Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk is a musician who is known not only in Russia, but also abroad. However, the first association that comes to mind when you hear his name is by no means the thought of a successful person in the modern sense of the word. Imagination rather gives birth to the image of an eccentric man, an unsociable, incomprehensible person, living in his ephemeral world, where there is not a single gram of material. Who he is, how he breathes, and what happens in his personal space - read about this in our article.
Karavaychuk - who is he?
Oleg Karavaychuk is a composer from Russia who wrote music for a huge number of films and performances, not only domestic but also foreign. The works of the author are known to many, but the personality of the composer himself remains a mystery, which is impossible to solve. Some consider him a genius, others - an eccentric, a man with oddities. There are legends and rumors about him that turn reality into fiction. One thing is absolutely certain: Oleg Karavaychuk is an extraordinary person, unlike anyone. He lives in his world, known to him alone. In this world there is no place for the material. Everything that happens around does not bother the maestro at all, he is not interested in what they think about him and what they say. He cares only about music.
Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk was born in December 1927 in Kiev. He began to hear music from an early age, and when he was five, he wrote his first piece of music. He always spoke and did what he considered necessary,
without looking back at the opinions of others. Sunglasses, a beret, a stretched awkward sweater - his manner of dressing in Soviet times was perceived as something abnormal. The man was often mistaken for a spy and tried to turn him over to the police. However, with perestroika, a different perception of Karavaychuk by people came. He became a legend, a hero, a certain character.
Biography
The biography of the composer is fraught with many dark stories and white spots. It is sometimes difficult to judge what is true and what is fiction. There is information that, as a child, Oleg played in front of Stalin himself, and the leader of all nations gave the little boy a white piano.
In childhood, the future composer starred in the legendary film "Volga-Volga". Parents of Oleg Karavaychuk were intelligent people. My father was engaged in professional music - he played the violin, but the man was arrested when Oleg Nikolaevich was only two years old. The composer practically does not know his father. Mom Karavaychuk also had a conservative education.
In 1945, Oleg Nikolayevich graduated from the music school in piano in Leningrad. Immediately I entered the State Conservatory, where I studied for four years. I must say that already in his student years, Karavaychuk behaved, to put it mildly, unconventionally. For example, he often did not agree with the professor, who taught “as expected”, and the musician wanted to do as he “felt”. The composer Oleg Karavaychuk grew up in agreement with himself and only with himself. He did only what his inner freedom commanded him. At some point, study in general became flour, and Oleg Nikolayevich stopped attending classes. At the final exam at the conservatory, he made a scandal and for many years said goodbye to the big stage.
Activities
For almost two decades Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk worked in the cinema. Manifestations of freedom made him the favorite of filmmakers in Russia. On the account of the composer more than one hundred and fifty game and documentary tapes to which he wrote music. One of the most successful works is considered to be works for the films "Monologue", "City of Masters", "Mom Married." Some works of Karavaychuk recorded at the studio were included in two musical collections - Concerto Grosso and Waltzes and Intermits. Many musical creations of the maestro are unknown to the Russian listener, but are widely revered outside our homeland. Karavaychuk composed music for several ballets.
In the early 60s, the only public performance of Oleg Nikolaevich in the Leningrad Concert Hall. The next time, Karavaychuk met with a wide audience only twenty years later - in 1984, the composer performed the music of Beethoven and Mussorgsky on the stage of the House of Actor named after Stanislavsky.
Until 1990, Karavaychuk's concerts were forbidden, his compositions were seized, and his family was persecuted. Probably, for this reason, the composer began to avoid excessive communication. He leads a closed lifestyle to this day.
Oleg Karavaychuk: personal life
Some kind of mystery has always surrounded the composer, but it is safe to say that in the 50s and early 60s he led a “normal” lifestyle, lived in a cottage in Lakhta, and looked after Leningrad girls.
Almost nothing is known about Karavaychuk’s personal life. He was never married, although there are rumors about a large number of fans of the composer's work, who in vain sought the attention of the maestro. By the way, about women in whom he was in love, Karavaychuk talks with interest. To some of them, for example, Catherine II, he devoted several of his waltzes. Modern female musicians are not inspiring. A man laments that the world has changed a lot and women have changed with him.
For a long time Oleg Nikolaevich lived with his mother on Vasilievsky Island. It is her maestro who considers the best and real teacher. According to Karavaychuk, her mother was a true woman, French blood flowed in her veins, and French was her mother tongue. The woman graduated from the conservatory, was friends with the pianist Horowitz - a genius of music. Mom always understood Oleg, she never forced him to anything, she was just there. According to the composer, he no longer met such teachers.
Where and how does he live
After his mother passed away, Karavaychuk became a recluse. He has a small house in the village of Komarovo. On a site among dense thickets at once and not to make out a tiny rickety hut. The musician does not recognize modern fashion for huge and, according to him, “dead” faceless houses with bare patches where there are no trees. He pities every blade of grass, birds, animals, saying that they have more life and truth than in modern man.
