Maria Yudina - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488, II. Adagio

wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) Maria Yudina (1899 - 1970), piano Recording: 1943 The great Russian 20th century composer Dimitri Shostakovitch said in his memoirs that living under Soviet rule was like living in an insane asylum. To illustrate the point he told the following story about his friend and classmate in the conservatory, the piano virtuouso Maria Yudina. One Sunday afternoon during the war Yudina was the featured soloist in a live broadcast over Radio Moscow of Mozart&piano concerto No. 23. It just so happened that Stalin was listening to the broadcast that afternoon and was most favorably impressed. The following day he phoned Radio Moscow and "requested" that they send him the recording of the Mozart piano concerto with Yudina they had just played. Of course, having been a live performance, no such recording existed, but nobody at Radio Moscow was going to risk Stalin&wrath by telling him that. So, they frantically summoned the entire Radio Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the conductor and Yudina to an emergency recording session that night. It was already after 10 p. m. before everyone showed up, and the original conductor was so nervous about making a "mistake" and incurring Stalin&ire that he could not beat time effectively. After several false starts, he was senthome and another conductor was summoned in his place. The second conductor arrived so drunk that he kept conducting sections of movements out of sequence. After about 20 minutes of this, the...