There is a woman in our writing club from Soviet Russia. She doesn't speak English very well but she says she comes because she "loves to hear free women speaking freely". Tonight her daughter, a concert pianist, had a show in the suburbs somewhere. So I went. C'�tait la gal�re to get there... one of the most important trains had stopped circulating so the rest of the network was totally jammed. When we finally got to the suburbs, it was sleeting madly. I eventually made it to the theatre, wet and under-dressed.

This woman's daughter is beautiful, and the finest pianist I have ever seen perform. She started by playing a technically difficult piece by Chopin ("is there a non-technically difficult piece by Chopin?", you ask), but then, partway into a second piece, she stopped. She said that she wanted to tell her story. She told about how she grew up in Tajikistan, the daughter of a single mother who was Tajikistan's first female pilot (somehow this does not surprise me about my friend from writing club). As a little girl she was enrolled in a conservatory. Her mother was soon removed from being a pilot and forced to work in a factory due to her criticism of the regime. The young girl was essentially locked in the conservatory and forced to play the piano all the time. Scales, scales, scales, over and over and over. She used to pretend that each note of the piano corresponded to a color of the rainbow, and by playing she could bring rainbows into the room and into her gray life. One day she came home and there were two police officers in her house. Her mother was once again in trouble for criticizing the regime. She was forced to change schools.

When she was fifteen she started to dream of falling in love some day. She thought about a Prince Charming coming along and sweeping her off her feet. Instead she was called into the director's office where he tried to molest her. She fought back against him and threatened to report him to the Party. She got to stay in school, but instead of playing the piano she was forced to scrub the floor.

Finally her mother devised a way to escape, and she left bright Tajikistan for cloudy Paris. In Paris there was freedom, but no escape from hardship. They lived in tiny maid's room after tiny maid's room, always searching for a piano so that she could continue to play.

Now she is a celebrated concert pianist, and for this show she worked with a lighting artist to connect all of the famous pieces that symbolized different parts of her life to a fantastic colored light show, so that her piano music could finally become a rainbow.

Then she played this piece, and I think everyone cried. I don't know, I was too busy crying. And hanging over the balcony because I had a terrible seat, crying on all of the people below. But I love Chopin. Love. If he were alive I would marry his mind.



Her hair wasn't as complicated this time.

I would love to collect the stories that have come out of the Soviet Union. The one man I met who walked for thousands of miles across Europe to be free, the formerly eminent scientists who barely get by in tiny Moscovian apartments, people like Nathalia's mother, who had to start all over again. At the end of the show she hobbles up to the stage to give her daughter a bouquet of white roses. She has become an old woman well before her time. Her daughter thanks a long list of people but she is not among them. Sometimes beauty is hard to see until tragedy throws it so starkly into contrast.

Wow. If she hasn't written a memoir or anything, perhaps she should. Or maybe someone should get all these stories together and publish a collection.
» randomjunk on 2013-02-08 08:08:49

the rainbow bit was very moving. it's nice to hear about a pianist that isn't so stuck up and full of themselves. i know an older woman who thinks that people should just be giving her money because she is somewhat talented on the keys.
» thaitanic on 2013-02-09 09:39:33

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