MARIA KORCHINSKA a Sketch
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MARIA KORCHINSKA A Sketch 1 CONTENTS PREFACE 1. Early life 2. The Moscow Conservatoire 3. The Russian Revolution 4. Persimfans 5. Count Constantine Benckendorff 6. Settling in England: the pre-war years 7. The war 8. Post-war years 9. Harpweeks with Phia Berghout 10. Maria Korchinska and her pupils NOTES 2 PREFACE Maria Korchinska (1895-1979) was a celebrated never returned to Russia. The family settled in harpist who began her career in Russia before the England, where a son Alexander was born in 1925. first world war. She started her studies at the Moscow Maria went on to make a career in England and in the Conservatoire at the age of ten, after getting through international arena. She established a strong a fiercely competitive entrance exam. She was taught reputation as a soloist, as a chamber player, as an by Xenia Erdeli and then by Alexander Slepushkin, adjudicator at international harp events, and as an and graduated in 1911 with a gold medal, the first inspiring, if daunting teacher. ever awarded to a harpist. By the time she was Constantine Benckendorff was my great uncle fourteen she was busy performing, both within the (brother of my maternal grandmother). Both he and Conservatoire and outside. It was a golden time and Maria Korchinska were colourful figures of my youth, she played under the baton of such luminaries as and Cony (as he was known to family and friends) Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Ippolitov-Ivanov inspired me to take up the flute nearly 60 years ago. and also Debussy, who visited Russia and impressed her hugely. In addition she played in Koussevitsky’s I was prompted to draw up this sketch after seeing Moscow orchestra from its foundation in 1909 until some material relating to Maria Korchinska’s life and the revolution of 1917. She survived the rigours of work in her daughter Nathalie Brooke’s family papers. the revolutionary years, and during that period It revived memories and encouraged me to set the famously accompanied Chaliapin in performances for material down in a form that would be accessible to prisoners at the Cheka (security police) jail. A few descendants, to younger generations of harpists, and years later, in January 1924, she played with the perhaps to a wider audience. It is based on Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra at Lenin’s funeral. Korchinska’s reminiscence about her early years, a concert scrapbook that was kept during the 1920s, Her teacher Alexander Slepushkin died in 1918, and some information in published sources and on the she was appointed to replace him as professor of internet, photos from a variety of sources, and the harp at the Conservatoire, also taking over as oral testimony of ex-pupils and fellow musicians. I principal harp at the Bolshoi Theatre. She was only would like especially to thank my cousin Nathalie, and twenty two at the time, yet in the course of a few the former pupils and fellow musicians who spoke so years made a big impression as a pedagogue as well eloquently about their memories of Korchinska and as a performer, thus influencing the next generation helped in other ways to realise this project: in of Russian harpists. particular Karen Vaughan, Hilary Wilson, Sian Morgan In 1922 she became a founder member of Persimfans Thomas, Brian Davis, Hannah Francis, Isobel (First Symphonic Ensemble), the world’s first Frayling-Cork, Cy Payne, William Bennett and Rhuna conductor-less symphony orchestra. It was during Martin. I have incorporated part of the text of a Persimfans rehearsals that she met Count previously published piece about Cony’s musical Constantine Benckendorff (1880-1959). He was a activities, mainly drawn from his memoir Half a Life. keen amateur flute player who had joined the [1] Persimfans Board. They were married later that year, and a daughter Nathalie was born in September 1923. In 1924 Maria left for England on a concert Nick (Kolia) Lampert, March 2015 tour, together with her husband and daughter, and 3 Maria Korchinska’s 1962 recording of solo harp music, for which she selected: Handel, Pastorale , Theme and Variations; Glinka, Variations on a theme of Mozart; Prokofiev, Prelude in C; Hindemith, Sonata for Harp; Albert Roussel, Impromptu; Jesus Guridi, Viejo Zortzico; Marcel Samuel-Rousseau, Pastoral Variations on an Old Christmas Carol; Benjamin Britten, Interlude from A Ceremony of Carols 4 1. Early life you have Maria and Helen in your charge, report on them to me every three weeks.” We spent eight splendid months in Moldavia, freed Maria Korchinska found it difficult, she said, to speak from the iron