Her fellow classmate, Adriana Birmak, recalled Yudina as ‘large, somewhat heavy, and seemingly older than her thirteen years. Her face itself was not particularly remarkable, but her serious attentive grey eyes seemed to read the thoughts of those she talked to, lending her an austere expression way beyond her years. She dressed simply in a sailor suit [. . .] and had difficulty in making contact with the other girls. Her spare time was spent reading – she did not join in our fun and games.’10 As Birmak noted, Yesipova required her students to sit in on each other’s lessons. ‘Anna Nikolayevna never let pass any misreading or discrepancy in the dynamic markings, thereby instilling discipline and a sense of responsibility in her students. She never shouted or banged the music, in the manner of some teachers. But should Anna Nikolayevna, pronounce quietly, “My dear, that simply won’t do”, the pupil realized that a thunderstorm was imminent and tried to slip away unnoticed.’ Yesipova valued Maria for her calm thoughtfulness and her immediate reactions. ‘As Marusya played, Yesipova would smile and nod her head approvingly. Normally she was never generous with praise.’ Birmak noted Yudina’s large excellent pianistic hands, with their wide palms. Already at the age of thirteen she could stretch a tenth and had no problems with chord or octave technique. ‘Her sound was deep and powerful; lightness of touch and transparency didn’t come so easily to her.’11
During the ten months Yesipova taught Yudina, she worked on sound, style, pedalling, adding brilliance to the touchée and generally refining her playing. Like her fellow students, Maria received free tickets for concerts, and heard in person the foremost artists of the day – the pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni, the violinists Jacques Thibaud and the young Jascha Heifetz. She also attended Yesipova’s duo performances with the renowned violinist Leopold Auer. Yudina was also an avid reader and exchanged books and visited museums with Birmak. The range of her reading went far beyond the requirements of the Conservatoire curriculum; she devoured Plato, the Romantic writers, and the great nineteenth-century Russian authors.
In August 1914, when Yesipova died unexpectedly, Glazunov transferred Yudina to the class of a young professor, Vladimir Nikolayevich Drozdov, a favourite pupil of Yesipova’s and himself a fine composer and musicologist. Yudina, now the youngest student in Drozdov’s class, observed that ‘All his female students were madly in love with him, he was young and handsome, and a wonderful pianist.’ Yudina, either too young or too engrossed in music, kept aloof. ‘At one class concert, I played Liszt’s transcription of Bach’s Organ Fantasy and Fugue in G minor very brilliantly, and Vladimir Nikolayevich quipped “Such success with Bach! That’s worth more than a pound of raisins.”’12 Drozdov extended Yudina’s repertoire, polished her piano technique and refined her sound, insisting that a powerful forte should never obscure the softness of touch.
Around 1916, Yudina started taking lessons from the renowned Polish pianist Felix Blumenfeld, while continuing her official studies with Drozdov – probably without the latter’s knowledge. An all-round musician, Blumenfeld had studied piano, conducting and composition at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Blumenfeld did not share his vision, or adhere to the aspirations of ‘The Mighty Handful’.* His piano compositions were harmonically reminiscent of Scriabin and stylistically of Karol Szymanowski, to whom he was incidentally related, as he was to the pianist Heinrich Neuhaus. Blumenfeld was not only renowned for his pianistic interpretations of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, but for his performances of contemporary music, not least his own. The general opinion was that had he focused exclusively on the piano instead of branching out into conducting, he would have been the most brilliant pianist of his generation. However, Blumenfeld’s scope was much broader. He started to direct opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, and as a convinced Wagnerian he conducted the Russian premiere of Tristan and Isolde in 1909 in a provocative production by Vsevolod Meyerhold.
In the 1910s Blumenfeld’s health started to deteriorate and by 1917 he was partially paralysed (reputedly due to syphilis). Although he no longer performed, he continued teaching at his alma mater, the Petrograd Conservatoire. In 1918 he transferred his teaching to the Kiev Conservatoire where he counted Vladimir Horowitz amongst his students. From 1922 until his death in 1931 Blumenfeld continued his distinguished pedagogical career at the Moscow Conservatoire.
Blumenfeld did much to widen Yudina’s musical horizons. Like him, she did not want to be limited by the piano, and in 1915 she enrolled at the Petrograd Conservatoire’s composition and conducting faculties. She was particularly inspired by Nikolai Cherepnin’s conducting and percussion classes, and enjoyed playing timpani and tam-tam in the student orchestra. Yudina called his lessons ‘real Symphonies’ – they covered the orchestral repertoire from Haydn to Debussy, from Schubert to Richard Strauss. Cherepnin became her musical idol, admired as much for his immaculate musical taste as for the strictness and elegance of his bearing. Yudina summed him up in Goethe’s words: ‘In der Beschränkung kennt sich erst der Meister’ (It is through restraint that one recognizes the Master).13 Yudina was struck by the enormous erudition behind the restraint, and yet no less by his genuine modesty: ‘I cannot remember a single occasion when Cherepnin might have shown us one of his own scores, even for study purposes. I was in those days somewhat critical of his compositions, finding them impressionistic and effete.’14
Her professors of composition, Vasili Kalafati and Maximilian Steinberg, were amongst the best teachers in St Petersburg. Kalafati taught counterpoint to many generations of composers, Stravinsky and Prokofiev amongst them. Steinberg was no less esteemed, continuing the traditions of his father-in-law, Rimsky-Korsakov. His most famous pupil was to be Dmitri Shostakovich. Prompted by her love of polyphony and Bach’s music, Yudina also took organ lessons for a time with Professors Jacques Gandshin and Nikolajs Vanadziņš. Another formative influence on her Bach interpretations was Isai Braudo, who became the Soviet Union’s most renowned organist and Yudina’s close friend.
During the summers Maria returned to Nevel’. Her cousin, Gavriil, recalled how ‘in those years Marila was caught up with going to the people. This nearly ended in tragedy. She had set off to help the peasants harvest rye. An hour or two later Marila came home with her right hand bandaged in a handkerchief, blood pouring everywhere. Mother carefully unwound the handkerchief to reveal a terrible sight: the thumb was nearly severed from the hand – it was only attached by a tendon – the cut was that deep. Marila had been wielding a scythe, with next to no skill. [. . .] By some miracle the wound healed and her pianism did not suffer.’15
It was during her mid-teens that Yudina started to develop the enormous spiritual and intellectual resources which would determine the direction of her life. A diary – a gift from her parents for her seventeenth birthday – acted as a stimulus to record her thoughts. The first entry reads: ‘30 VIII 1916. Arrived in Petrograd to start living my life for ART.’ These words were followed by a no less lofty declaration: ‘I only know one way to God: through Art [. . .] All that is divine, that is spiritual, first came to me through Art, through one of its branches – Music. This is my Vocation.’16 Indeed, the so-called ‘Nevel’ Diary’, written in Petrograd and in her home town, testified to her intellectual and spiritual quests during this formative period.