If you, perhaps a regular Radio Survivor reader, have not seen The Death of Stalin yet, please know that it is a radio movie. This is not an endorsement, just an observation. The tragic-comic film begins by concatenating a possibly real or possibly apocryphal radio story that took place during the Second World War with Stalin’s last days, which occurred almost a decade later.
Maria Yudina
The radio story involves an alleged 1944 performance of Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto, the solo portion served up by the pianist Maria Yudina. Soviet radio broadcast the rendition, which Stalin heard. He then called and asked for a copy of the interpretation. The problem, of course, was that it had been aired live. But there was a saying in those days: “If it didn’t actually happen, it should have.” So the station’s terrified staff rounded up the orchestra and Yudina and they labored through the night until they had a suitable black vinyl recording of the piece. Functionaries dutifully delivered the record to Stalin the next morning.
In the movie, this remarkable radio moment is taken up the elevator of time to 1953. The movie has the very religious Yudina include an eloquent hostile note in the recording, which Stalin reads and then collapses from the stroke that would soon kill him. In fact, Yudina may have written a courageous statement against Stalin, but when she received The Stalin Prize, presumably earlier. It supposedly read: “Day and night I will pray for forgiveness for the monstrous atrocities that you have perpetuated against your people. I reject the Stalin prize, and am sending the money for the renovation of a church and the salvation of your soul.”
But here is the problem with this frightening classical radio yarn, it comes from Solomon Volkov’s book “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostokovich.” Speaking personally, I find convincing the scholar Laurel Fay’s contention that the tome is a fraud. But here’s the problem with that. It’s also possible that portions of the volume come from actual events, just not events told by the composer Shostakovich, but recounted from other sources. So here we have a movie that smooshes fact with fiction based on a “memoir” that some scholars say smooshes fact with fiction.
I conclude this post with a historian’s obvious question: has anyone tried to track this radio event down via one of its supposed participants? A member of the orchestra? The conductor? I am going to look into this in my voluminous non-existent free time. Until then, I have to admit, it’s a very juicy story, one that, dare I say it, may not have actually happened, but should have (not that I would have wanted to live through it, of course).
In any event, one thing I know for sure. Maria Yudina really did perform and record Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto. Enjoy.
