Ukrainian pianist plays the piano in her bombed-out home one last time

In the video above, Irina Maniukhina, a professional pianist in Bila Tserkva, a town 80 km (50 miles) south of Kyiv, said goodbye to her home by playing her piano before fleeing from further attacks.

I can’t blame her — if it were me, I’d also play it one last time, too. Her playing is quite good, and she’s not playing easy pieces, either.

A bomb had landed about 10 meters (about 30 feet) from the house, which was still standing but strewn with debris. With the notable exception of one of its “G” keys, the piano seems undamaged and only a little scuffed.

Maniukhina started by playing the first few bars of Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90 No. 2, followed by Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 1.

(It should be noted that Chopin fled Poland shortly before the November Uprising, a rebellion against the Imperial Russia.)

Her daughter Karina recorded the video and shared it on TikTok, where she captioned it with “Do not judge, my mother is a professional pianist and decided to play to let go of this case.”

As her mother played, Karina walked through the house to record the destruction. Here are some stills from that portion of the video:

Here’s a report that includes quotes from Karina: Ukrainian mum defiantly plays piano to ‘say goodbye’ to bombed home in heartbreaking clip.

An excerpt:

Karina said that her mother wanted to play to help forget about the war.

She said: “It wasn’t a sad moment. My mother just wanted to let go of unnecessary thoughts, and I remembered events in our house with a smile.

“She wanted to forget about the war and her worries for our safety. She’s been playing all her life and she even graduated as a pianist.

“Since there was a lot of ash and dust in the keys and everyone was in a state of shock, she could not play for a long time.”