Maria Korchinska: An unassuming memorial in stone, a lasting legacy in music

Not all funerary monuments consist of lavish marble sculptures, carved heraldry and soaring columns. In fact, most of us awaits a much more understated, yet no less important type of monument: a gravestone. 

The survival and legibility of gravestones depend on the type of stone used, the local climate and method of inscription. Gravestones that are still legible today can reveal interesting stories about individuals, families and communities.

This is the case, for example, for an outwardly unassuming gravestone at St. Peter’s Church in Claydon, Suffolk. At first glance the simple grey, lichen-speckled stone slab doesn’t give much away but the inscription is engraved deeply and remains legible. This is not, by comparison to some of the other monuments you might find in CCT churchyards, an old headstone. The biographical dates recorded on it are “born 17.02.1895” and “died 17.04.1979”. What, then, makes a gravestone that was erected well within living memory so historically interesting? The places of birth and death might give a clue. Born: Moscow, 22 years before the Russian Revolution. Died: London. A further clue as to how the deceased in question might have ended up in London, lies in a reference to her husband, also recorded on her gravestone. Buried here is the “Widow of Count Constantine Benckendorff.” And her name: Maria Korchinska. Her profession is recorded, interestingly, not as countess, but “Harpist”. 

However, whether you were a countess or a harpist married to a count might have mattered little to Russian revolutionary forces in 1917. So, who was Maria Korchinska and how did she end up in Claydon, Suffolk?

Maria Korchinska was born, as we have already established, in 1895 to a family of landed Russian gentry of Polish descent. Her father, however, whom she described as “strong-willed” and “avant-garde” in notes about her life recorded by one of her pupils, gave away his inherited wealth to his brother and took up a post as a lecturer in Mathematics and Engineering at Moscow University. Despite her father’s revolutionary and atheist leanings, the family didn’t have to forego all comforts. He forged a career that led him into a high position in the Civil Service and the family lived in a comfortable, official residence. The education of Korchinska and her 5 siblings consisted of rigorous physical and mental exercise, prescribed by her dominant father, and resulted in her being able to read and write before the age of three but dreading the demanding lessons. 

When Maria was six, two of her sisters died of scarlet fever, a tragedy which afforded her a brief respite from her father’s regime. She was sent to her grandmother’s estate in rural Moldavia, together with her surviving sister, Helen, and enjoyed the relative freedom that being away from Moscow and out of her father’s sight afforded her.  

At the age of ten Maria entered the Moscow Conservatoire and proceeded to spend six happy and eventful years there as a teenager. It seems that the education she received at home had prepared her well, for she almost experienced the conservatoire atmosphere as relaxed compared to her home life. Hours spent in lessons without her governess afforded her a new freedom; and, allowed to pursue the harp as her only instrument, in contrast to the piano, which she hated, she slowly developed a deeper interest in music. Her teachers were for the most part so well-known and respected, that their names will resonate even with those who have only a casual interest in classical music: Rachmaninov and Debussy were two of them. Her favourite teacher seems to have been a kind man named Slepushkin. She graduated from the conservatoire in 1911 as the first harpist to be awarded a gold medal.

After graduation, Korchinska was determined to go to university to become either a doctor or a lawyer. She tried her hand at a medical career first but realised she was too squeamish. And shortly after she began her legal studies, the first world war broke out and the need to earn a living prevented her from continuing. Necessity forced her to make money with the only professional skill she had; playing the harp. 

Maria Korchinska survived the turmoil of the Russian Revolution of 1917 relatively unscathed, thanks to her musical talent. “‘Belonging to the Arts’, she recalled in her 1965 BBC broadcast, ‘was a trump card in Soviet Russia and one had a right to exist.” (Nick Lampert, https://willm4.sg-host.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Maria-Korchinska.-A-Sketch.pdf ) She played at the Red Army Club in exchange for rations to support her family. She was delighted when an opportunity came up to accompany opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin for a performance at the state security prison, which held many political prisoners. Korchinska went in the hope to see friends, who had been arrested, and to receive and bring messages. She did manage to see friends but was warned by a Commissar afterwards not to talk to the prisoners again, lest she might find herself among them.

Her memories of playing at Lenin’s funeral with the Bolshoi orchestra include having to smear her face with fat to protect her skin against the -30C cold and not being paid for the work. In 1918, her kind teacher Alexander Slepushkin died, and Maria was appointed to his post at the age of only 22. One of her students, Vera Dulova, was to become the most celebrated Soviet harpist of her time.

The revolutionary spirit of the time extended into the world of music and in 1922 Maria Korchinska became a founder member of a radical musical experiment: the world’s first conductor-less orchestra. The democratic passion of the musicians who came together to form ‘Persimfans’ (short for First Symphonic Ensemble in Russian) motivated them to break out of the confines of traditional concert halls and to perform instead in factories and community centres. For Maria Korchinska, however, her time with ‘Persimfans’ did not just influence her career, it also had a very personal and lasting impact on her life. 

