Great Russian pianist enriched Chicago
Pianist Dmitry Paperno did not have an easy life.
He launched his career in a Soviet system that crushed spirits, sanctioned anti-Semitism and demeaned artists of his considerable stature (hewas a laureate at the fifth International Chopin Piano Competition inWarsawin 1955).
So when Paperno immigrated to theUnited States in 1977, theUSSR’s losswas Chicago’s gain. The pianist joined DePaulUniversity’s music faculty that year, enriching this city’s cultural life ever after.
Paperno’s death on Oct. 12 at 91 inNorthbrook of natural causes has led admirers to contemplate the allure of his art and the reasons he never received quite the global recognition he deserved.
“His playingwas extraordinary— so deeply lyrical,” said Donald Casey, former dean of DePaul’s School ofMusic.
“Hewas probably one of the most gifted pianists I’ve heard play,” saidDaniel Lyons, a former Paperno student.
“Dmitry Paperno is a highly talented pianist and aman of intelligence,” wrote piano virtuoso Vladimir Ashkenazy in the foreword to Paperno’s memoir, “Notes of aMoscowPianist.”
“Therewas a rightness to his playing,” observed James Ginsburg, who released several Paperno recordings on Ginsburg’s Chicago-basedCedille Records.
“When youwere listening to him play, in that moment it felt like this is theway the piece should be played.”
When I first heard Paperno, in January 1988, I was struck by the tenderness of his pianism. Playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat (K. 482) with Concertante di Chicago, Paperno “created a beautifully proportioned andweighted tone, its nuances constantly changing,” Iwrote inmy Tribune review. “Paperno’s delicate touch in the andante made it easy to see why the
audience at the first performance of the piece in 1785 demanded that Mozart repeat themovement.”
So whywasn’t Paperno as celebrated as Russian colleagues such as Ashkenazy, his roommate during the Chopin competition?
Careers in the arts are mercurial, of course, and on purely technical terms few could challenge Ashkenazy’s prowess. But therewere other reasons the wider public did not knowwhat Paperno brought to the piano, his gifts overshadowed by Russian titans such as Ashkenazy, Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter.
“Hewas never the big persona of Gilels or Richter,” said Ginsburg. “But he’s definitely amember of that Russian school, from the studio of one of the great Russian teachers (Alexander Goldenweiser).
“Hewas not a self-promoter type but somebody who just really lived with the music and let it speak through him. He didn’t really get management when he came here— his concertizingwas largely local. My negotiation with him toward that first (Cedille) recording (“Dmitry Paperno Plays
Russian PianoMusic”, 1989) was interesting.
“I said to him, ‘You made those recordings with (producerNorman) Pellegrini onMusicalHeritage Society, but it’s been over 10 years. Why haven’t you made another recording?’ And he said, ‘Nobody asked me.’ ”
The combination of Paperno’s introspective personality and somewhat dark view of theworld— surely colored by his ordeals in theUSSR— came across clearly in “Notes of a MoscowPianist.”
“The painful disappointment and unprecedented satisfaction that only music can give are the motivating forces in a musician’s fate,” wrote Paperno, whowas born in a Jewish family Feb. 18, 1929, in Kiev and gravitated toMoscowfor his education and career launch.
“Only through constant connection with his life’s work can he remain worthy of his own respect.”
But that connection oftenwas injured by the politics, corruption and neglect of the Soviet system. Having survived WWIIas a piano student in Russia, Paperno later witnessed firsthand the persecution of musical
giants.
“In February 1948, Soviet music sustained a new and crippling blow,” hewrote in “Notes of aMoscowPianist.” “This time the victims were several leading composers, mainly Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Miaskovsky, and to a lesser degree, Khachaturian. By fiat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, their musicwas pronounced ‘formalistic,’ inimical to the people, and was, in effect, banned.”
Over time, the situation “degenerated into an openly anti-Semitic campaign against cosmopolitism,” wrote Paperno, whose grandparents had been murdered by German forces at the Babi Yar killing grounds outside Kiev.
But the killings did not stop there.
“In 1952,” wrote Paperno of life in Stalin’sMoscow, “a group of Jewish writers and poetswas shot in secret.”
August 1968 delivered what Paperno called “the cruelest blow: ‘the Prague Spring’was crushed. … For many, our country’s tragic invasion of Czechoslovakia meant the end of all our hopes for a fair and democratic Russia.”
By 1975, Paperno decided to apply for an exit visa, at which point “the applicant immediately became a traitor andwas treated accordingly,” he wrote.
Paperno leftMoscow with his family inMarch 1976 and settled in Chicago in January 1977.
Why Chicago?
“At the time he had the choice between Toronto, NewYork and Chicago,” recalled Anna Radzin, his daughter. “NewYork I think hewas a little afraid of— itwas simply too big. It certainlywould be America, not Canada, which leaves Chicago.
“I think he found the American dream, but he himself didn’t consider it that. (At DePaul) hewas surrounded with faculty, students, people who loved him, looked up to him. And he still sadly didn’t really either understand that or always hoped for more.”
Or as he put it in his book: “Our first months in Chicagowere marked by a sense of alienation and hopelessness, traces of which are felt to this day.”
But DePaul recognized the man’s importance.
“By all accounts hewas the first trulyworld-class artist thatwewere ever able to hire at DePaul— my predecessor brought him in,” said Casey, referring to Frederick Miller (the current dean is Ronald Caltabiano).
“When you bring a world-class artist onto a faculty, it enables you to approach otherworld-class artists. In many respects, his appointmentwas absolutely pivotal in the elevation of the DePaul School ofMusic.”
But studying with Papernowas not easy. Hewas ferociously demanding and never quite satisfied.
“You couldwork on a piece as hard as you could, polish and polish it, and after you played it the most you could get out of him was: That time, not bad,” remembered musician Lyons, who did his graduate studies in piano performance under Paperno.
During a lesson, “He would sit and demonstrate howto play,” said Lyons. “The structure of (his) phrasing and theway thingswould breathe musicallywas oftentimes breathtaking.”
At social gatherings, Paperno sometimeswould ask his students to join him at the keyboard in duets.
“It’s theworst possible scenario, after you’ve had a few drinks, playing through even basic duet works, four-hand pieces or orchestral transcriptions,” recalled Lyons. “Itwas really like having a complete piano lesson right there. Not anything technical, just howthe music breathes, the phrasing, pacing, colors, balance, everything.”
Thanks to Cedille Records, Paperno’s art has been preserved in several key recordings, including “Dmitry Paperno Plays Russian PianoMusic,” “Uncommon Encores,” “Recordings by aMoscow Pianist” (which gathers music Paperno recorded in theUSSR forMelodiya) and more.
To those of us who heard him live, the luster of his tone, beauty of his touch and depth of his expression will linger in memory.
It allwas testament not only to his gifts but also to the Russian school of pianism he so eloquently represented.