'KAIM' upright piano. Museum "OLD URALSK". Republic of the Qazaqstan.

[themaximillyan]

In the heart of the "Old Uralsk" Museum, a remarkable artifact stands as a testament to history—the KAIM upright piano. This instrument, with its not rich black painted wood finish and delicate white ivory keys, carries within it the echoes of a tumultuous past. According to its last owner, this piano was not merely an object of beauty; it was a trophy, a remnant of a world torn apart by war. In 1945, as the dust of conflict settled over Europe, a Soviet military officer claimed the KAIM from the ruins of fascist Germany. It had once graced the third floor of a brick mansion in a small town in East Prussia, a place that had housed a choreographic ballet school before the ravages of war transformed it into a shell of its former self. The officer's daughter recalls her father’s stories of that fateful day when American bombers unleashed their fury upon the building. The mansion, once alive with the grace of dance, was now a crumbling edifice, its walls nearly obliterated. Yet, amidst the chaos, the piano remained, precariously balanced on a small section of the third floor, as if defying the destruction around it. It was in that moment of peril that Soviet soldiers, with great care and reverence, extracted the piano from its precarious perch, just before the building succumbed to the inevitable collapse. Transported to the USSR, the KAIM found a new home in the West Kazakhstan region, in the city of Uralsk, where it would rest for sixty years in a modest house, its stories whispered only to those who dared to listen. The piano, with a pitch of 415, now stands as an exhibit in the museum, a bridge between the past and the present, inviting visitors to ponder the lives it has touched and the music it has yet to play.