By Olga Fyodorova
On a sultry day in June, 1938 there was a skinny young man with a knapsack
walking down Povarskaya street in downtown Moscow. Stopping by an old mansion
housing the Gnessins music college, he spent some time chatting with the
doorman and stomped up right into the director’s office.
“May I come in? I’m cavalryman Timofei Dokshitser, I’ve been sent to study
music here at the Gnessins college…”
“How old are you, Private Timofei Dokshitser? 12, 13? You sound like a
kid…”
“No, I’m 16 already. I’m pretty short, that’s true…”
“You play…”
“Trumpet. Learned
to play it myself. We had one back at the cavalry school, but no one could
play it… I tried my luck and, after much trouble, I managed to coax
a couple of sounds out of it ….. I eventually managed to figure
out just about any tune. One day my commander heard me play, summoned me
to his office and asked if I could play some popular tune. I did.
“And what about a dance?” he said. I obliged. “You need to make a
serious go at it,” he said, you’ve got talent…” he said and arranged
for me to be sent out to a music college…”
Timofei Dokshitser was a natural, his lips fitting the pipe mouth
like a glove does a hand making easy work of what other students
found next to impossible to play, his vibrant soul soaring high with the
melody. “Yeah, this young man is absolutely fantastic!” his teachers gasped
in admiration.
Shortly after graduating in the spring of 1941, Timofei was appointed a
lead trumpeter with the Defense Ministry orchestra, the very best, exemplary
outfit that played during all those glitzy military parades they held on
Red Square. Timofei was in seventh heaven!
His joy proved pretty short lived, though. Just a month later, Nazi Germany
invaded and even though the members of the Defense Ministry’s top band
were spared the battlefront, they were working flat out playing at call-up
centers, hospitals, and railway stations seeing off the departing
troops and sometimes even playing right at the battlefront.
His experience of playing during military parades in Moscow was limited
to just two performances, the first being on the early freezing morning
of November 7, 1941. The German troops were less than 30 kilometers away
and it looked like Moscow would fall any moment.
But it didn’t, and the parade they held on Revolution day on November 7th
did much to boost the Red Army’s sagging spirit. The second time was the
Victory Day parade in June 1945 and this time the orchestra’s sound was
vibrant with overpowering joy that was so hard to hold back…
1945 was one of the happiest years in Timofei’s life. First because the
war was over.
Secondly, because he had entered the Gnessins music college and, thirdly,
because they admitted him to the world-renowned Bolshoi orchestra.
Throughout his long stint with this country’s premiere musical theater,
Timofei
Dokshitser rose
to the position of a lead player. His trumpet playing a stirring solo in
the Polonaise opening up Mikhail Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Czar”,
gracing the Neapolitan Dance in Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” and soaring
up in “Chopiniana”…
Simultaneously, Timofei, already a seasoned player, was honing his skills
studying under Professor Mikhail Tabakov – a veteran of the Bolshoi orchestra
whose exemplary sound was winning him kudos both during orchestral performances
and solo concerts.
Professor Tabakov instilled in Timofei a taste for different musical styles
and a very special attention to detail, the tiniest nuances that add so
much character to what people play.
He also inspired in Timofei a strong penchant for solo playing.
Always working
to expand his instrument’s vast repertoire, Timofei Dokshitser was
making trumpet arrangements of piano and vocal pieces which have since
been widely used by his colleagues everywhere…
A real powerhouse, Timofei Dokshitser kept studying on. After graduating
from the Gnessins college he moved on into composition and, falling in
love with conduction, entered the Moscow Conservatory studying under the
best teachers there but never made it to the pulpit. Not because he lacked
the talent or willpower, but because he just couldn’t make himself give
up his beloved trumpet, which was now a veritable extension of his body...
Teaching was another big passion, instilled in him by Professor Tabakov
who immediately appreciated Timofei’s flair for helping fellow students,
always sensing their weak points and finding the right words they needed
to play better.
This pedagogical ability kept developing on and eventually made Dokshitser
one of the country’s very best teachers. His students invariably excelled
at national competitions, always encouraged by their Professor to expand
their repertoire and even seeing their best arrangements played by him
in concert.
And still, it was the solo concerts that packed halls around the nation
that brought out the best in Dokshitser the musician…
He would walk out on stage and slowly, as if conducting a Divine Service,
put up his instrument filling the air with sounds whose beauty was absolutely
out of this world…
Never once did he sound harsh or misplay a note. Listening to his playing
people became oblivious of how untamed and treacherous the trumpet really
is. Whatever the Master did sounded so natural and impeccably right…
They say that trumpet players don’t last long. After 20 years of playing
their face muscles get limp and their lungs start to fail. Timofei Dokshitser
played more than 40 years and never once got tired!
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