The Lost Pianos of Siberia

Truly, there would be reason to go mad if it were not for music,’ said the Russian pianist and composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Where wooden houses seem to cosy up together for warmth, there are pianos washed up and abandoned from the high-tide mark of nineteenth-century European romanticism.

I soon realized what is missing can sometimes tell you more about a country’s history than what remains. I also learned that Siberia is bigger, more alluring and far more complicated than the archetypes might suggest—much bigger, in fact, than all the assumptions I had made when my plans began to germinate, then proliferate, and I found myself caught up in the momentum of travelling a ravishingly surprising place.

Siberia is a nightmare or a myth full of impenetrable forests and limitless plains, its murderous proportions strung with groaning oil derricks and sagging wires. Siberia is all those things, and more as well.

When crystals fell from the feathered branches, it felt like I was walking into a cloudburst.

I realize I could no more unsnag the idea of Siberia’s lost pianos than set out coatless into cold so extreme it makes your tears freeze into the lines around your eyes.