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‘I wish for my life's roses to have fewer thorns’: Heinrich Neuhaus and Alternative Narratives of Selfhood in Soviet Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus (1888–1964) was one of the Soviet era's most iconic musicians. Settling in Russia reluctantly, he was dismayed by the policies of the Soviet state and unable to engage with contemporary narratives of selfhood in the wake of the Revolution. In creating a new aesthetic field that defined him as Russian rather than Soviet, Neuhaus embodied an ambiguous territory whereby his views both resonated with and challenged aspects of Soviet-era culture. This article traces how Neuhaus adopted the idea of self-reflective or ‘autobiographical’ art through an interdisciplinary melding of ideas from Boris Pasternak, Alexander Blok and Mikhail Vrubel. In exposing the resulting tension between his understanding of Russian and Soviet selfhood, it nuances our understanding of the cultural identities within this era. Finally, discussing this tension in relation to Neuhaus's contextualization of the artistic persona of Shostakovich, it contributes to a long-needed reappraisal of his relationship with the composer.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 The Royal Musical Association

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References

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82 Lermontov, Mikhail (1814–41) was a Russian Romantic poet of the so-called Golden Age, and one of the founders of the psychological novel. Anton Rubinstein (1829–94) was a Russian composer and pianist considered the only serious rival to Liszt, and founder of the first conservatoire in Russia (in St Petersburg). Fyodor Chaliapin (1873–1938) was one of the most famous Russian (bass) opera singers of his time, particularly renowned internationally for his performance of the title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910) was one of the most influential painters of the Silver Age, and although he protested against the label, he was said to be a Symbolist artist.Google Scholar

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97 Vrubel's painting originally would have been even more striking than it is today. The artist had mixed bronze powder, which has since oxidized, into his paints, in order to present a stunning, glistening effect to the sunset's rays touching the subjects depicted on the canvas.Google Scholar

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100 Neuhaus, Heinrich Gustavovich, ‘Glen Gul′d’ (‘Glenn Gould’), Kultura i zhizn′ (Cultural Life), 7–8 (1957), repr. in Neuhaus, Razmïshleniya, vospominaniya, dnevniki, ed. Milstein, 211–12.Google Scholar

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102 Borisov, Yurii Alexandrovich, Po napravleniyu k Rikhteru (In the Direction of Richter; St Petersburg: Azbuka-Attikus, 2011), 57. As a compromise, Richter reported that Neuhaus suggested he ‘tried ‘to “speak” the recitative in the voice of Diogenes from a barrel’.Google Scholar

103 RGALI, f. 2774, op. 1 ye. kh. 187.Google Scholar

104 Neuhaus, Ob iskusstve fortepiannoy igrï, rev. edn, 164.Google Scholar

105 A video clip demonstrating the use of sympathetic resonance in the recitative of Beethoven's ‘Tempest’ Sonata in D minor, op. 31 no. 2, performed by the author, may be accessed in the Supplemental Material online at <10.1080/02690403.2019.1651498.>' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=A+video+clip+demonstrating+the+use+of+sympathetic+resonance+in+the+recitative+of+Beethoven's+‘Tempest’+Sonata+in+D+minor,+op.+31+no.+2,+performed+by+the+author,+may+be+accessed+in+the+Supplemental+Material+online+at+<10.1080/02690403.2019.1651498.>>Google Scholar

106 Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 512.Google Scholar

107 Neuhaus, Dokladï i vïstupleniya, ed. Khitruk, 107.Google Scholar

108 Blok, ‘Iz stat′i “O lirike”’, 69.Google Scholar

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110 Ibid., 70.Google Scholar

111 Neuhaus, Ob iskusstve fortepiannoy igrï, rev. edn, 205.Google Scholar

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113 Ibid., 4.Google Scholar

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115 Frolova-Walker, Stalin's Music Prize, 90–6. As explained by Frolova-Walker, it was this mechanism of celebrating the folk music as an essential part of being a Soviet artist which had earned the Stalin Music Prize for so many recipients and genres from the Central Asian Republics, Caucasus region (including Armenia and Georgia) and other ethnic concentrations such as the Baltics. Thus, names which are rarely heard in Western musicology – Uzeyir Hajibeyov, Ahmed Hajiyev, Shalva Mshvelidze, Juozas Tallat-Kelpša – were rewarded for artistic merit either alongside, or even above, works by composers recognized today, such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky. Similarly, the same process prescribed programmes that were alien, for instance, to Shostakovich's symphonies in order nonsensically to justify their Soviet ideologies.Google Scholar

116 Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome; Fairclough, Classics for the Masses; Jelagin, Taming of the Arts.Google Scholar

117 For a summary, see Mitchell, Nietzsche's Orphans, and Olga Haldey, Mamontov's Private Opera: The Search for Modernism in Russian Theater (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010).Google Scholar

118 Neuhaus, Heinrich Gustavovich, ‘Razdum′ya o Shopene’ (‘Thoughts on Chopin’), Kultura i zhizn′, 3 (1960), in Neuhaus, Razmïshleniya, vospominaniya, dnevniki, ed. Milstein, 233–6 (p. 233).Google Scholar

