"I'll dine with Auntie." And leave.
I wrote my Conservatory fugues honestly; Glazunov didn't let composers off lightly on the exams, though he was more liberal with performers. He always gave them high marks. A talented person could get a 5+ [A+] without much effort.
But composition was another matter. He could be very fussy and could argue long and hard about whether a student should get a 3 or a 3- or perhaps a 2+. A teacher was overjoyed if he managed to get his student an extra half grade. And I'd like to show that I had trouble with him too, despite the notorious alcohol.
There was an examination on the fugue. Glazunov gave the theme and I had to write a fugue with a stretto. I sat and puffed over it, I was soaked with perspiration, but I couldn't do the stretto. You could kill me, but it didn't work. I thought there was a catch in it, maybe there wasn't supposed to be a stretto. So I handed in the fugue without one, and I received a 5-. I was hurt. Should I go and talk to Glazunov? That wasn't done, but on the other hand, it looked as though I hadn't passed well enough. I went to see him.
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Glazunov and I began looking it over and it turned out that I had incorrectly copied down the theme. I got a note wrong. That's why I couldn't do the stretto. That miserable note changed everything. If I had written it down correctly, I could have done all kinds of stretti. At a fourth, or a fifth, or an octave. I could have written canon by augmentation or diminution or even retrograde canon. But only on the condition that I had the theme copied correctly, and I had made a mistake.
But Glazunov didn't change my grade, instead he scolded me.
I remember his lecture, word for word, to this day: "Even if you had mistaken that note, young man, you should have realized that it was a mistake and corrected it."
I studied honestly at the Conservatory, working harder than many others. I didn't pretend to be a genius and I attended all the classes.
Being a diligent student wasn't easy in those days. The times were hard, even the teachers didn't make much effort. For instance, Nikolayev, my professor, was a refined man, more than refined, in fact, and his tastes were recherche as well. Consequently he couldn't allow himself to appear at the Conservatory bundled up in rags. But it was cold at the Conservatory, there was no heat, so Nikolayev came up with this solution-he came late. The students would tire of waiting and leave. But I sat and waited.
Sometimes another stubborn student, Yudina, and I would get fourhand transcriptions from the library and play to pass the time.
Yudina was a strange person, and very much a loner. She gained immense popularity, first in Leningrad and then in Moscow, primarily because of her distinction as a pianist.
Nikolayev often said to me, "Go and listen to how Marusya plays."
(He called her Marusya and me Mitya.) "Go and listen. In a fourvoice fugue, every voice has its own timbre when she plays."
That seemed astounding-could it be possible? I would go and listen, hoping, naturally, to find that the professor was wrong, that it was just wishful thinking. Most astounding was that when Yudina played, each of the four voices really had its own timbre, difficult as that is to imagine.
Yudina played Liszt like no one else. Liszt is a very verbose composer. In my youth I played a lot of Liszt but then I cooled toward 5 1
him completely, even from the point of view of sheer pianism. My first solo recital had a mixed program, but my second was all Liszt. But then I grew tired of Liszt-too many notes.
Yudina was wonderful at those Liszt pieces that didn't have quite so many notes, for instance, "Les Cloches de Geneve," which I think is his best piano work.
Once Yudina stung me rather badly. I had learned Beethoven's Moonlight and Appassionata Sonatas and I performed them often, particularly the Appassionata. And Yudina said to me, "Why do you keep playing them? Take on the Hammerklavier. "
I was hurt by the mockery and I went to Nikolayev, who agreed to let me learn the Hammerklavier. Before bringing it to Nikolayev, I played it for Yudina several times, because she had a marvelous understanding of Beethoven. I was especially impressed by her performance of Beethoven's last sonata, opus 1 1 1 . The second part is extremely long and extremely boring, but when Yudina played I didn't seem to notice.
It was thought that Yudina had a special, profoundly philosophical approach to what she played. I don't know, I never noticed that. On the contrary, I always thought that much of her playing depended on her mood-the way it is with every woman.
Externally, there was little in Yudina's playing that was feminine.
She usually played energetically and forcefully, like a man. She had powerful and rather masculine hands with long, sturdy fingers. She held them in a unique way so that they resembled an eagle's claws, to use a trite metaphor. But of course, Yudina remained a woman and all the purely feminine feelings played an important role in her life.
When she was young, she wore a floor-length black dress. Nikolayev used to predict that when she was old she would appear on stage in a diaphanous peignoir. Luckily for her audience, Yudina did not follow his prophecy, she continued wearing her shapeless black dress.
I had the impression that Yudina wore the same black dress during her entire long life, it was so worn and soiled. But in her later years, Yudina added sneakers, which she sported summer and winter. When Stravinsky was in the U.S.S.R. in 1 962, she came to the reception for him in her sneakers. "Let him see how the Russian avant-garde lives."
I don't know if Stravinsky saw, but I doubt that her sneakers had the desired effect on him.
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Whatever Yudina played, she played "not like everyone else." Her numerous fans went wild, but there were some interpretations that I didn't understand and when I asked about these I · usually got the reply, "I feel it that way." Now, what kind of philosophy is that ?
I showed Yudina my works; 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 Krenek, Hindemith, and Bart6k. She learned Krenek'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.