"Lost Pianos of Siberia" by Sophy Roberts is a mesmerizing journey into the heart of Siberia, where the author explores the forgotten and hidden stories of pianos scattered across this vast and enigmatic region. Roberts' narrative weaves together history, music, and personal anecdotes to create a captivating portrait of Siberia and its enduring fascination with the piano. At the center of the book is Roberts' quest to uncover the secrets of these lost pianos and the people who once played them. From remote villages to grand estates, she traverses the Siberian landscape, encountering a diverse cast of characters whose lives intersect with the instrument. Through vivid descriptions and rich storytelling, Roberts brings to life the landscapes, cultures, and communities of Siberia, offering readers a unique glimpse into this often-overlooked corner of the world.

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting with this one. I saw 'Siberia' and the cover and requested it without another thought. But as a result, I am equally as unsure about how to review this book.

The author's journey through Siberia on a quest to seek out these long lost treasures. Not exactly what one thinks about when they hear 'Siberia'. Instead one thinks of the Gulag, exile, and mass, unmarked graves.

The author was on the hunt for a different kind of history altogether - though Russian history itself is a main character. You can't have the histories of these instruments in such a bleak place without context of what makes the juxtaposition so beautiful at times.

Yet even when the travel is about pianos, at the same time it really isn't. There is just as much, and more, about the people and their times, culture, lives. The book is basically in chronological order from pre-Soviet, to Soviet, to post-Soviet. From there it is also divided up by region as the author treks to and fro across the massive continent. A stop in Yekaterinburg where the Romanovs came to their violent end is also on the agenda as she travels through the region - and it came to be that these parts I was almost most interested in than the piano search. These slices of life that people are carved out, those who willingly live here, I could not get enough of those passages. I am a Minnesota girl through and through, I will take winter over any other season no contest and yet Siberia...there's no way. Even I could not live there. I have so much respect for those who can, and do, continue to make their homes in one of the harshest climates on earth.

The author details how pianos came to be so beloved in Russia, and Siberia specifically. From large and grand pianos, to sturdier but simple uprights, she seeks out as many as she can find. That these instruments even survived the trip to and through Siberia to begin with is a testament to those that loved them. That some survive still, so many centuries to decades after they were constructed, is another.

Recommended for those with an interest in the history of Russia.

What an interesting book! Roberts manages to claim the attention of the reader with her quest to find pianos in the arid and cold land of Siberia.

Part travel, nature, history, music and anthropology, this book tells the story of Siberia and Russia in general.

This is an absolutely beautiful written book about Russian history and the comfort that music brings.

This book is an interesting mixture of travel writing, Russian history, and music as the author travels across Siberia ostensibly to locate different pianos -once highly fashionable and popular in Russia - that have now disappeared. Along the way, she gives the history of the regions of Siberia to which she's traveling - some of these areas (notably Yekaterinburg) are very historically significant - and tells the stories of how music (particularly piano music) influenced these regions and Russia as a whole.

Let me reveal my bias right away, especially for anyone who doesn't know me or my background: Russia is kind of my "thing." I studied Russia extensively in college, I briefly traveled there, and I've continued my "studies" through lots and lots of reading. Given that interest, of course I was into a lot of the information in this book. But that also reveals something quite important about this book: it's about Russia far more than it is about music. Depending on who you are and what you're looking to get out of the book, I think that'll have an impact on how much you end up enjoying it.

Biases aside, the execution of the book is wanting organization. The sections are organized by region and generally move chronologically throughout Russian history, starting with how piano music got hot in the cold climates, then moving toward how the arts were received by the new Soviet regime. As I got further into the book, I completely forgot what the author's central purpose was - the one she stated at the start of the book: to find some of these lost pianos. She would mention it here and there, but there was so much peripheral information that the central goal was lost in the drift.

