Maria Yudina and Stalin

The pianist Maria Yudina was an outspoken critic of Stalin, and was woken at night by the police who ordered her to come with them. She feared the worst; but the reason for the summons was that Stalin had heard her playing a Mozart concerto on the radio, and right now demanded to hear it again, at once, without delay. Unfortunately, what he had heard was a live radio broadcast, of which no recording had been made. So Stalin's henchmen assembled Yudina plus a motley group of musicians for a nocturnal recording session, not the most relaxing of circumstances in which to play Mozart! You can hear the performance on Youtube, that amazing free source of rare classical music. Her playing is free from the slightest trace of self-interest, as is the playing of her class-mate Sofronitsky - both are strangers to any concept of musical or personal safety. If you listen to Yudina playing the Schubert A-flat major Impromptu, again you hear someone racing toward beauty without wearing a seat-belt, or as the Americans might say, playing by the seat of her pants! A moth toward the flame...

Those interested in modern examples might be interested to check out the website of the pianist Andrei Gavrilov, while Ivo Pogorelich has some interesting political tales to tell on the political circumstances surrounding his appearance at the Tchaikovsky competition in the 1980s. Whether any modern pianist can match the golden age pianists is debatable; perhaps the concept of the sublime is being airbrushed out of contemporary vocabulary in our materialistic age, where the modern equivalent of the medieval cathedral is the shopping mall at Dubai. But at the very least these amazing musicians/technicians offer some interesting parallels of personal danger and courageous piano playing (in addition to huge piano techniques). Among the younger generation Konstantin Lifschitz is able to mine a sublime seam of Bach, as is the blind French pianist Bernard D'Ascoli. And the young Japanese pianist Aimi Kobayashi certainly looks like an inspired angel. If you copy and paste this in your browser she is playing a Chopin Impromptu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvcMSGbKGo4&feature=PlayList&p=0635480989206E9C&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=13