119 Neuhaus, ‘Avtobiograficheskie zapiski: Glava II’, 47.Google Scholar

120 Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome, 289; Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad. Similarly, the positioning of late-imperial Russia as a supreme leader of a pan-European culture was traced in Mitchell, Nietzsche's Orphans. From a political aspect, Neuhaus was keenly aware of the implications of Soviet imperialism and was outspoken about what he defined as the annexation of the Baltic States during the Second World War; similarly, he had been critical of the way in which Central Powers and Russia had wrangled over the borders of the new Ukraine and Poland during the First World War. Moscow, Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Delo P-38569.Google Scholar

121 Günther, Hans, The Culture of the Stalin Period (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990).Google Scholar

122 Neuhaus, Heinrich Gustavovich, ‘O Shopene’ (‘About Chopin’), Sovetskaya muzïka, 2 (1960), 42–5, in Neuhaus, Razmïshleniya, vospominaniya, dnevniki, ed. Milstein, 230–3 (p. 233).Google Scholar

123 Moscow, Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Delo P-38569; Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus, ‘Tvorcheskaya diskussiya v Moskovskom soyuze sovetskikh kompozitorov’ (‘Creative Discussion at the Moscow Union of Soviet Composers’), Sovetskaya muzïka, 3 (1936), 16–60; Neuhaus, Dokladï i vïstupleniya, ed. Khitruk; Neuhaus, ‘Glen Gul′d’.Google Scholar

124 Neuhaus, ‘O Shopene’, 233–4.Google Scholar

125 Neuhaus, Dokladï i vïstupleniya, ed. Khitruk, 107.Google Scholar

126 Fliyer, Yakov Vladimirovich, ‘Shchedrost′ khudozhnika’ (‘Generosity of an Artist’), in Fliyer, Stati, vospominaniya, intervyu (Articles, Reminiscences, Interviews), ed. Elena Borisovna Dolinskaya and Mikhail Mikhailovich Yakovlev (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1983), 235–9 (p. 236).Google Scholar

127 Barenboim, ĖmilGilels; Barenboim, ‘Kniga G. Neygauza i printsipï ego shkolï’; Gordon, ĖmilGilels. For a discussion of this situation between Gilels and Neuhaus, see Razumovskaya, Maria, ‘Heinrich Neuhaus: Aesthetics and Philosophy of an Interpretation’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Royal College of Music, London, 2015), chapter 5.Google Scholar

128 Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 247.Google Scholar

129 A meeting of writers was called in Moscow on 10 March 1936. The Literaturnaya gazeta (Literary Gazette) followed on from the Pravda articles by denouncing Pasternak and several other writers for their ‘formalist conduct’ on 15 March (no. 14, pp. 1–3) and 20 March (no. 17, p. 1). For a further summary of Pasternak's difficulties with the regime at this time, see Barnes, Christopher, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1989–1998; repr. 2004), ii: 1928–1960, 132–51.Google Scholar

130 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 201–6; Pauline Fairclough, A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (Aldershot and Burlingon, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 25.Google Scholar

131 Neuhaus, ‘Tvorcheskaya diskussiya’, 27.Google Scholar

132 Letter to Lucy Pogosova, 24 December 1951, in Neuhaus, Pisma, ed. Katts, 373.Google Scholar

133 Letter to Berta Marants, 17 May 1952, in Neuhaus, Pisma, ed. Katts, 376.Google Scholar

134 See, among others, Neuhaus's letters to Mark Milman from Sverdlovsk, 25 January 1944, and to Boris Kuftin from Tsaltubo, 29 November 1948. Ibid., 263, 321.Google Scholar

135 Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, 206.Google Scholar

136 Neuhaus, Ob iskusstve fortepiannoy igrï, rev. edn, 213.Google Scholar

137 Neuhaus, ‘Tvorcheskaya diskussiya’, 27.Google Scholar

138 Hellbeck, Autobiographical Practices in Russia, 290.Google Scholar

139 Halfin, Terror in my Soul, 244.Google Scholar

140 Pravda, 17 February 1936, 3. This is the summarized version of Neuhaus's speech, which has underpinned certain investigations of the denunciation of Shostakovich. For example, it was presented in Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, 206.Google Scholar

141 Neuhaus, ‘Avtobiograficheskie zapiski: Glava II’, 48.Google Scholar

142 Moscow, Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Delo P-38569, 29–30.Google Scholar

143 Photograph taken in 1958; reproduced and discussed in Maria Razumovskaya, Heinrich Neuhaus: A Life beyond Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2018), 71. The Tenth Symphony was withheld from performance until December 1953 owing to the post-1948 anti-formalism campaign following Stalin's death in March that year.Google Scholar

144 Hellbeck, Autobiographical Practices in Russia, 290.Google Scholar

145 Taruskin, ‘Safe Harbors’, 98.Google Scholar

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