When the police found her, my mother was playing Schubert
OrchestrasThe German-based pianist Elisaveta Blumina writes movingly about living with her mother’s dementia.
My mother, Mara Mednik, was born in Leningrad just before World War II . A child prodigy, with perfect pitch and an enormous will to be on stage one day. At the age of two she tried to accompany her violinist uncle on the piano while standing. At the age of five she sat as a soloist in the large hall of the Philharmonic and played Chopin…
After moving to Hamburg, she immediately found a job at the university …. An enormous number of today’s world-famous soloists passed through her hands: she cooked for them, practiced with them in their apartment, accompanied them on their trips to competitions and supported them wherever she could. There is hardly a large orchestra today where her protégés are not seated. Then Corona came. And the dementia…
Read on here.
A sad but beautiful story. But the music lives on, even when most of the rest is gone.
The story is lovely, but I must quibble lightly about a) the headline, and b) a small point in the translation.a) The lady in question wasn’t playing Schubert when the police found her: she played Schubert for the police officer when she was taken home. And b) she did not accompany her students in their apartment, but in hers. Yes, the word can mean either, but the lack of commonsense makes me wonder if this is a machine translation.
Underappreciated article. I’ve seen a lot of virtuoso soloists but piano accompanists/collaborative pianists have always impressed me more. Their ability to sightread and react on the fly to whatever is happening in front of them is awe inspiring. If I could ask for one superpower that would be it. Not to mention a country where police officers take a few minutes to listen to Schubert played by a lady they helped.
A touching essay, even with the limits of Google Translate.