, to the present day with the Gulag, the prison camps synonymous with Siberia, playing a central role throughout. The approach each government took toward music provides valuable context on the culture of each era. A background in music or pianos may enhance the journey, though the nonmusical reader will not be intimated or overwhelmed. VERDICT Tigers, pianos, prisoners, and historical perspective throughout Siberia's past and present are the heart of this personal account that starts and ends with the search for a piano. While the pianos and their providence are captivating, the history and people stand out.—Zebulin Evelhoch, Deschutes P.L., OR

Library Journal

Narrating this spellbinding travelogue/crusade, British actor Katherine Bailey puts her charming sophistication and refined steadiness to good use. Her graceful restraint draws listeners in and pays homage to the author’s artistic sensibilities and lucid writing. Travel writer Sophy Roberts is obsessed with finding the pianos Russia imported in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As she follows leads and questions peasants and famous musicians alike (and is detained by government officials at one point), she uncovers the spirit and culture of Russia’s people. She recounts her travels across sparsely populated frozen landscapes and along the way offers an intimate portrait of how Russia’s feudal traditions still conflict with Western culture and its opportunities. Her sensitive discussions of the technology and individual tonal character of pianos, along with Bailey’s excellent reading, make this production a moving listening experience. T.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

2020-03-03
Across the vast expanse of Siberia, pianos brought culture and consolation.

British journalist Roberts makes an engaging book debut with a chronicle of her travels through Siberia searching for pianos. Guided by a history of 19th-century Russian piano makers, the author was aware of the proliferation and distribution of pianos, some manufactured by Western companies, far from Russia’s major cities. By the end of the 19th century, one workshop in St. Petersburg alone had built more than 11,000 pianos, many of which were hauled by sledge to outposts in Siberia. “East of the Urals,” Roberts writes, “music teachers were paid two to three times the amount they earned in Western Russia. In these new towns of the expanding Empire, the piano played an even more important social role than it did in a Moscow drawing room.” In the town of Tomsk, for example, a place Chekhov found boring, a chapter of the Imperial Russian Music Society incited a flourishing musical culture. Its grand piano was chosen by the brother of famed pianist Anton Rubinstein. Besides forming the center of cultural life for residents who settled in Siberia hoping for fortune, freedom, or a new beginning, pianos were crucial to the region’s many penal colonies, where classical music elicited “a keen sense of European identity and pride.” In Kolyma, near the Sea of Okhotsk, Roberts recalls the “political dissidents, hardened criminals, recidivist killers, invalids half dead with dystrophy, poets, pianists, and starving women” brought by Stalin’s gulag ships. Even in that harsh colony, there was a grand piano, housed in a building constructed by prisoners. Roberts describes vividly the “bald, scarred, austere” landscapes that make up much of Siberia as well as the often eccentric individuals—many of them piano tuners—who assisted in her quest. Aiming “to celebrate all that is magnificent about Siberia,” Roberts realized that often the pianos she found were “tied up with a terrifying past.”

An absorbing history illuminates a bleak landscape. (b/w illustrations; maps)

Kirkus Reviews