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 BAM 2050
Russian Film Music IV

the belair collection

"It so happened that in September 1986 I went to Chernobyl. The impact the trip made on me has been colossal. Stunning, I'd say. My life - as I suppose the lives of so many others - has reached the point of no return: Chernobyl. It is not the tragedy of Russia alone. As Challenger's wreck was not the tragedy of America alone. It is the tragedy and pain of all mankind. This planet proved to be too small to think otherwise, even if it happened in another hemisphere. Probably for the first time we all felt so acutely that we are one, we are - Humanity. Chernobyl is a symphony in two parts. The first part is called Zone. I tried to put in it the deafening feeling of the life of a town suddenly turned stern, where for many each day was cut literally into seconds of their work shifts in high radiation Zone. The outline of destroyed reactor already almost blocked from view by the sarcophagus' walls. The road to the atomic power plant, roadsides covered with plastic. Road signs: "Caution, radioactivity! Don't stop!" We keep meeting armored troop carriers driving at full speed. No faces, men wearing masks. It all brings back memories of amazing prevision of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. Only this is no film. This here is life. The second part I called Quo Vadis? - Where do you go? It is my tribute to the ones who sacrificed their lives to save us from a catastrophe, from the unpredictable consequences no matter where we are, in what country or what point on this planet. Garry Grodberg has been the first to play this symphony - Chernobyl. I have great esteem for him as organist, as musician. But this is not the point. It has been Garry Grodberg who visited Kiev in just a few days after the explosion to play for Kievan audiences".  Mikael Tariverdiev

Mikael Tariverdiev - everybody in Russia knows the name in connection with film music, especially with two cult films: "Seventeen Moments of Spring" and "The Irony of Fate". But apart from writing music scores for 132 films, Mikael Tariverdiev is also the composer of chamber vocal cycles, of four ballets, of four operas, of a number of pieces of organ and instrumental music. Student of Aram Khachaturyan (he graduated from the Gnesin Institute, composition class, in 1957), and made his debut as composer when the famed chamber singer Zara Dolukhanova sang his vocal pieces at Moscow Conservatoire Great Hall. Boris Pokrovsky's Chamber Music Theatre started its life with Mikael Tariverdiev's opera "Who Are You?". His comic opera "Count Cagliostro", first produced by this famous theatre in December 1983, has become a mainstay of its repertory and has been presented by the theatre in all its foreign tours.

In the last decade Mikael Tariverdiev concentrated on instrumental music. He composed three organ concerts "Cassandra, "Cahier Polyphonic", "Third Concert", Ten Chorale Preludes "In Imitation of Old Masters" and the organ symphony "Chernobyl" prompted by the impressions of his trip to Chernobyl soon after the catastrophe. Among his later pieces there are two concerts for violin and orchestra and the "Romantic Style" Concert for Viola and String Orchestra composed on the request of the well-kown musician Yury Bashmet.

Mikael Tariverdiev combines two seemingly incompatible traits. His music is always recognizable by the very first bars, recognizable irrespective of its genre - be it film music, theatre, opera or vocal, it invariably bears the imprint of his unique intonation, it has got a face of its own. But as a composer he kept changing, kept searching for new approaches, kept pursuing new aims. In the sixties, after the roaring success of the romances presented by Zara Dolukhanova, refined pieces, exquisite like drawings in Indian ink, he proclaimed the "third direction".

What was it, what was its philosophy? A challenge to academism on the one hand or to the triteness of mass culture on the other. But when the third direction is joined by the others becoming popular he reverts to academic genres, but unlike those who are getting bogged down in the maze of avant-garde, Tariverdiev goes for the classical comic opera, for baroque polyphonic organ concert. He fills this music with modern sensibilities, with freshness of feeling again and again bridging the gap between the present day and the past, molding fragmented music directions into a whole the name of which is just music.

Mikael Tariverdiev won 18 international prizes, among them American Music Academy's award (1975), Japan's recording company Victor's award (1978), three Nika awards for the best film scores of the year 1991, 1994 and 1997. He has been awarded the State prize of the USSR Lenin Konsomol prize (1977), the title of People's artist of Russia (1986). He headed the Composers' Guild of Cinematographers' Union since its inception and he was the Art Director of New Names - International Charity Program.

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BAM 2050 Bel Air Music - 07/2013
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