The main issue with this book is one I've been seeing a lot of as I've allowed more recently-released nonfiction to dominate my reading over the past couple of years: this story would have made for a fabulous extended article in a magazine (probably a travel magazine), but the added information padded onto it to make it the length of a book muddled the core purpose.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is nonfiction with epic proportions. Spurred by a request from a Mongolian pianist and a dated photo of a piano outdoors in Siberia, British author Sophy Roberts embarked on a quest to find pianos in Siberia and document their provenance. Each of her artfully crafted sentences begs further thought or investigation—but on she goes, searching for pianos, while unearthing cultural, historical, artistic, political, and architectural details that captivate the mind. Just to consider the difficulty in transporting pianos across the frozen permafrost of Siberia in previous centuries is to bear witness to its people's love and appreciation of music. Consider that Tsar Nicholas and the entire Romanov family were transported from Moscow to Siberia, over one thousand miles, for execution, and yet, their piano was brought with them. During WWII, a later generation of Russians risked life and limb to save the Romanov's piano. Siberia's is an immensity of space, time, and misery—but also of music and endurance. To read this book and not pine to see Siberia will be a harder feat than finding the lost pianos of Siberia.

This was an interesting journey, a way to connect physical culture with music, geography, and history. The author is searching Siberia for the titular pianos, but she ends up finding so much more. I liked her style of prose very much indeed, and have tried to find a passage to quote that will do it justice:
"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."

One could wish there were more pictures in the book, but other than that, no complaints. The classical music lover and the Russophile will both enjoy this equally, for different reasons.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a digital ARC for the purpose of an unbiased review.

Non-Fiction Book Review: The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts.

This was a book providing by NetGalley.com for review, and I was very excited when it was approved. I live with my aunt, who is world renown harpist of colour, whose knowledge of harps is always a fascinating thing to learn. So, when I saw this, I requested it and hoped, and one day it got approved.
This book is a new release in North America as of August, and it is a Creative Non-fiction. This isn’t just an account of knowledge of pianos in Siberia, or a listicle as what you would find on BuzzFeed “Top 10 Pianos you wouldn’t believe where we found them!” It’s a narrative of the history of Russia/Siberia, the exploration for these pianos by the author, and how it blends together.
Pianos, like harps, need a lot of love for their gut strings. While some modern pianos will be corded with synthetic strings, the pianos in this book are from the golden age of the pianos, the 1800s. This was before the synthetic strings where used, and so the fact they are in some place as cold and as bitter as SIbera is a little surprising.
Let me give you an idea.
My aunt’s harps, she has quite a few more than one, are kept in a specific room in this house. It is a south-facing window. These harps are mostly antique ones strung with traditional gut strings because she thinks the sound is better – I don’t know, I’m not musical, but I trust her. She has a humidifier that keeps it humid during the cold winters. And when we have thunderstorms in the summer, the strings will continuously be falling out of tune because of the humidity changes. Gut strings are incredibly finicky.
And yet, some of the fantastic European style pianos ended up in Siberia.
I live in a Taiga zone, here in the Canadian Rockies, and it gets cold. I am not in the level of cold that Siberia has. So seeing the title, my brain went, “What.” And I read.
I won’t lie; reading Russian and Siberian names with my dyslexia is a little bit on the hard side, so this book took me a bit longer to get through. But it was worth it. It was a different view of a subset of history I don’t know tons about, as history always intersects with the piano in this book. Some of it was Stalin’s reign or the fall of the Tsars, and some of it was just how people were exiled to the north and chose to bring pianos with them.
And this is explored through the idea that music is a core part of surviving hardship as a human, with a small piece on a reindeer herding tribe that isn’t musical to showcase the difference. It talks about the Romanovs playing the piano in their house arrest, and of the liberal thinkers taking their pianos with them into the wilds, and how those who were building a terrible railroad under the Stalin regime used music to keep themselves moving forward.
It is a dark book at times, as it is whenever you are dealing with some of the darker parts of human history. And there are aspects of how the author mentions some of the things she did that rub a bit wrong with me, but I couldn’t tell you why it bugs me. But I still liked it; I wish I had a good atlas to look at these places to understand where she was, and the history more.
But it’s a beautiful little window into a world, through books, that I do think was a beautiful exploration of a musical instrument, and its place in history.
I think this book would be good for people who like this type of nuanced history. That history is as much about everyday objects and their place in a larger scheme of the world, versus just the Great Man form of history. It won’t teach you a ton about pianos per-say, but it will show you how humans adjust in big moments of history in smaller ways. Sometimes resilience is not just about fighting back. It’s about surviving.

