“Talents, where do you come from? - From childhood. I compose and live only with what I was fed in my childhood in my native land ”(Valery Gavrilin). The biography, which is very difficult to summarize, was closely associated with art in this person. This composer brought into his work all the spiritual beauty of his city and region. Trepidation, vulnerability, subtlety, tenderness - all this was embodied in the works of the composer.
Voice born near Vologda
Valery Alexandrovich Gavrilin was born on 08/17/1939 in a family of teachers. For the future composer, as well as for many of his peers, war became a kindergarten, which brought hunger, misfortune, orphanhood. Vladimir's father, who went to war, dies in August forty-second near Leningrad. The family moves to live in the village of Perkhuryev. From there, the mother is close to the orphanage, which was located in the village of Vozdvizhenskoye, where she worked as a director.
Hard time, exhausting work, a hungry winter of the forty-sixth year did not prevent the villagers from arranging winter gatherings with exhaustive accordion, dancing and refraining “under the tongue”, lingering, sad songs. Valera absorbed all this like a sponge. This continued until 1950, and then overnight childhood ended. The mother was arrested on a false charge, not allowing children to be seen, her aunt took her sister Galya, and the eleven-year-old domestic boy ends up in the Vologda Orphanage.
Orphanage
At the orphanage was a choir, piano and music worker Tatyana Tomashevskaya. Neither in the choir, nor in the dances, Valery Gavrilin, whose biography went in a different direction, did not succeed. It also doesn't matter if he played the instruments. But looking at the accompanist, the boy was breathtaking. He was overwhelmed by the desire to create music and write notes himself.
Once, professor Ivan Mikhailovich Belozemtsev came to the city from the Leningrad Conservatory to select gifted children. He was shown a boy who is trying to write music. The professor decided to play Valery’s music notebook, but was stopped by the future composer, who decided to demonstrate his own composition. A guest from Leningrad asked to play amazing music more than once. From that moment on, Valery’s life changed.
Training
In 1953, with the permission of his mother, who managed to get freedom, he was taken to a music school at the Leningrad Conservatory. Gavrilin was educated in the clarinet class. He later moved to the composer department. Valery studied with rapture. Replayed all known symphonies and sonatas, all new works.
At nineteen, the young composer enters the conservatory in the department of theory of compilation of works. After studying for a couple of years, he suddenly leaves for the musicology department and is more seriously interested in folklore. In the course of his studies, Valery Gavrilin was on expeditions, studied rural life, memorized the dialect, and recorded songs. The trips were hard. The work is not only hearing, but also the soul, heart. Post-war, hungry villages, women's torn songs helped Valery Gavrilin to combine future musical classics with folk art. And also write a book about the work of V. Solovyov-Sedogo.
Music Success and Crisis
Towards the end of his studies at the conservatory, Gavrilin wrote the suite “Tarakanische”, several strings for a quartet and “German Notebook” - a vocal cycle based on Heine’s verses, which was greeted with applause by the Union of Composers and has been part of the performers' repertoire for many years.
At the insistence of Shostakovich Valery entered graduate school. He passed the exams externally. The thesis was the cycle "Russian notebook". In 1965, at the final concert of the decade of Leningrad music, the performance of this composition was a huge success. Gavrilin began to be called "Yesenin from music." In 1967, the composer became the youngest laureate of the Glinka State Prize.
After such an overwhelming success, Gavrilin begins a creative crisis. He always writes a lot, but cannot achieve the high creative achievement that he created in his vocal cycles. And he goes into the shadows for several years, where he creates plays for the piano, suite, writes music for films and performances. And only in the seventy-second year did he manage to write several powerful works, such as the opera The Tale of the Violinist Vanyusha, the symphonic works War Letters and German Notebook 2. A little later, others appeared: “German Notebook 3”, “Evening“ From the Album of an Old Woman ”and a cycle to Shulgina’s poems“ Earth ”.
In all these works, Gavrilin managed to create a new genre, which one of the musicologists called “song-symphonic”. His pop and musical works are of such a high level that they were performed and performed by opera and chamber celebrities with pleasure.
Theater and music
The composer made a great contribution to the theater. His music sounds in many plays and the most significant work of Gavrilin was "Chimes", born after the author read the works of Vasily Shukshin.
The choral work “Chimes” is a musical picture from the life of a common people. The sounds in the composition personify the symbol of life in its various manifestations. This is a kind of alarm to humanity - do not kill the good in yourself, do not envy, do positive deeds, love the beauty.
Ballet
Valery Gavrilin, whose photo was known to many Soviet citizens, was a huge success in ballet. In 1983, Anyuta received the Golden Prize. Three years later, he was put on the stage of the San Carlo Theater.
And this work appeared thanks to the director Alexander Belinsky, who decided to put "Anna on the Neck" as a ballet film. Pondering the plot, he heard the performance of Gavrilin’s “Waltz” and was fascinated by it, offered the composer to combine the various piano miniatures into a single whole with “Waltz” at the head of the musical accompaniment of the ballet “Anyuta”. Parties in the ballet were performed by such masters as Maximova and Vasiliev. Subsequently, this creative union of talented people created the TV show "House by the Road" based on the works of Twardowski.
In the eighty-ninth year, Gavrilin wrote the score for the ballet “The Marriage of Balzaminov”, which was subsequently embodied in the film Belinsky.
Valery Gavrilin, a composer and musician, has written several more ballet works in which the tragic features inherent in his music are clearly heard.
Personal life
Most of Valery Alexandrovich’s life took place in Leningrad, but despite this, he never broke off his connection with Vologda. He took part in many events of his native land.
Personal life was as good as the work of Valery Gavrilin. In 1959, Valery married the teacher of the orphanage Natasha Steinberg. When he first saw his future wife three years before the wedding, Gavrilin immediately thought that he would marry her. On his part, it was love at first sight. There was a big age difference between them , but Valery Alexandrovich was able to interest, captivate and fall in love with Natasha, with whom he lived for almost forty years.
Talented people cannot live forever, they leave, leaving behind a memory for years. In 1999, on January 28, Valery Alexandrovich Gavrilin died. After his death, Gavrilin’s legacy remained.