By Olga Fyodorova
“Maestro, I want you to slow down the music a bit as I dance…”
“What?! You want me to slow it down? And what about your partner’s jumps
coming right after you?! He can’t fly, can he? We’ll mess up the whole
thing if we do that!”
“Take it easy, my partner can fit the tempo just fine!”
“Of course he can! Look…” at this point, humming the tune, the short and
paunchy conductor embarked on a series of ballet pas absolutely unthinkable
for someone of his bulk…”
“You see?! There is no sense arguing with me. I have all the scores - notational
and choreographic - at my fingertips. Which is pretty natural too because
if I didn’t, how on earth would I have managed to conduct the Bolshoi’s
ballets for so long?..”
Yuri Fayer definitely knew his way around in ballet but he still managed
to dig up ever-new nuances even in the most tried and true evergreens.
Small wonder that his conductorship was always a celebration for both the
listeners and the performers…
Yuri Fayer was born in 1890 in Kiev. His phenomenal talent revealed itself
early on. He took up the violin at the still tender age of 6, played his
first solo concert at 11, joined the Kiev Opera’s orchestra at 14 and two
years later entered the Moscow Conservatory. He studied day and night but,
overwhelmed by mounting financial problems, he eventually had to quit and
resume orchestral work.
At 20, Yuri Fayer was already in Riga playing first fiddle in the local
opera theater. Simultaneously he took up a violin class at the local music
college where he later formed a symphony orchestra playing summertime dates
at the Baltic Sea resorts.
That happy streak proved pretty short-lived though. Shortly after the outbreak
of World War One, Fayer left Riga and returned to Moscow and re-entered
the Conservatory and, simultaneously, started working at the Bolshoi where
he quickly proved his musical bona fides as an orchestra leader.
The love for conducting had gone too deep into his heart. One day they
asked him to stand in for a conductor who had fallen ill. The debut was
so good that they asked him to do it more and more and, before very long,
Yuri realized that ballet conducting was his cup of tea…
He usually started his working days in the ballet class watching the stars’
rehearsals and keeping an eye on the young dancers’ progress. Perfectly
aware of each one’s fortes and weak spots, he maintained close contact
with the performers with each jump and pas coinciding perfectly with each
chord the orchestra played….
The Bolshoi’s dancers adored Fayer whose perfect conducting always added
punch and expressiveness to the music.
“Each time I hear the orchestra playing under his baton I feel the music
penetrating my very bone marrow,” said the great Russian ballerina Maya
Plisetskaya. “The music and dance come together offering a cohesive and
very homogenous picture of what’s going on…”
Yuri Fayer managed the musical side of more than 50 ballets and often helped
the choreographer too. Keeping a close eye on each dance, he resolutely
discarded everything that was not entirely in line with the music and sometimes
even prompted his own pas…
Always looking forward, Yuri Fayer readily took on board modern ballets,
appreciating everything that was fresh and talented in art. He enthusiastically
worked on Shostakovich’s ballets and never tired of admiring the ones written
by Sergei Prokofyev, especially the Cinderella starring the inimitable
Galina Ulanova…
They first met in February 1938 and Yuri Fayer immediately appreciated
Ulanova’s poetic nature and inborn musicality. Her signature dancing
manner largely determined the musical vision of the ballets he eventually
implemented. To him, Galina Ulanova was the ideal translator of musical
ideas into the language of dance…
Ulanova was equally appreciative of Yuri Fayer whom she considered the
best partner around to carry out her ideas. “His musical memory is
absolutely stunning!” she said, “He knows each and every pas, feels the
technique and the way it corresponds with music…”
Yuri Fayer’s inspired work brushed off on everyone around in the Bolshoi
and he was the darling of just about everyone, from the lead singers to
the corps-de-ballet to the musicians and the theater administration.
When he said he was going to retire, everyone took it a personal tragedy…
Even though he was past 70 now, Yuri Fayer kept working on and, until his
very last days, he was fully in the know of what was going on in the Bolshoi…
They say that just a few hours before he died, his friends gathered around
his deathbed. Yuri Fayer was already unconscious. After a long and intense
pause, the people started whispering to each other. Someone said: “They
say Maya Plisetskaya is going to dance Phoedra?” Suddenly everyone heard
strange coarse sounds coming from where the dying man lay. Listening hard,
Fayer’s friends realized that he was trying to sing a tune from the ballet.
A few moments later the sounds died out and it was all over…
30 years have passed since that tragic day of August 3, 1971 but the Bolshoi
is still waiting for a ballet conductor of Yuri Fayer’s caliber…
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