I can’t think of a more specific topics than pianos in Siberia, and that’s what this book is about. However, it’s about a lot more than that, too. The authors search for pianos sends her all over Siberia, where she meets many fascinating people and learns the stories of the region. I learned a lot about Siberia and pianos while reading this book. It was great.

Almost on a whim, journalist Sophy Roberts decides to travel deep into Siberia to search for antique pianos, to uncover an instrument worthy of the talents of a Mongolian concert pianist.

The book gives an overview of the history of Siberia from the time of Catherine the Great to the present day. Roberts discusses how, in various ways, Western music spread into the furthest reaches of Siberia, and describes the instruments that are known to have made their way there, in various salons, concert halls and so on. She hunts for many of these, with little luck.

Through Roberts' quixotic search, I got to find out an awful lot about the history, culture and geography of a place I will likely never see. I have never read a book quite like this one, I don't think.

There is no dramatic curtain-raiser to the edge of Siberia, no meaningful brink to a specific place, just thick weather hanging over an abstract idea.

It is a modern economic miracle, with natural oil and gas reserves driving powerful shifts in the geopolitics of North Asia and the Arctic Ocean. It is the taste of wild strawberries sweet as sugar cubes, and tiny pine cones stewed in jam. It is home-made pike-and-mushroom pie, clean air and pure nature, the stinging slap of waves on Lake Baikal, and winter light spangled with powdered ice. It is land layered with a rich light history of indigenous culture where a kind of magical belief-system still prevails. Despite widespread ecological destruction, including 'black snow' from coal mining, toxic lakes, and forest fires contributing to smoke clouds bigger than the EU, Siberia's abundant nature still persuades you to believe in all sorts of mysteries carved into its petroglyphs and caves. But Siberia's deep history also makes you realize how short our human story is, given the landscape's raw tectonic scale.

British journalist Sophy Roberts' The Lost Pianos of Siberia is one of those books that encompasses so much more than a cultural or geographical history, although that's the broadest category I can think to try to stuff it into. 

The book is nominally about Roberts' search for "lost" pianos in Siberia -- the instruments bearing a surprising history in this rough land of rough conditions -- beginning with acquiring a special one for Mongolian pianist Odgerel Sampilnorov. Honestly, that's not exactly a story I'd jump to read. But this is one of those books that begins with one premise and blossoms into something wholly unexpected. It tells so many other stories and introduces figures and places that were astonishing, heartbreaking, inspiring, and wonderful to learn about. Some were part of Roberts' quest; others surprised her along the way.

Time has a life of its own in Siberia. It has a depth and dimension which makes you feel that days shouldn't be hurried -- the opposite of how our time is construed in the West. So when the priest I had befriended suggested I should stay a while longer before I caught the last train out, I wanted to more than anything. But such is the trouble with Siberia. The map is always goading you with how much more territory there is still left to cover.

Siberia is a vast and, at first glance, bleak landscape, but if travel narratives are any indication, it's a magnetically compelling one as well. Lost Pianos is interestingly set apart by its music-themed angle, certainly what would seem an unusual one for this locale, but as we'll see actually isn't all that unusual and in fact has deep cultural significance. Music, after all, was described by Thomas Preston, British Consul to Western Siberia during the Russian Revolution, as "a passport...particularly in Russia." Catherine the Great, in her push to westernize Russia and bring it on a par with the great European cultural cities, made pianos and piano music an ubiquitous part of the country's arts and culture.

The more he talked, the less Stanislav's remembering focused on the siege than on the music that punctuated his past. He was using pianos in the way J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons.

