Review: “Sonata for Broken Fingers” – Chamber Opera on Stalin’s Terror Falls Short

The pianist and teacher Maria Yudina was one of the most enigmatic musicians of the Soviet era. As a friend of renowned figures like Shostakovich, Boris Pasternak, and Osip Mandelstam, Yudina was an openly devout Christian and a fervent supporter of many western modernist composers who were banned in the Soviet Union. Despite facing a ban from giving recitals for several years, she seemed to have led a somewhat charmed life during Stalin’s reign of terror. Her life inspired various stories – likely apocryphal – about Stalin’s admiration for her playing.

These tales serve as a foundation for Joe Cutler’s chamber opera, Sonata for Broken Fingers, which recently had its premiere in a concert performance conducted by Sian Edwards, featuring the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Marketed as a “dark absurdist thriller,” the opera presents an awkward fusion of fact and fantasy crafted by Cutler and librettist Max Hoehn. Here, Yudina transforms into the character Maria Maximova, a pianist and teacher imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital with the diagnosis of a “sluggish schizophrenic.” In this narrative, all her recordings are destroyed.

In the opera, late one night in 1953, Stalin demands a recording of Maximova playing “Beethoven’s Sonata No 33” (a fictional piece) by the next morning. Fearful of informing him that all her recordings had been destroyed on his orders, officials rush to bring the pianist, who hasn’t played in five years and has two broken fingers, into a recording studio to re-record the sonata.

The story unfolds in 20 sharp scenes, blending speech, declamation, and occasional songs over a musical backdrop of ostinatos, pedal notes, and rattling percussion from the six-piece ensemble. Interspersed are snatches of pre-recorded piano that resemble pastiche Beethoven. Despite these elements, the opera lacks engagement. For much of its duration, Maximova remains a sidelined figure, taking center stage only in the final scene where she recounts her experience playing at Stalin’s funeral. This aria, performed by Claire Booth, was one of the few moments where her talents were fully utilized. Elsewhere, Booth’s contributions were limited to brief bursts of brittle coloratura.

The other performers – Stephen Richardson as the somber Stalin, Christopher Lemmings as Gleb, the panicked director of Moscow Radio, James Cleverton as Leonid, the minister of culture and Maximova’s brother, and Lucy Schaufer as the conscientious doctor – did their best with their roles. However, their collective efforts yielded an overall underwhelming result.