Ignat Solzhenitsyn is a man divided. And that’s a good thing.
“I felt I was already split in two halves as both pianist and conductor. But now there is this other half,” said the 50-year-old musician.
The “third half” of Solzhenitsyn’s life is his dedication to finishing the English translation of his father’s complete works. His father, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), was one of the 20th century’s most important writers: Nobel Prize-winning author of the three massive volumes of the “Gulag Archipelago,” his book about the gulag forced labor system—which included intimate reflections on the eight years he spent in a gulag prison—as well as such novels as “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” “Cancer Ward,” and “In the First Circle.” The elder Solzhenitsyn’s crime: expressing in a private letter some doubts about Stalin’s decisions at the end of World War II. Only Stalin’s death in 1953 kept him from spending the rest of his life in the Soviet prison system, which Solzhenitsyn christened “the gulag archipelago.” In 1970, the Nobel committee awarded him the literature prize, commending his work “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.”
Young Dreams
Solzhenitsyn’s accomplishments loom so large that it must have been daunting for young Ignat to pursue his own, separate artistic dreams. But he did, and with his family’s full support. He recalls having walked into his father’s study and hearing Beethoven on the record player. He was mesmerized, and his father, rather than shooing Ignat out the door, listened with him as the music unfolded. The family had recently moved into a Vermont farmhouse that came with a baby grand piano. Lessons ensued.
“That was my first conscious discovery of music, but I’m told that when I was not even able to walk yet, I would stand by the record turntable, holding on to it and listening to the LPs playing. When the music stopped, I would throw a fit until it started again,” Ignat Solzhenitsyn said.
Young Solzhenitsyn’s passion and years of practice on that baby grand led to earning dual degrees in piano and conducting at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, followed by a concert career aided by the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. The list of orchestras with which Solzhenitsyn has appeared either as pianist or conductor is long and includes those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris, Israel, and Sydney, among many others.
The pandemic put a hole in that list’s chronology for 20 months, but 2022 has seen Solzhenitsyn gradually resume his performing schedule with performances in Philadelphia, at the Marlboro Festival; London’s Wigmore Hall; and elsewhere. “Classical music has been very quick to cancel and very careful about rescheduling because until very recently, there has been so much uncertainty, particularly about state regulations,” Solzhenitsyn said.
He is in the midst of planning a spring 2023 schedule that includes piano recitals and an appearance conducting Moscow’s National Philharmonic Orchestra. Though raised in the United States and England, Ignat Solzhenitsyn was born in Moscow, and he retains connections to that city both professionally as a musician and personally through his two brothers and mother who live there. The brothers moved back to Russia from America, as did their father toward the end of his life, when it was certain that the Soviet Union was done for. Ignat, because he was committed to studying music in the West and had a full slate of concerts even before graduating from the Curtis Institute, remained behind.
That has not always been easy, especially in recent months. Asked if the current Russia–Ukraine war has made his life in the Ukraine-supporting West more difficult than otherwise, Solzhenitsyn paused, and said quietly: “Yes, it has. That’s my best answer. It is a difficult time.”
Translation as Discovery
The last two years were difficult in a different sense, as the pandemic has kept Solzhenitsyn isolated in New York and at the old family home in Vermont. During that hiatus, he turned to related matters: “I focused on other projects, first of all teaching, both at the Curtis Institute”—where he has been on faculty since 2004—“and privately. But I also took time to reevaluate some responsibilities with respect to my father’s work.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s complete writings in Russian consist of 30 volumes averaging 500 pages each. Despite the Nobel Prize and the West’s recognition of Solzhenitsyn’s genius, many volumes have yet to see English translation. Addressing that deficiency became Ignat’s ambition during his downtime.
“Much Solzhenitsyn has appeared in English but there is much still awaiting translation, and that is something I am trying to rectify,” the younger Solzhenitsyn said. “The most important work yet to be fully translated into English is arguably his most important work, ‘The Red Wheel.’”
“The Red Wheel” is a history of the Russian Revolution in which the events and characters are historical, but the dialogue in many cases is imagined, for the obvious reason that in most instances no one recorded conversations between, for example, Lenin and Trotsky. The result is factually based but also novel-like in its interchanges between personae. “It is a work like no other. He had to invent a genre just to write it, to bring history alive.”
Comprised of four parts in the Russian original, three volumes have now been brought out in English: “August 1914,” “November 1916,” and “March 1917.” Ignat Solzhenitsyn is now focusing on bringing out the final volume, “April 1917,” “in which Vladimir Lenin, as we now know, arrived in Russia with the secret assistance of the German government to meet with Trotsky and plot their way to power.”
Many more volumes of prose, poetry, and even stage plays remain to be translated. Completing that task has been Ignat’s new focus, because, as the son puts it, “It’s important today that everything flows through English.”
His father lived a long life, but even so, how did he manage an output so vast? “He did not understand the concept of writer’s block. He felt it was a luxury experienced by writers in well-to-do circumstances who could choose to write but also choose not to write, while in his case, he was from a youngest age compelled by fate and his desire and his gift to be a writer. This was greatly fortified by the sense of duty to use his remaining years to document and record and expose the truth about Russia, truth that was not only neglected but in many cases covered up, concealed, distorted, and lied about by the Bolsheviks and their successors.”
Reflections on Classical Music
Ignat Solzhenitsyn’s devotion to his father’s work echoes his own commitment to an art form that conveys the values of an era gone by. Gazing out onto a contemporary cultural landscape that often engages in anti-Western animus, where culture itself is considered suspect if its origins are European, what future does he see for the classical music he loves?
“We are seemingly in the process of throwing overboard the heritage of Western culture. I would think that, when contrasted with so many unjust and vile things we’ve done as a species, culture would be seen to stand as representing the best we have done. This idea that we should toss it because it doesn’t fit the current narrative is profoundly short-sighted and may yet lead to catastrophic, irreversible results. I hope and believe, however, that will not be the case.” What forms the foundation of his optimism? “For as long as we are human, we will need music. We do not live by bread alone,” Solzhenitsyn said, alluding to the Biblical passage, Matthew 4:4: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
“That passage has always struck me. It’s so counter-intuitive in a way. What could we possibly need besides the material? But most of us, at some point, search for spiritual nourishment. Classical music will always be needed.”
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
