If the composer composed only one world famous song "Katyusha", then he would have remained forever in history. However, Matthew Blanter was the author of almost 200 songs. Of course, they all did not become popular, like his most famous work. But among them are many wonderful compositions - symbols of the Soviet era. And his melody of the “Football March” has long opened football competitions in various countries of the former Soviet Union.
early years
Matvey Blanter was born on January 28, 1903 in the small town of Pochepe, Bryansk Region. There were four children in a large Jewish family. Father, Isaac Borisovich Blanter - a well-known merchant in the city. He owned a chip factory and warehouses at the Unecha railway station, from where he traded kerosene and grain. Mom, Tatyana Evgenevna Vovsi, served as an actress, a relative of the famous actor and director S. M. Mikhoels. Her other famous relative was M.S. Vovsi, academician, doctor of medical sciences.
In subsequent years, a large family moved to Kursk, this happened shortly before the First World War. Matvey’s childhood years passed here. He went to study at a real school. Even then, the boy showed creative inclinations. He sang in the school choir, played in the orchestra of the local drama theater. From 1915 to 1917 he studied violin and piano at the local music school with the famous Kursk teachers A. Egudkin and A. Daugul.
Moving to the capital
In the spring of 1917 he moved to the capital of the Russian Empire, where he enters the prestigious Music and Drama School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society (now it is the famous GITIS). He played the violin, the history of music and composition, and was taught by the country's most famous music educators.
The working biography of Matvey Blanter began immediately after graduation, in the most difficult years of the Civil War. He gets a job at the Moscow pop-art studio "HM Forreger Workshop". The young musician is responsible for the musical part and composes music for the theater. After working here from 1920 to 1921, he moved to Leningrad, where he worked in the Leningrad Satire Theater, in the same position as the head of the music department.
First hits
Matvey Blanter wrote his first songs in the 20s in the genre of light dance music. Among the general public, his works gained popularity, including the famous John Gray foxtrot in those years. Then there were other exotic songs “Baghdad”, “Fujiyama”, tango “Stronger than death”. Already at that time he was a prolific composer, composing in a variety of fashionable at that time charleston and shimmy.
His hits were staged in popular cabarets: the Petrograd "Balaganchik" (1922) with the participation of Rina Zelenaya, in the Moscow "Peacock Tail" (1923). Future famous artists V. Toporkov and L. Columbova performed the ironic romance “Leather belt”. In the prewar years, he continued to work in the theaters of Moscow, Leningrad and Magnitogorsk.
The most popular composer of the country
In 1938, Matvey Blanter’s most famous song “Katyusha” performed by L. Ruslanova was first performed. Which has become a folk symbol of war, it is now sung in many languages of the peoples of the world. He began to move a little away from dance music, and an easily recognizable style began to take shape. At this time, "Partizan Zheleznyak" and "Song of Shchors" were composed, which were included in the repertoire of L. Utesov.
In total, during the war years he wrote about 50 songs, including "Goodbye, Cities and Huts" (created June 23, 1941), under which in the first months of the war they went to the front. Popular songs of those years still sound in military films: "In the Frontline Forest", "My Beloved", "Twinkle".
In the post-war years, Matvey Blanter created many songs that are still popular, including “Better not to have that color”, “In the city garden”, “Sit down, friends, on the long road”. In 1966, the famous "Black-eyed Cossack" was written.
He continued to collaborate with theaters, wrote music for I. Raikin's miniatures, performances of the music hall, and began working with cinema. The composer worked actively until 1975.
personal information
Very little has been written about personal life in the biography of Matthew Blanter. It is known that the first wife was the ballerina Nina Ernestovna Schwan, from the marriage with whom the only son of the composer was born - Vladimir, who worked as executive secretary of the popular journal "Nature". In addition, Vladimir Blanter wrote articles and books under various pseudonyms. The composer dedicated his songs “Lullaby” and “Under the Stars of the Balkans” to him, for which he received the Stalin Prize in 1948.
Matvey Isaakovich buried his second wife, Olga Ilyinichna, in the 80s. The only granddaughter Tatyana Brodskaya lives in the USA, she flew to his funeral and inherited the property of the composer. In 2009, a conflict over copyright broke out, and the Russian Football League wanted to abandon the use of the Blanter Football March. Tatyana Vladimirovna allowed to play music for free.