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A new opera by British composer Joe Cutler and Swiss librettist Max Hoehn explores the meaning of music in a terrifying world. Inspired by the remarkable life of Maria Yudina, the virtuoso pianist and survivor of Stalin’s purges, this dark absurdist thriller is brought to life by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and a fine cast of soloists on 14 July 2024.
In the last days of Stalin’s reign, a mysterious phone call from the Kremlin launches a desperate and seemingly hopeless search for a missing pianist… Conceived as an intimate sound experience, Sonata for Broken Fingers is influenced by the radio operas of the past and the recent flourishing of audio drama during the pandemic. Hear the world première performance at the CBSO Centre this summer and stay tuned for a future album release by Birmingham Record Company. Supported by the Swiss Cultural Fund UK.
How did you come across the story of the pianist Maria Yudina (1899-1970) and what made you incorporate it into this new opera?
Max Hoehn: The relationship between Stalin and the artists he favoured or persecuted has inspired several plays and books. This particular myth concerns a surprise phone call from the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union to Radio Moscow one night with an urgent request for a recording of Mozart with Yudina playing. The recording didn’t exist and the radio scrambled together an orchestra and Yudina in the middle of the night to make the record from scratch and deliver it to Stalin the following morning. Shostakovich tells this apocryphal story in Testimony and there are many fascinating video interviews by Richter and others about Yudina’s eccentric and extremely risky behaviour during the purges.
This story has always haunted me because it is about music-making in the most difficult, terrifying circumstances. I thought a claustrophobic, intimate opera about the meaning of music in a terrifying world would be a very enticing, thought-provoking prospect. Like in the works of Bulgakov, there is also a very dark comic thread running through the text because of the absurdity of the situation.
The mission of the Swiss Cultural Fund in the UK is to develop a range of cultural events and projects allowing Switzerland’s artistic scene to be presented in the United Kingdom with special emphasis on the encouragement of new talents. Find out more on the events supported by the Fund and how to support its work.
The opera brings together individual and global strands of history. How did you transcribe this dialectic in Sonata for Broken Fingers?
Composer Joe Cutler’s music goes inside the mind of the pianist forced to make this emergency recording and aims to capture the tense atmosphere of those years. But Stalin himself plays a major role (sung by the bass Stephen Richardson). His persona has overshadowed several operas of the past, but I believe ours may be the first that actually puts him on stage. We observe his nocturnal habits and dramatize his fatal stroke and state funeral. So although it’s a chamber opera, the subject matter does give it a certain epic quality.
What characterizes your work with Opera21?
I founded Opera21 as an independent producer of contemporary opera and music theatre. Our work is artist-led, international in its outlook and thrives through creative partnerships such as the current one with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Birmingham Record Company. We are working with top musicians who have been vital to contemporary music in the UK and beyond like Claire Booth (Soprano), Andrew Watts (Countertenor), Torsten Rasch (Composer) and Sian Edwards (Conductor).
Could you please tell us what will follow the première at CBSO Centre in Birmingham?
At the same time as rehearsing for the first performance we are recording the opera with the same cast and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The album will be released in early 2025 on all streaming platforms. Much of my inspiration for this piece comes from radio drama and the genre's recent revival during the pandemic, so this is a very exciting step for the project. Opera as an act of imaginative storytelling on the part of the listener has always been just as valid as the full experience on stage.
