The Siloti family came to Russia from Italy during the 1700's. Siloti first had piano lessons with Nicholas Rubinstein and Zverev, Scriabin's teacher. Early ambitions to write music were guided by his harmony and composition instructor Tchaikovsky, who became a great friend and godfather to Siloti's daughter Oxana. After Liszt's death he returned to teach at the Moscow Conservatory. He married Vera Tretiakov, daughter of the art lover whose palace and collection became the Tretiakov Gallery. The Silotis eventually settled in Petersburg after years of residing in Germany and Belgium.
Kyriena Siloti (1895-1989) once gave this writer a hand-written memoir of her father, written in pre-Revoltuionary Cyrillic in 1987. She recounted events in Siltoi's life which could not appear in the 1963 Soviet edition of reminiscences of his life, published on his centennary year:
"On the piano, father practisced for fewer hours than most pianists and never worked for more than half an hour at a time, saying that after half and hour, he's tired. When I told him that I don't fell tired after half an hour, he said 'You don't work, you play.'
"At the beginning of the century, he bagn to diminish his piano playing and take up conducting. In 1903 he dfounded his Siloti Concerts in which he played unknown classical works [such as the Brandenburg Concertos] and introduced modern music to St. Petersburg."
Among the soloists at his concerts were Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Casals, and Grainger. His role as a leading figure in the capital's musical life ended with the Revolution.
"In 1919, father left. He had been arrested for 'disobedience'. Mother incited her friend Dr. Ivan Ivanovich Manukhin (who knew and treated Lenin). Because of this Manukhin, father was released from prison and placed under house arrest in the doctor's home. Soon they released him but evicted him from his apartment and gave him very small quarters, seized his property, piano, music, letters, etc. So father had to go to the Conservatory to practise.
"One morning when he arrived, the kind concierge Ivan told him that someone is expecting him and wants to speak with him. Father unwillingly went together with this stranger to a classroom and as soon as they entered the room, he quickly turned around and locked the door. Father, 'taken aback': 'What will happen? Will he shoot me, will he beat me?' Instead the stranger removed his false beard and father recognized Paul Dukes, a young English pianist (my colleague in the Conservatory) whom Albert Coates brought to our house because we children all spoke English. It turned out that while he was a student at the Conservatory, Paul was training as a future secret agent for his government. He offered to help father and the family get out of the country. This way my parents and my sister left Russia in the winter, over the snow in a sled with a white horse, coachman in a white caftan with white blankets over the Gulf of Finland, passing Kronstadt on the ice and reaching the Finnish shore.
"In Finland, the police asked who could identify him. He called Erke Mellartin in Helsinki, the director of the Conservatory." Mellartin had appeared in one of Siloti's concerts and helped the family reach America. One possession Siloti managed to take with him on his flight was the photo of Liszt seated with Siloti at his side.
Siloti settled in America and taught at the newly founded Juilliard School. His cousin Rachmaninoff lived nearby and often sought his and Kyriena's advice, for his career as a pianist had been an arbitrary choice and Rachmaninoff often encountered problems while preparing his new programs. Siloti infrequently played in public. One of his last concerts was with Toscanini: they performed Liszt's Totentanz and his arrangement of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy. Carlo Zecchi was in New York at the time, met Siloti and heard the concert. He told this writer that Siloti's pianism was brilliant but that a mutual agreement was lacking between conductor and soloist. Kyriena wrote:
"In the beginning of the century on a tour in Europe, father became interested in a new invention. Out of curiosity he agreed to play on such: a grand piano [which produced] piano rolls, not knowing that half a century later, these pieces would be heard on a public radio program! I've heard that program and was terrified because there was no trace of his individualistic playing. All his life he refused to make recordings, saying 'I cannot play for a machine.' I am glad that I have a tiny record made by myself at home (when in the 40's I bought such an apparatus for my pedagogical work). Father said a few words and then played a few measures from different compositions (even from songs). This record gives an impression of his individualistic playing a little."
An additional twenty minutes survive in which he repeatedly plays themes from Gounod's Faust, his cousin Rachmaninoff's Second Suite for Two Pianos which both performed together, and two fragments of Liszt's works. At times Siloti hums the missing parts while playing. We chose the most audible and musical fragments from a tape of the primitive sounding discs, which were lost or destroyed several decades ago.
© Allan Evans, 1996