discipline of Moscow. My grandmother about her own life, and she did not publish a memoir. had always sent us melons, corncobs, nuts and wine She did, however, begin to record some from her estates, but now to see her magnificent reminiscenses, getting as far as the ‘first chapter of kitchen garden was a joy. My mother’s sister (a very an autobiography’. This was set down in 1975 by beautiful woman) and her son (an extremely difficult Brian Davis, one of her pupils, and the following are boy) were staying with us. My aunt always wanted some extracts: me to look ‘nice’, in particular expecting me to comb ‘As a professional harpist, I had the pleasure of my hair twice a day; so …I cut it off. Of course I was making [a] long-playing record of harp music [in punished, but soon after I exacted my revenge. I 1962]; now when I think about my life, it seems like disappeared for a whole day into one of the several a very busy, very varied LP. huge baskets kept for storing the flour from the corncobs in winter. Everyone became most I was born in Moscow [in 1895] to a family of landed concerned, even casting anxious looks into the pond, gentry who had never taken part in the artistic world. which was very gratifying. When evening came I We were Polish by blood, but settled in Russia for emerged and was punished; but I did not mind—I four generations, and as a result completely Russified had had my revenge. in upbringing and outlook. My early life was dominated by my father, who was a quite exceptional …..My father came to visit us in Moldavia; I person. He had the strongest of wills, and held remember it was the first time I had seen him on extremely avant-garde ideas for his time. He felt it horseback. He was not so demanding at this stage, in was time people of his class should work fact quite kindly, but we had orders to return soon to professionally, so he gave away his inherited estate Moscow. So back we went, my sister and I... to his half-brother and took a post as lecturer in At our return my mother had twins, which meant two Mathematics and Engineering at Moscow University. more wet-nurses, many more screams and much Later on he combined this with a senior Civil Service more harassment. Meanwhile, the next stage in my post. father’s educational scheme began. I have been His first wife gave him a son, but died prematurely, asked, “Why are you a professional player?” The leaving him broken-hearted. When he was 42 he answer is, in my father’s words, “One has to be remarried; my future mother was twenty five and professional now.” He was convinced that after the came from the part of Moldavia then in southern next war that Russia lost we would all have to earn Russia, now in Romania. She was a typical late our living. So, in my seventh year, I embarked on a Victorian lady, with a genteel education. Her devotion demanding routine that included geography, drawing, to the Roman Catholic church contrasted with my sculpture, anatomy and the piano as well as the usual father’s atheism and liberal ideas, but he was the subjects. As for languages we spoke Polish as well as force that moulded us children. He conceived a Russian, in view of our ancestry. My father rigorous discipline for the six of us (the son he longed considered that we needed to know not the for arriving fifth) and being the eldest I bore the languages of our friends, French and English, but brunt of all my father’s ideas and experiments. those of our potential enemies; so I was set to learn German, and my sister was tutored in Japanese. We were stretched mentally and gymnastically from Again my father’s forecasts proved correct. The the start according to strict routines. As a result I Japanese war of 1905 gave us our first taste of could read and write before I was three, but I insecurity, and in 1914 we knew we had to work. dreaded the lessons because they were so demanding. Cold baths and exercises took care of the From the age of six until I was ten I studied for two physical side, designed to develop strength and hours every morning with my father, whose particular courage. But life was not wholly uncomfortable; my aim was to discover where the talents of his children father now being in charge of the Civil Service lay. He decided I was best at music so my work at department responsible for the roads and rivers of a the piano intensified, and I hated it. (The harp did vast area, we lived in an official residence which had not make an appearance until I was nine). As you can a huge garden. There we children played with others see, my education was of a quite unusual kind—a from the surrounding big houses with great mixture of Tolstoy and the Barrets of Wimpole Street.