Yet pianos are undeniably a bourgeois symbol, requiring money, space, and years of upkeep, not to mention the luxury of time and dedication necessary for learning to play. Siberia, then, with its remoteness, its brutal history, its legacy of banishment, is an unlikely setting for these objects better associated with high-society European drawing rooms. And yet Roberts introduces stories of people in the lowest epochs of their lives, like exiled in the gulags of this harsh, unforgiving climate, who had piano music as their soundtrack, however out of place the instruments might have seemed in this setting.

Neither of us had come for the certainties, but for the outside possibility that a little marvel might appear.

Roberts travels to far-flung locales, including Sakhalin, Yakutsk, Kamchatka, and Yekaterinburg, where the last Romanovs had taken a piano with them into exile. As she moves from city to city tracing pianos with historical significance to the region, Roberts recounts small histories of some of the events that shaped this part of Russia. Even if these are familiar to readers, her retellings are succinct enough to be very impactful, and beautifully, sometimes poetically written.

And what began about music and pianos ends up being about infinitely more, about the human condition and especially about survival. As Roberts herself notes, the book's theme is that of "a far-flung search for Russia's remarkable survivors." And a theme of reconciling past with present, as they layer over one another in a place so heavily bound to the darkness of its past, and holding on to one's identity regardless of circumstance. Valery Kravchenko, a pianist in Kamchatka, tells her, "It is impossible to get rid of the past. That is a very important feeling for artistic people."

Beyond this, I find it a remarkably tough book to describe and characterize. It's richly descriptive, both inwardly meditative and boldly exploratory, and written in a way I can only think to describe as haunting. 

Because the history moves quickly from one story to another without the depth and detail that can lose a more casual reader, it's accessible for readers not already steeped in Russian history. And although I already knew a lot of what was covered here -- the fundamentals of Siberian exile,  the Decembrists, and the Romanovs among that -- I so enjoyed the way she told the stories, the details she highlighted, that it never felt repetitive or dull. Indeed, the feeling I had most strongly after closing this book the last time was that I could happily reopen it to any page and start reading again. That kind of magic only happens once in awhile.

Much of that is a testament to the surprise of where the narrative goes, and much to Roberts' entrancing, lyrical writing, as well as an admirable understanding of what stories she can tell and where to let her own involvement recede: "I let the silence hang, to ease the story out of a room of memories where only ex-Soviets can go."

There were times when I came to think of Siberia not only as a physical location, but also as the word to describe what happens if you stay too long in a place that is not your own, sticking around for one winter too many until you realize you have gone too far to turn back.

Roberts mentions several times that you start chasing one thing but it leads you to discover something completely different. This book feels like that concept perfectly executed -- you can start reading it for one topic, but it leads, exhilaratingly, to a million other stories you didn't realize you wanted to know, with an atmospheric portrait of times, place, and people. It's a treasure.

I loved this book, it's original, wholly unexpected, the story is unknown and it does something I love in books - unearths little known details of Jewish culture, and our interactions with other cultures.
Definitely worth reading. Also, includes beautiful photographs and wonderful details. Go follow the author's instagram account for more beautiful pics.

This seems like a great book but I cannot l download it due to how publisher choses to share the ARC, it is only in PDF incomplete download, nothing for kindle. I will have to wait to read it at my library. which is a shame because the premise seems so good.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher for an attempt for an ARC in exchange for an honest review, however I cannot fully review this book.

Available: 8/4/20

This is well-written, but still kind of a bizarre travel across Siberia looking for old pianos. Siberia really is the end of the world in many ways and so can definitely support a look from an outsider. The pianos are remnants of its long time in the shadows and the fame and infamy of those who passed through. There are probably a limited group of readers who would be interested in such a tale, but they should enjoy what is here.

Sophy Roberts begins The Lost Pianos of Siberia with an epigraph taken from a book a friend recommended to me and I loved--Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes: “Objects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost. People have always given gifts. It is how you tell their stories that matter.” Sophy Robert’s artful writing and engaging way of telling her story do matter.

