Book Review - The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
What sparks an adventure to begin for you?
Ticking off a bucket list, planned expeditions years in advance or a moment of serendipity?
What about an idea whispered in your ear?
Would it you set off in search of the unknown, the missing and the forgotten in one of the world’s wastelands?
Read on to find out how Sophy Roberts experienced the further reaches of Siberia on such a quest, the people she meets and the history of a land that even the name strikes fear.
Reading Around The World, allows me, and hope you, to travel to locations where I may or will never travel.
I made it to Siberia once - just.
The true travel story below tells it involved three vodka soaked friends, and how I survived a flight in the fated Tupolev Tu-154 on route to Novosibirsk, Siberia.
What’s this book about?
‘The Lost Pianos of Siberia’ follows Sophy Roberts embarking on an epic journey across the vast, timeless landscape of Siberia. Her route unearths hidden tales of forgotten pianos and stories of resilient people whose instruments and lives intertwined. The quest was to find a lost piano for a pianist friend.
What prompted the author to write the book?
Roberts formed a friendship in the summer of 2015 with a young Mongolian woman called Odgerel Sampilnorov while staying with their joint German friend, Franz-Christoph Giercke.
It was on one star filled night, close to the border with Siberia, in a ridge line of Gers, nomads’ round-shaped wood-and-canvas tents, an idea came in a whisper.
Odgerel, an outstanding and accomplished pianist, enraptured everyone by playing with ‘great feeling for devotion and suffering’ pieces from Bach, Mozart, and a selection of other notable composers. Odgerel was a former piano teacher of Giercke’s daughter and cousins.
Giercke shook his head with irritation at the sound of the instrument. Not the way it was being played but the poor expression of the notes and resonance of the keyboard and whispered in Robert’s ear his frustration, ‘We must find her one of the lost pianos of Siberia!’
That was it. The Genesis of an idea and the first step of adventure.
Robert writes, ‘Giercke loves all of these things too, but above all, the spirit of adventure. Offering to help pay for the endeavour, he said that only in trying to take on something difficult would something interesting ever happen.’
What a magnificent phrase and potential of adventure seeds in the mind. Do interesting things happen when simple is the norm? Or, in seeking difficulties, are rewards interesting lives to live and remember?
She goes on, ‘We made our plans in this way: If we could do it, it would be good, and a good story. And if we couldn’t do it, we would have a story, too, the story of not being able to do it.’
And so the search began to find a Lost Piano of Siberia for Odgerel to play.
How does the writing style transport me to the places she visited?
Roberts, a travel journalist who writes for the Financial Times and Condé Nast Traveler, beautifully describes the vastness of the land and beauty in strangers.
‘Siberia. The word makes everything it touches vibrate at a different pitch…’
‘Siberia rolls off the tongue with a sibilant chill.’
‘Siberia is far more significant than a place on the map: it is a feeling which sticks like a burr, a temperature, the sound of sleepy flakes falling on snowy pillows and the crunch of uneven footsteps coming from behind.’
‘Siberia is a wardrobe problem - too cold in winter, and too hot in summer - with wooden cabins and chimney stacks belching corpse-grey smoke into wide white skies. It is a melancholy, a cinematic romance dipped in limpid moonshine, unhurried train journeys, pipes wrapped in sackcloth, and a broken swing hanging from a squeaky chain. You can hear Siberia in the big, soft chords in Russian music that evoke the hush of silver birch trees and the billowing winter snows.’
‘It is the ultimate land beyond… Before air travel reduced distances, Siberia was too remote for anyone to go and look. It became a wilderness ideal for banishing criminals and dissidents when the Tsars first transformed Siberia into the most feared penal colony on earth.’
What Roberts captures with precise details are the serendipitous meetings with locals and their history connecting them to specific pianos. Using local TV, and social media, her quest takes her to the far reaches of the region, a land mass one-eleventh of the world. Yet, you feel the smallness of the apartments where, push against one wall, an upright piano finds space to be played amongst remnants of often a past which many chose not to remember.
What insights did I gain? What makes me want to visit the same places?
I found fascinating and revealing the history of Siberia. Many millions had no choice to travel there. Prisoners and exiles, often with family following behind, along on occasions with a piano carried, dragged, sledged over thousands of miles. Stories were interesting about those who moved to remote and barren places, still do for the silence, anonymity, and safety they might find. (To a point.) As much as you can there. Roberts found that too.
