Chalaev Shirvani biography

The date of publication: He has an amazing fate. He was born in a small mountain village of Khosreh in Dagestan. His childhood was in the difficult post -war years. He studied at a rural boarding school, then graduated from a music school in Makhachkala. Then there was an attempt to enter the University of Kyiv on a historian. It didn't work out. I had to return to my homeland.

After two years of studying at the University of Makhachkala, a fantastic transformation occurs in his life teacher, the shather enters the Moscow State Conservatory. Would a young man from the Dagestan village then think that he would have to hand over the state examinations to Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich himself, who, having familiarized himself with the student’s symphony, would invite him to go to graduate school.

But not everything turned out to be so simple. He will go to graduate school only after 2 years and no longer on Shostakovich. Then he will write a great many interesting things: symphonies, operas, ballets, symphonic concerts, will become the author of the first anthem of Dagestan, and, more than half a century, will connect his life with our Ruz region. About his rich creative life, unearthly love and spouse, the outstanding singer Nina Grigorenko, as well as about many other interesting things, we talk with Shirvani Chalaev in his small house on the outskirts of the village of Tuchkovo in a spacious office on the second floor.

The main place in the office is the piano. It is behind him that the master creates. The number of poetic collections scattered on its desktop is striking. Pushkin, Lermontov, Yesenin and many Dagestan authors translated into Russian are present here. I accidentally open one of the books. On pages with printed verses I see the notes written by hand. Naturally, the first question is about this.

Therefore, in order not to forget, I leave notes on the pages. She was born after I read the front -line recordings of our Dagestan poet Effendi Kapiev. In the eighties of the last century, Boris Alexandrovich Pokrovsky set this opera in the eighties of the last century. Effendi wanted to write a book - a documentary or art work based on his impressions at the front, but he did not have time to die in the year.

But his draft records of some sketches remained. And in addition to overheard dialogues, there are his philosophical poems. Effendi Kapiev got a very complex multifaceted essay, where almost 40 separate records. After reading all this, I had a desire to make an opera on this work. And Boris Pokrovsky set her in his theater. Moreover, he forbade me to come to his rehearsals, invited only to the premiere of the performance.

I saw delighted me and shocked. Quite unexpected directorial decisions. Suppose a letter from the deceased soldier is read out. At first, an appeal to the family, children, wife, mother is calmly sung. Starts to sing Sokolenko, there is such a wonderful singer. Then she sharply silent, and already loudly shouting with a tear, quickly pronouncing the words, the letter continues to read some soldier.

After that, already abruptly cutting off the brewer, already in a different tonality sings the actor, who plays the child, written by a soldier, who is written by a soldier. And so everything changes several times. A completely different canon of 12 different things. I shuddered already. The hall roared all. You just start to feel the whole anguish that is transmitted in the narrative.

With this production, we went to Dagestan. There was also an amazing reaction. By the way, this is one of my next operas, and in all, I had them since that time I stopped at the house of the work of the Union of Composers near Ruza. And in the nineties, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, financing of the House of Creativity ceased, he fell into decay and almost fell apart.

When the house of creativity still existed, I just went here to rest or work. It was very convenient. Then, when there was no recreation center in the old Ruza, someone offered me to buy this house in Tuchkovo. The owners of this house were some Koreans. In those days, business people appeared. So they began to build this house, but then they were very rich, and they immediately wanted to have something more grandiose.

And since two of my tribes lived here in the neighborhood, they offered them to buy this house. Well, already my nephews suggested buying this house to me. So in my nineties I had this small two -story house in Tuchkovo. Here he moved here to write music. I do not do anything except the music. Even in Soviet times, creative people were allowed not to go somewhere every day to work.

The experience still went. Now I'm retired, I constantly come here, I am doing something here. She was a soloist of the Leningrad Theater. Fantastic beauty woman. Here, look, her photo is on my piano. A friend Armenian laughs all the time, they say, Shirvani, how could such a beautiful woman marry you? But I was young too beautiful. Unfortunately, she is no longer alive.

I took her, buried in Makhachkala. She asked to bury her where I would lie. She is from the Pashchenko family. There were three relatives of the general in the Russian army.Here is Nina's granddaughter of one of them. Her grandfather in the year was invented by the prototype of the future mortar "Katyusha". I have an older brother, an officer of tank troops. So he said that they studied the shooting according to the textbook of the Ninin's relative.

She was forced to flee to Greece after the revolution, there he worked as a teacher, the other was buried in the Russian cemetery in Paris. A powerful family of civilized people. In their family was the Governor-General of the Poltava region. And there we met. After 2 years, we got married. And so I lived with her all these years until she died. Mom did not like my choice, she would like me to be married to Dagestan.

She could never understand and imagine how happy I was precisely because life brought me to Nina.

In that house, I also have an office on the second floor. My friends artists like to come to me there. There are amazing landscapes, a great place to work. Look, shows the photos that they are hung on his wall in his office. This is my house in the village. Here are my nephews. This amazing was a photographer. Once, Andrei Eshpai and another composer was called to the press and news agency.

They asked to make music for a French company that shot a film for Americans about interethnic problems in the Caucasus. They were going to shoot there, asked me to go with them, show them everything there. But at that time I could not go, as I studied in graduate school. He connected them to his nephew Paul. He was with them for the guide, and as the operator he helped them, built personnel.

Then they returned to Moscow. They had no end to the enthusiasm for his nephew.