The musician loves privacy. He claims that it is here, among nature, that one can freeze and dissolve, and there is no better condition for him. In moments of complete emptiness, when there are no dreams or thoughts, music comes.
Karavaychuk Oleg Nikolaevich says: "Everyone wanted to make me" sensible ", correct." And he himself did not need it. When the maestro sits down at the instrument, his fingers begin to live a life completely separate from the whole world. People recognize the genius of Karavaychuk, and he says: “I don’t feel that it is brilliant. I just play, and the music pours from the soul. I don’t feel like a genius, but if I feel like that, I won’t play too much. ”
About music
Oleg Nikolaevich writes music at night, in the midst of silence. Nothing prevents him, and to create, does not require any special atmosphere. Answering questions about whether crises or torments occur in his creative life, the maestro answers that he does everything unexpectedly, music just comes at a time when a man is in a state of boredom.
He tries not to think about music, because it conveys internal psychology. According to Karavaychuk, a note enriched with philosophy is much worse than just a note. You can’t think a lot about music, you cannot feel or make sense, you just need to play. When inspiration comes, the main thing is to have something at hand - no matter what it will be - a music book or the rest of old wallpapers.
It has an absolute form, over which the rest have been struggling for years - this is what Oleg Karavaychuk often tells his interlocutor. “Waltz of the Madman” is one of the composer's works, which gives the listener the best possible idea of the hurricane of passions that rages in the author’s soul. The great ones first make a sketch, later hone their form, and Karavaychuk can instantly play, as if in shock - “even from bed, even from the grave”. Before touching the tool, his hands draw something in the air.
Concerts of the Maestro
Every month in the Museum-apartment of the artist Brodsky concerts of Oleg Karavaychuk are held. However, it is difficult to call the musician’s performance as concerts in the usual sense of the word. Each time it is improvisation, without a specific program, without rehearsals. At musical evenings, the composer mixes his own compositions with the immortal works of the classics, serving it with an individual sauce, in a manner of performance peculiar to him alone.
By the way, before the concert, Karavaychuk often asks to remove the front rows from the hall - his instrument makes too powerful sounds, and the maestro is afraid to accidentally stun his audience. But this is perhaps the only reason why the composer recalls the listener. By his own admission, the musician, he does not perceive anyone at concerts. In order to abstract from the hustle and bustle, Karavaychuk puts a pillowcase on his head during a performance. Recent years, it was in this form that the viewer contemplated it. Today, they say, the maestro has cooled down to this habit, but he often allows himself something unusual during a performance - for example, playing while lying down.
What's inside
Karavaychuk exists in his own world, filled with music. He does not have a TV, he does not read newspapers, he is not interested in what is going on around, what is written about him - he is also not interested. However, there are things that affect a musician, such as painting. Karavaychuk admits that this is a powerful force that can drive you crazy. He was very impressed with visiting art galleries during his visit to Spain. Also, the musician was very fond of the national Spanish dance - flamenco.
He worships Petersburg. The composer has a special perception of this city. Karavaychuk shares that the city on the Neva produces an incredible impact on people on a gray day, with gray and formidable clouds. This is a formidable grayness, from which it blows greatness. But below - the usual "seryatin" and "miserable man."
The musician has practically no friends. He often repeats: “I live according to Pushkin. God, save me from friends, and from enemies I myself will get rid. " “... Appearance does not matter to me” - therefore, Oleg Karavaychuk never thinks about how he looks. The musician gives interviews reluctantly. In his own words, there is no narcissism in him. The maestro has no favorite photographs, and he does not like to look at them.
Karavaychuk has a special relationship with cinema. He practically does not watch it. The musician says that, like music, cinema should not turn into a platform with ideas, the screen just has to show something.
Why am I playing?
Currently, Karavaychuk is involved only in those projects that interest him creatively. In whatever financial situation the maestro is, he refuses commercial offers. He considers the main thing for himself in music not mastery at all. His idea is to guide people into the world of the beautiful and the intangible. "... When I play, something starts to sprout in the listener, and he hears the world."
He was biased for a long time, and only after a visit to the UK, where Karavaychuk spoke to the BBC radio station for a Russian audience and delighted his radio presenters with his energy, he was appreciated at home.
Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk worked with Vasily Shukshin, Ilya Averbakh, Kira Muratova. The maestro was friends with avant-garde musician Sergei Kurekhin, Shostakovich, and studied with Richter. He is an unusual person, not just a composer - he is wider and deeper than this concept. However, all that was physically left of his many years of work, besides working in the cinema, were two CDs. Rumor has it that the maestro’s house is a mountain of bobbins with their own records.
Of course, his talent was marked by some awards. For example, in 2002, Karavaychuk received the “Golden Aries” for the music for the film “Dark Night”, and in 2009, the Sergey Kuryokhin Award “For Merits in the Development of Contemporary Art”. In 2010, the maestro was nominated for the Steppe Wolf prize in the Something category. However, by and large, Karavaychuk is outside the social system. He does not distinguish between work and life, because music for him - this very life is. And for this he should be immensely respected.