Maria Yudina

Maria Veniaminovna Yudina (Russian: Мари́я Вениами́новна Ю́дина, Mariya Veniaminovna Yudina; September 9 [O.S. August 28], 1899 – November 19, 1970) was a Soviet pianist.

Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Nevel, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire. She studied at the Petrograd Conservatory under Anna Yesipova and Leonid Nikolayev. She also briefly studied privately with Felix Blumenfeld. Her classmates included Dmitri Shostakovich and Vladimir Sofronitsky.

After her graduation from the Petrograd Conservatory, Yudina was invited to teach there, which she did until 1930, when she was thrown out of the institution because of her religious convictions and vocal criticism of the Soviet leadership. After being unemployed and homeless for a couple of years, Yudina was invited to teach the graduate piano course at the Tbilisi State Conservatory (1932–1933). In 1936, upon Heinrich Neuhaus's suggestion, Maria Yudina joined the piano faculty of the Moscow Conservatory, where she taught until 1951. From 1944 to 1960, Yudina taught chamber ensemble and vocal class at the Gnessin Institute (now Gnessin Russian Academy of Music). In 1960, Maria Yudina was thrown out of the Gnessin Institute because of her religious attitudes and her advocacy of modern Western music. She continued to perform in public, but her recitals were forbidden to be recorded. After an incident during one of her recitals in Leningrad, when she read Boris Pasternak's poetry from the stage as an encore, Yudina was banned from performing for five years. In 1966, when the ban was lifted, she gave a cycle of lectures on Romanticism at the Moscow Conservatory.

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