Testimony- The memoirs of Shostakovich, as related to & edited by Solomon Volkov

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

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text excerpt

I showed Yudina my works because I was always curious to learn her opinion. But in those days, it seemed to me she wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about them, she was mostly interested in the new piano music from the West. It was Yudina after all who introduced us to the piano music of Křenek, Hindemith, and Bartok. She learned Křenek’s Piano Concerto in F minor and it made a great impression on me in her interpretation. When I looked over the music in my older years, it didn’t have the same effect. / In those days, I remember, I enjoyed playing second piano for Yudina and then going to the orchestra rehearsals. This was, if memory serves, around 1927, when the performance of new music was still permitted. The conductor Nikolai Malko treated Yudina very rudely. He blatantly mocked her and her eccentricities, and used to say, ‘What you need is a good man, Marusya, a man.’ I remember being shocked that Yudina, who raised her hackles over the least trifle, didn’t seem to get angry with Malko. Personally I wouldn't have let it go. / Later Yudina must have changed her mind about my music, because she played quite a bit of it, particularly the Second Piano Sonata. There’s a recording of it, and everyone seems to think it’s the best interpretation of the sonata. I think that Yudina plays my sonata badly. The tempi are wrong and there’s a rather free approach to the text. But perhaps I’m mistaken, I haven’t heard the recording for a while.

excerpt from 'Testimony- The memoirs of Shostakovich, as related to & edited by Solomon Volkov' pp. 39 (278 words)

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