V. Lotar-Shevchenko
The pianist Vera Lotar was born in 1901 in Turin. Her parents were high school teachers, father taught mathematics. Her mother — letters. They later both lectured in Sorbonne.
As Vera herself confirmed she studied music «since she remembered herself . Literature and music reigned in her family. At twelve Vera already played with Arturo Toscanini orchestra. She became Alfred Korto's pupil in Paris and shared her teacher's affection for Chopin and Debussy music. Graduated from Korto's class Vera entered Vienna Academy of Music where she enlarged her repertoir reachly. Since then she never parted of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven's portrait forever stood on her piano.
In Paris she married soviet trade mission official and in 1938 the couple came to the Soviet Union. Her welcome was totally in accordance with the macabre fame this year has left in the history of our country. Thanks to famous soviet pianist Maria Veniaminovna Yudina who stood up for Vera, she managed to confirm her status of performer and started working in the State Filarmonia of Leningrad.
But then her husband arrest came first, after him she was arrested too and sentenced for 13 years in Stalin's gulag. Being not guilty at all she spent her term in Sahalinlag and Severurallag.
All these long years the keyboard cut on her plank-bed with the kitchen knife was her only musical instrument. She «played her silent piano during her rare free moments. These extraordinary concerts had their audience compiled of her roommates — women prisoners who were shocked by her devotion to music and assured they understood and heard what she tried to play with her fingers tortured by hard work the most unusual music instrument of XX century.
Released from the camp she worked as a leader in Nizhnii Taghil's musical theatre. It was in this theatre where the future famous Russian film director Vladimir Motyl has staged his first projects.
Later she lived in Barnaul. In mid seventies of the last century on invitation by the president of the Siberian branch of Soviet Academy of Science she moved to Novosibirsk and became a soloist of Novosibirsk state philharmonic society.
Vera Lotar-Shevchenko became an active performer. She played in Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Odessa, Omsk, Sverdlovsk. She worked incredibly hard, performing her favorites — Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. Her performance of all Sonatas and Concerto N°5 of L.v.Beethoven with the orchestra of the Novosibirsk state philharmonic society conducted by Vassilii Sinaisky became her real triumph.
Although she had a chance to return to France she always rejected: «It would be treachery for the memory of those russian women who helped me during that infernal term in prison.
She is buried in the South cemetery in Novosibirsk. Vera's own words are on her gravestone say: «Blessed is the life where Bach lives.
