Lev Ozerov

The tall building on Uprising Square is a monument to the luminary of all sciences.

But soar up in the lift, enter Gnesin’s apartment— and cults and monuments slip out of your mind.

With this tall stone needle

Stalin may have scratched the sky of socialism, but the old composer’s apartment makes you forget this.

“These spectacles,” I hear,

“were worn by Nikolay Andreyevich.” (Gnesin is telling me about his teacher, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov.) “And this book,” adds Galina Mavrikiyevna, “is a present from him.” A breath of the past, of the sea, of the composers we call the Mighty Handful.

Gnesin sits down at the piano.

He sits there for a long time, bowing his head with its triangular beard.

He sits there so long

I wonder if he has dozed off.

And Galina Mavrikiyevna begs him not to play, not to remember, not to upset himself. But it’s impossible not to remember. Not to remember hurts. To remember hurts still more. But then, who really knows, who can say?

Gnesin looks pale and sad.

Not long before this, he had suffered a stroke—soon after an official meeting with Zhdanov.

Zhdanov had played the piano to the assembled composers; cruelty often likes to adopt the dress of sentimentality— a hatchet beside a curtain of light blue tulle. Zhdanov had pounded away at the keys, as if pounding his 1946 decree into the composers’ skulls.

Prokofiev, Myaskovsky,

Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and others had listened. Not one of them said a thing:

What could they say?

Only Gnesin got to his feet and, gently as ever, said, “And you dare to teach us about music?”

No answer. The silence did not bode well.