One of her fellow ensemble members, was a shy, inexperienced flautist, by the name of Constantine Benckendorff. Born into a Russian aristocratic family of Baltic-German origin, he had first had a career in the Russian Navy, served in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War and managed the family estates in between these wars. His father served as the ambassador to London until he died of influenza in 1917. Constantine’s own career came to a halt following the Russian Revolution. Despite being progressively minded and initially finding employment with the Red Navy, his aristocratic roots made it impossible for him to work within the Soviet government. However, he had always been a passionate, if not an exceptional, flautist and faced with few other options, he decided to pursue a career in music. In his memoirs, he described many of his first attempts to play alongside some of the most highly-trained musicians in Russia as part of ‘Persimfans’ as ‘small mortifications’ (Half a Life. London: The Richards Press 1954). Despite some teething-issues, he gradually gained confidence and was particularly encouraged by one of his fellow ensemble members: Maria Korchinska. She foresaw a career for him in chamber music, organised him a professional gig outside of ‘Persimfans’ and married him in 1922. 

In 1923, their daughter Nathalie was born. Shortly after Nathalie’s birth, in 1924, the young family left for England where Maria was going on tour. They never returned to Russia. Constantine still had family in England. His mother had remained there after his father’s death and his sister, Nathalie, was now married to an Englishman. They first lived in the Benckendorff’s London residence but soon moved to a somewhat more rural location: the village of Claydon in Suffolk.

One can imagine them going for a stroll through the churchyard, perhaps venturing into St. Peter’s church to admire its Catholic revival elegance, while remarking on the excellent acoustics. 

It seems that the whole family had settled in Claydon. In 1949, Constantine’s brother in-law (the aforementioned Englishman) Sir Jasper Ridley presented the church with a statue of the Virgin and Child by Henry Moore, as a War Memorial, possibly motivated by his own personal experience of the pre-mature death of his son, who died fighting in the Second World War, aged 30. The statue has since been moved to Barham church, but Sir Jasper and his wife Nathalie are buried together at Claydon. You can identify their gravestone by a carved image of a bull. 

After moving to Claydon, Maria and her family divided their time between Suffolk and London. In 1925 their second child, a boy named Alexander was born in Suffolk and in 1929, the family gained English citizenship. 

Thanks to her talent, Maria Korchinska began to build a career for herself in England during the 1920’s and 30’s. At first, she played as a soloist, often accompanied by her husband, who was steadily improving his skill as a flautist. Her solo performances earned her admiring reviews from the British press, especially since the harp was not commonly regarded as an instrument fit to carry a solo performance. 

Maria continued to play throughout the war, often, once again, in unconventional venues for example in caves near Lewes, clubs, YMCA’s and secret camps. Benjamin Britten was inspired by her talent and she was in turn inspired by his work. In 1943 Korchinska played in the first complete performance of Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols” at Wigmore Hall, one of London’s most famous venues for chamber music.

After the war, Maria Korchinska continued to work, having established a reputation as one of the most highly esteemed harpists in Britain. She travelled extensively, performed on the radio and was frequently booked for recordings. From the 1950s onwards, she taught many pupils, who would go on to become some of the most accomplished harpists in Britain, such as Karen Vaughan, Head of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music from 2010 until 2022. She also performed for three seasons at Glyndebourne, the famous annual opera festival near Lewes, which had been established in 1934 and was only paused briefly during the war. 

Throughout the 1960’s and 70s, Korchinska was heavily involved with a project to bring young harpists from all over the world together in the Netherlands, where they could share their worries, learn from more experienced players and practice in a decidedly non-competitive environment. These annual “Harp Weeks” were organised by Korchinska and her friend, Dutch harpist Phia Berghout. It was in 1964 at the fourth iteration of the “Harp Weeks”, that Korchinska was united with one of her former Russian pupils, Vera Dulova, who had found success behind the Iron Curtain. The “Harp Weeks” came to an end in 1979, when Korchinska passed away and her friend Phia Berghout found it impossible to continue without her. Korchinska’s husband had predeceased her 20 years prior. Her daughter Nathalie continued to live at Lime Kiln, the family home in Claydon, with her family. Letters that Nathalie wrote to her mother during the war can now be found in the Imperial War Museum near another CCT Church: Duxford.

Maria Korchinska’s memorial at St. Peter’s seems exceedingly humble compared to her life’s achievements. However, her legacy lives on in the work of the many, many pupils she taught, and the World Harp Congress, an organisation that holds triennial harp festivals inspired by Korchinskas’ and Berghouts’ “Harp Week”.