Fittingly, if annoyingly, I have mislaid my copy of The Lost Pianos of Siberia, so this will have to be from memory, just like many of the stories that Sophy Roberts collects over the course of the book. The conceit of the story is that Roberts was spending most of a summer with a German friend in Mongolia — as one apparently does — and she heard a young Mongolian woman playing the piano with extraordinary grace and beauty. Roberts quickly realized that the skill and talent of Odgerel Sampilnorov outclassed the limited instruments available to her in rural Mongolia, or indeed all of the country. Roberts promises to find and bring to Sampilnorov an instrument worthy of her abilities.
That promise turned into a quest, that quest took Roberts back and forth across Siberia, and the journeys became a book (also documented in part on a web site). In the book, Roberts braids three strands: first, the history of pianos in Russia, and to a lesser extent the history of pianos in general; second, Russian history from Catherine the Great onward, with a particular emphasis on Siberia; and finally, Roberts’ own travels to far-flung parts of a far-reaching place. Similarly, she divides the book chronologically into three parts: “Pianomania,” 1762–1917; “Broken Chords,” 1917–1991; and “Goodness Knows Where,” 1992–present. The first date is the beginning of the reign of Catherine the Great, a time when piano technology was advancing and the instrument assuming its modern form even as Russia was importing European expertise, very much including instrument makers for its court and upper nobility.
Roberts describes how in Russia pianos became symbols of culture and refinement, how developments in the international market let to the establishment is a significant domestic piano manufacturing industry, as well as how teachers, composers and impresarios found a larger market in Russia for their services than practically anywhere else in Europe. During the Imperial period, these linked developments led to a great dispersal of fine pianos across the empire, not least in Siberia. The first great fortunes made in Siberia came from fur, and as trading posts grew to towns and cities, nobility and bourgeoisie alike showed their cultivation by bringing pianos across the great distances from Europe. Subsequent engines of prosperity such as the railroad or natural resources produced wealthy households whose members craved the culture that piano playing represented. Less happily, nobles forced into political exile in Siberia brought their households, including pianos, with them. Roberts notes particularly the many Decembrists – idealists who revolted against the Tsar in 1825 — who brought culture, science and learning with them to Siberia. European Russia’s loss was Siberia’s gain, and that very much included pianos. She also relates the history of Polish rebels, many of them educated, sent to Siberia, and the instruments they either brought or found in that distant land.
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