SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 360 Silverman, Marissa. Gregory Haimovsky: A Pianist’s Odyssey to Freedom. University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, 2018. x + 256 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. $80.00: £60.00. The title of this highly absorbing book is deceptively general, for the story of Gregory Haimovsky (b. 1926), one of the least well known of the great pianists of the twentieth century, is not so much about his emigration from Russia, but mainly an account of his early career and, most importantly, his heroic attempts to introduce the music of Olivier Messiaen to the Soviet Union of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, where Stalin’s legacy was very much alive, both in the stultifying dogma of Socialist Realism and, still more seriously, in the continued conviction of Russian supremacism and virulent antisemitism. The latter is brought alive in this book, not by accounts of physical atrocities, but by letters, reminiscences and official documents showing the constant insidious pressure from the country’s political leaders to ensure that Jews who did not join the Communist Party (or change their names) had virtually no chance of professional success. Dr Silverman at times seems to be rehearsing very familiar facts from Soviet cultural history, but in every case their relevance to her subject is made clear. Similarly the occasional repetition is always necessary for the continuing narrative, and the author shows her awareness of this by extensive cross-references to earlier passages in the book. It will be of great interest to musicians, students of Soviet Russia, and to musicologists, for most of whom the great bravery and determination shown by Haimovsky will be from a grim and unknown world. After the Introduction, Dr Silverman’s long-gestated book consists of five chapters: 1. A Pianist is Born; 2. A Concert Pianist in Exile; 3. Spirituality, Love and Color: Understanding Messiaen’s Music; 4. From Thaw to Frost: Neonationalism and the Messiaen Premieres in the USSR; 5. Haimovsky and Grazhdanstvennost´. The two appendices are: Selected Performances of the Music of Olivier Messiaen by Gregory Haimovsky, 1964–72; and Selected Writings by Gregory Haimovsky on the Music of Olivier Messiaen. For musicians, the third chapter may cover familiar territory, though it will undoubtedly be of interest to those with only a superficial acquaintance with the music of Messiaen. For Sovietologists, parts of the first chapter will likewise be well-known. What, however, makes this book fascinating is the specific detail of the various experiences of this highly talented and brave individual, inspired by a hardly less resourceful composer. For example, the improvised first performance of Quatuor pour le fin du temps in 1941 was in the freezing conditions of Stalag VIII, where German officers and guards, not entirely faithful to Hitler and the Nazis, arranged for a piano and a cello to be provided to Messiaen and other musical prisoners for this extraordinary occasion, where all are said to have listened with rapt attention. REVIEWS 361 Haimovsky, despite graduating brilliantly, immediately fell victim to the programme of cleaning out from Moscow institutions all Jews (seen as spies for the USA), wherever possible replacing them with Russians. He was exiled to largely destroyed post-war Kalinin (now Tver´) where he was assigned to work in a primitive school for illiterate beginners. In such grim surroundings, the pianist’s arrangement of an embryonic concert was enough for the authorities to punish him by a spell in the army where, ironically, he was encouraged to arrange two concerts before being returned ‘home’. Many other such skilfully recounted episodes and anecdotes make this book very readable. He was obliged to remain for sixteen hard years in Kalinin, there beginning his odyssey of studying and, later, propagating the work of Messiaen. Strikingly, Silverman chooses Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony and Dostoevskii (mainly Brothers Karamazov and his 1880 Pushkin speech) to illustrate the particular nature of Haimovsky’s beliefs and achievements. As a sensitive victim of antisemitism, the pianist reacted emotionally to the symphony’s first movement, ‘Babii iar’, but resented the later satirical movements, believing that the composer, whose music he regarded as a ‘lethal drug’ (p. 82), should have perhaps added the passacaglia from his...
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Open Access
Jun 19, 2019
Robin Ryan + 1