Beginning with Franz Liszt’s 1842 arrival in St. Petersburg, Roberts sets the scene for cultural change. When she opens her search for a piano worthy of Odgerel Sampilnorov, a young Mongolian pianist she has met, she transports her readers to Siberia, a place most know only for the horrors and often death confronting political prisoners in forced-labor camps. From the outset, Roberts conveys two important facts—that her book is “written for general readers” and “is sometimes more about the looking than the finding.” No music expertise is required, but readers must open their minds to an extended hunt involving leads that do not pan out, trial and error, and the thinking process and persistence of a writer on a passionate mission.

“I traveled ‘on the hoof’ wherever a lead might take me, by plane, train, helicopter, snowmobile, reindeer, amphibious truck, ship, hovercraft and taxi,” Roberts writes. What’s more, after discovering her bad reaction to Siberian mosquitoes, she undertook her search over several winters. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the bitter Siberian climate expects an adventure, and Roberts does not disappoint. However, weather is but a small part of that adventure.

Roberts also offers history—not the history of the Gulag prison camps although she offers a bit of that, but mainly the little known history of people who relocated to Siberia, via the trans-Siberian railroad, for any number of reasons—many of them wealthy or middle class and caught up in the pianomania of the day. Readers learn how Catherine the Great helped promote and spread Western music culture throughout Russia and about the development of a Russian school of music that fostered love of music even in the inhospitable Siberian climate within which a piano had little chance of longevity.

To write much more would give away too much. Readers need only know they are in for an adventure and a learning experience. Roberts will open their eyes to people, places, and culture of a Siberia they probably neither knew, nor anticipated. If these readers also possess inquiring minds capable of reveling in and/or identifying with her research process, so much the better.

For more information, photos, and videos, see https://www.lostpianosofsiberia.com/

Thanks to NetGalley, Grove Press, and Sophy Roberts for an advance reader copy of a book that broadened my knowledge of Siberian and music history.

An exciting tour de force as the author uses her experience as a travel writer to take the reader on to a journey through the wilds of Siberia in search of pianos that may or may not exist since the time of Catherine the Great.
Reminds one of Paul Theroux travel novels as Sophy Roberts adds eccentric characters to the story as well as takes of each she visits.
History of Russia unfolds on each page makes the reader want to know more of the Sakhalin Islands and other places that Sophy Roberts placed in the mind of the reader.
One can hear the music played through the pages of the novel.
An astonishing debut novel.

Lost pianos, who'd have thought?

So OK, I decided to read this purely on the romantic view I had in my head. The title just grabbed me. I envisioned a swathe of wonderful pianos populating Dr Zhivago like scenes, sweeping across vast snowy tracts, the endless Steppes, deep in dark forests, draped in interesting places, hinting at lost pasts. Maybe some one slightly referencing Kate Busch dancing across and around in a Cathy Come Home sort of way.
But this book turned out to be not my dream.
This is Sophy Roberts searching out the importance of music to the Russian soul, the lost masterfully made pianos left over from before the Revolution are the focus of her pilgrimage into knowing Russia and its music, her obsession. As she states, "There is a covert charm to Siberia." That charm draws her in. Roberts is, "captivated by how marvellous it would be to find one of Siberia’s lost pianos in a country such as this. What if I could track down a Bechstein in a cabin far out in the wilds? There was enough evidence in Siberia’s musical story to know instruments had penetrated this far, but what had survived?"
I found it hard to be upbeat about the Gulag excerpts, given the massive deprivation and dehumanizing that occurred here. Still Sophy's enthusiasm injected music into the dark night of its soul.
In some ways this is a brave and creatively romantic lens through which to view the Russian landscape, it's triumphs and flaws.
Whichever it is, this is a fascinating and very different journey.

A Grove Atlantic ARC via NetGalley
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

I was intrigued. Pianos and Siberia--what a strange combination.

I love piano music. I have played (poorly) since I was eight years old. I love the piano music of Rubinstein and Rachmaninoff. I love Russian composers, from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov to Stravinsky to Prokofiev to Shostakovich.

But--Pianos in Siberia? The far land of exile and punishment for millions known as The Prison Without a Roof?

Just the kind of book for me.

