The Lost Pianos of Siberia

I knew the entire endeavour had been inflected with a measure of madness.~from The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

I was intrigued. Pianos and Siberia--what a strange combination.

I love piano music. I have played (poorly) since I was eight years old. I love the piano music of Rubinstein and Rachmaninoff. I love Russian composers, from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov to Stravinsky to Prokofiev to Shostakovich.

But--Pianos in Siberia? The far land of exile and punishment for millions known as The Prison Without a Roof?

Just the kind of book for me.

Sophy Roberts spent several years traveling across the breadth of Siberia tracing an unlikely, but rich, musical heritage. Her book The Lost Pianos of Siberia is part travelogue and part show more Russian history, filtered through the impact of music.

Franz Liszt's Russian tour "turned the Russian love of the instrument into a fever in the 1840s," Roberts writes.

The diversity of Siberia's people, from the indigenous people who underwent repression, to prisoners including serfs and the Romanov family, fill the pages as Roberts sought the rumored, legendary pianos, including the piano Empress Alexandra played while held prisoner.

The book is also a compressed Russian history, especially of the 20th c. revolutions, and a history of the piano, including the rise of Russian factories.

It felt about as far from home as I could get while remaining on this planet. ~from The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

In the far-flung communities of Siberia, Roberts discovers the universal love of music. It is incredible to read about herders gathering to hear a brilliant pianist play a baby grand in a Mongolian gert.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a unique and mesmerizing read.

The publisher gave me a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. show less

Lost pianos, who'd have thought?

So OK, I decided to read this purely on the romantic view I had in my head. The title just grabbed me. I envisioned a swathe of wonderful pianos populating Dr Zhivago like scenes, sweeping across vast snowy tracts, the expansive steppes, deep in dark forests, draped in interesting places, hinting at lost pasts. Maybe some one slightly referencing Kate Busch dancing across and around in a Cathy Come Home sort of way.
But this book turned out to be not my dream.
This is Sophy Roberts searching out the importance of music to the Russian soul, the lost masterfully made pianos left over from before the Revolution are the focus of her pilgrimage into knowing Russia and its music, her obsession. As she states, show more "There is a covert charm to Siberia." That charm draws her in. Roberts is, "captivated by how marvellous it would be to find one of Siberia’s lost pianos in a country such as this. What if I could track down a Bechstein in a cabin far out in the wilds? There was enough evidence in Siberia’s musical story to know instruments had penetrated this far, but what had survived?"
I found it hard to be upbeat about the Gulag excerpts, given the massive deprivation and dehumanizing that occurred here. Still Sophy's enthusiasm injected music into the dark night of its soul.
In some ways this is a brave and creatively romantic lens through which to view the Russian landscape, it's triumphs and flaws.
Whichever it is, this is a fascinating and very different journey.

A Grove Atlantic ARC via NetGalley show less

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is nonfiction with epic proportions. Spurred by a request from a Mongolian pianist and a dated photo of a piano outdoors in Siberia, British author Sophy Roberts embarked on a quest to find pianos in Siberia and document their provenance. Each of her artfully crafted sentences begs further thought or investigation—but on she goes, searching for pianos, while unearthing cultural, historical, artistic, political, and architectural details that captivate the mind. Just to consider the difficulty in transporting pianos across the frozen permafrost of Siberia in previous centuries is to bear witness to its people's love and appreciation of music. Consider that Tsar Nicholas and the entire Romanov family were show more transported from Moscow to Siberia, over one thousand miles, for execution, and yet, their piano was brought with them. During WWII, a later generation of Russians risked life and limb to save the Romanov's piano. Siberia's is an immensity of space, time, and misery—but also of music and endurance. To read this book and not pine to see Siberia will be a harder feat than finding the lost pianos of Siberia.

My copy of the Lost Pianos of Siberia was provided by NetGalley. show less

"Siberia has the virtue of not startling or astonishing you right away but of pulling you in slowly and reluctantly, as it were, with measured carefulness, and then binding you tightly once you are in. And then it's all over - you are afflicted with Siberia. After malignant anthrax [sibirskaia iazva, literally, 'Siberian ulcer']. which apparently doesn't exist anymore, this is Siberia's most famous disease: for a long time after being in this land a person feels hemmed in, sad, and mournful everywhere else, tormented wherever he goes by a vague and agonizing sense of his own inadequacy, as if he's left part of himself in Siberia for ever." - Valentin Rasputin

I feel this book has a similar effect. A word of caution: If you've got an show more inexplicable desire to visit Russia, this book will make that yearning even worse. show less

An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history, and Russian culture, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure, and a strange forgotten story, all wrapped into one fascinating book : Simon Sebag Montefiore

I will fully accept that I wasn't the target audience for this title. I got this from the library as my only travel writing book of the year to get a deeper sense of the Siberian places in the narrative, but the book was many miles wide and only a half-inch deep as the author dipped in and out of multiple places in every chapter. Inevitably part of her search for rare pianos was interrupted by visa problems, which is not unexpected, but this didn't properly add up to the book I hoped to read. The rating reflects that this was crisp and properly edited, and I did learn quite a few things about Russian history.

Siberia, Russia, Russian-heritage, historical-places-events, historical-research, music, nonfiction, cultural-exploration*****

When I thought about Siberia I always thought about its vastness and the bitter cold of the steppes and the penal colonies that was so isolating but this book brings new and impressive joy to that view. The author is a travel writer with an affinity for Russia, its history, and its peoples. And the fascinating history of the creation and need for pianos to make life infinitely better. It's a wonderfully written narrative complete with photos, references, and real people who are more than knowledgeable about the travels of these pianos throughout political upheavals, hot and cold wars. I really loved this read and show more plan to get the audio when available (print copies have a penchant for wandering away with family and/or friends).
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Grove Press via NetGalley. Thank you! show less