With official papers in order, she heads to a border post near Kosh-Agach, one of the last settlements in Russia before Mongolia, even, perhaps, a route out of Siberia. ‘The view was immense looking across the steppe. The temperature falling to below minus twenty and dropping. It felt like the End of Everything.’ From nowhere, four armed border guards in white camouflage on snowmobiles appeared. Her integration lasted the rest of the day.
So perhaps even at the End of Everything, Siberia still has vestiges of terror.
Does it remind me of any places I’ve been, or stories to tell?
Along with my trusted interpreter, Oleg, we’re waiting to board a night flight to Novosibirsk, Siberia from Domodedovo Airport, Moscow. To travel the twenty-six miles from the centre of Moscow, we used a sleek, modern high-speed train. A sharp disconnect from the aeroplane we were now walking towards across the tarmac, lit dimly in the darkness of a distant terminal gate.
The Tupolev Tu-154 has an unusual rear door entry. Steps drop from under the tail of the aircraft. A scene similar to grainy UFO films where dark shadows walk up into the hull, never to be seen again. (Probably after being probed and prodded, I imagine.) It’s a distinctive feature of the Tu-154, much like its safety record. One better you didn’t know before you boarded. (I didn’t.) Flight safety records report 110 accidents, with 73 hull-losses.
In language school, many useless sentences involved walking along Arabat Street, Moscow, starting conversations. Now walking down Arabat, the stark faces I passed didn’t suggest they wanted to engage, and truth, I never tried.
We reached Red Square. As you enter Lenin’s Mausoleum, a soldier guards each step, staring as you descend into its dim corridors. One intimidating moment reminds the strict reverence required there as a loud insistent ‘shush’ echoes off granite walls, as I started to say something to Oleg. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lies in a glass sarcophagus. His waxy skin illuminated in the dark. You keep moving from the darkness of death into the brightness of life and the living. There is Saint Basil’s Cathedral, its fairy tale pastel turrets and spires, contrasting beauty against the formidable beastly presence of the blood red Kremlin.
Toe caps of pointed dress shoes scrubbed across the tarmac in front of us. Two friends, an arm each supporting, were helping the third remain upright. Only just. An overwhelming stench of aircraft fuel and stale vodka drifted back from the trio ahead. Turning to Oleg I said, ‘Well, they are never going to let him board the flight.’ He shrugged, his expression, ‘Welcome to Aeroflot.’
Passing by holes in the fuselage filled with expanding foam, seats with no covers, their foam stained and ripped, we squashed into barely covered seats two rows behind the ‘Три друга.’ Boarding an Aeroflot aircraft paralytic is obviously not a problem.
On most flights I’ve travelled, a drinks trolley contains those perfect miniatures of famous brands. On this flight, they used standard sized half and full bottles. When offered the opportunity, each of the three accepted a bottle grateful for a ‘top up.’ The seats in front of theirs pushed flat forward, six legs extend fully on top of them. My interpreter started chuckling. They’d just shouted in unison, ‘This is better than first class!’ Then as music started played from an 80s boombox carried on board, other passengers and even the flight attendant joined in the party.
No sleep was had that night.
I arrived, feeling like you imagine those three amigos would, but stone cold sober shuffling towards the carousel as the sun rose through the windows. My fellow vodka sodden passengers were welcoming the morning with laughter, hearty back slaps, now all skipping towards the exit.
Welcome to Siberia!
I’d booked the same route for the return journey. I ripped the ticket into confetti. I would rather walk back than fly on another Tupolev Tu-154 flight. Instead, I took the Trans-Siberian train from Yekaterinburg To Moscow. An adventure for another story.
What have I learned about me, writing, life, or travel from this book?
The spark of a conversation can light the fire of an adventure. If you let it burn. We can extinguish the flame of a story before it burns.
What quests can begin with a simple whisper in the ear?
Embrace and welcome difficult situations, for there you find adventure and stories.
What I most found fascinating were the stories of the families who travelled with exiled or imprisoned spouses the thousands of miles to the barren steppe carrying with them, among their possessions, a piano. How inanimate objects can hold untold stories in their serial numbers.
What music comes to mind or embodies the mood or themes of this book?
It’s a cliche, but reading the book suddenly brought to mind watching the film Dr Zhivago many years ago with my mum. The theme tune from the film ran through my mind when Roberts described the Revolution and the vast landscapes, their secrets buried under the snow and ice.
What specific passages or quotes resonated with me the most, and why?
‘Objects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost. People have always given gifts. It is how you tell their stories that matters.’ - Edmund De Waal The Hare With The amber Eyes.