Sophy Roberts spent several years traveling across the breadth of Siberia tracing an unlikely, but rich, musical heritage. Her book The Lost Pianos of Siberia is part travelogue and part Russian history, filtered through the impact of music.

Franz Liszt's Russian tour "turned the Russian love of the instrument into a fever in the 1840s," Roberts writes.

The diversity of Siberia's people, from the indigenous people who underwent repression, to prisoners including serfs and the Romanov family, fill the pages as Roberts sought the rumored, legendary pianos, including the piano Empress Alexandra played while held prisoner.

The book is also a compressed Russian history, especially of the 20th c. revolutions, and a history of the piano, including the rise of Russian factories.

In the far-flung communities of Siberia, Roberts discovers the universal love of music. It is incredible to read about herders gathering to hear a brilliant pianist play a baby grand in a Mongolian gert.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a unique and mesmerizing read.

The publisher gave me a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This one was interesting to me, but not for the right reasons. I received this book from NetGalley. I thought I be reading a lot about the history of pianos in Siberia, more from a musical standpoint. I ended up reading a lot about Siberia, with the musical bits and pieces sprinkled in. So, in one way I disliked it because I was wanting to learn about music and influences within that time period. On the other hand, I learned a lot about the history of Siberia, Russian culture and politics and some interesting personal narratives.

I enjoyed reading this book but agree with a review in The Guardian about its “gaping flaw” – in the beginning, the author says she is on the hunt for a piano on behalf of a musician friend who lives in Mongolia, a hop-skip-and-jump from Siberia by local standards. Eventually, she seemingly forgets about the nominal purpose of the journey in favor of just wandering very, very far and wide while contemplating the astonishing cruelty and suffering that is the history of Siberia. However, the book is still entertaining and informative, as Siberia is still a mostly vast and unexplored place and the people there, both ethnic Russians and members of the fast-disappearing ethnic minorities, are often very interesting, although, clearly, reading about them is much less grueling than experiencing them first-hand.

On the rare occasions when the author comes near a political opinion, ignore her. At one point (Kindle location 1460), she reports that she is attempting to “find in music a counterpoint in music… to the modern images of this country [Russia] reported by the anti-Putin media in the West.” Anti-Putin media? Is that the media reporting about the widespread corruption, brutal suppression of internal dissent, and dispatch of hit squads into other nations to poison political critics? That media? Yeah, so unfair, that media, reporting all those true stories that make the Kremlin look bad.

And then of course there's all those awful people who relentlessly dwell on the negative and overlook the achievements of Stalinism:

The USSR of the thirties, while leading to better living standards and greater opportunities for the general population, also resulted in trauma on an unprecedented scale. (location 3028)

and

The Gulag may have been filling up under Stalin at an appalling pace, but at the same time, literacy rates in the USSR nearly doubled by the end of the decade. (location 3374)

It's a testament to how the memory of the USSR is receding that people can write such things and not receive the ridicule they deserve. Imagine the censure an author might receive for similar sentiments about Hitler's Germany.

OK, sorry, maybe that's too harsh for three ill-advised sentences in a book of 400+ pages.

In the long stretches of the book which are unburdened by political apologetics, I enjoyed the book greatly, but reading books about someone else's difficult trip from the comfort of my bed is my idea of a simple inexpensive pandemic pleasure.

I was given a free electronic advanced review copy of this book via Netgalley. Thanks to Grove Press for the freebie.

Siberia, Russia, Russian-heritage, historical-places-events, historical-research, music, nonfiction, cultural-exploration

When I thought about Siberia I always thought about its vastness and the bitter cold of the steppes and the penal colonies that was so isolating but this book brings new and impressive joy to that view. The author is a travel writer with an affinity for Russia, its history, and its peoples. And the fascinating history of the creation and need for pianos to make life infinitely better. It's a wonderfully written narrative complete with photos, references, and real people who are more than knowledgeable about the travels of these pianos throughout political upheavals, hot and cold wars. I really loved this read and plan to get the audio when available (print copies have a penchant for wandering away with family and/or friends).
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Grove Press via NetGalley. Thank you!