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By Nina Yakhontova

This year abounds in anniversaries of celebrated artists and performers. Particularly stand out the 125th birth anniversaries of several great musicians: the Russian bas Fyodor Chaliapin, the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, the Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rakhmaninov and the Russian singer, with 40 years as a soloist at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Doctor of Arts and Professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Antonina Nezhdanova. Her crystal clear and soft voice win her the fame of one of the best soprano singers of coloratura in the 20th century. She had both the great Chaliapin and Caruso as her partners on the stage. In 1902 Nerzhdanova, then a student at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Umberto Mazetti, was invited to the Bolshoi. In 1912 her great success at the Grand Opera in Paris overnight won her a world-wide fame. Unfortunately, in the 1910s and 20s, the years when her talent was flourishing, sound recording was far from perfect. Work to restore the singer's best recordings began not long ago. In the year of her anniversary her recordings can be heard on the radio, television and in the singer's museum in Moscow. The museum has a special room where many young vocalists have made their debuts. The room is taken care of by the chairwoman of the International Union of Musical Personalities, the celebrated singer and teacher Irina Arkhipova.
A report from the exhibition dedicated to Bulat Okudzhava from the Voice of Russia correspondent Milena Faustova.
Bulat Okudzhava is a poet, writer and performer of his own songs. The prominent Russian historian and philologist Dmitry Likhachev has said about him: "The very appearance of Bulat Okudzhava radiated a rare charm. That was the charm of his personality, the charm of his talent. His work marked a certain change in our attitude to life."
Bulat Okudzhava died last summer. On the first anniversary of his death Moscow has opened an exhibition in a house in a lane of Arbat, an old Moscow street Okudzhava loved and sang about. Four halls tell the story of the poet's life.
The first hall portrays his childhood. The walls feature old photoes: Bulat with his nurse, mother and father. His father was shot in 1937 during Stalin's repression campaign. As the wife of "an enemy of the people", his mother was sent to work to Stalin's concentration camps where she spent nearly 20 years. Arbat, with its cosy courtyards, with his friends, became the boy's family. At his concerts he always sang a song, introducing it with the words: "Now I'll sing a song about a street that embodies Moscow and my home country. This is a song about Arbat."
When World War Two broke out, Okudzhava, concealing his young age, went to the front as a volunteer and fought there almost three years. This period is covered by the second hall. Here are the photoes of Okudzhava, a teenager in a greatcoat, high boots, with a gun in hands. Next to the photoes are his first poems, short stories and songs. He began writing verse in the hospital where he recovered from his wounds. He sent his verse to a front newspaper. The war imprinted itself in his memory and in his work. One of his novels portrays the war as seen by a 17-year-old. Presented not as a tragedy but as an experience, it conveys the writer's optimistic attitude, the most attractive feature of his entire work.
In the 1960s Okudzhava was joined by the poets of a younger generation - Andrei Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina - in the effort to create a new layer in post-war Russian culture. His voice always stood out for its romanticism, kindness and love of life.
The third hall, a hall of history, features portraits of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Napoleon Bonapart and the family of the Russian czars. One of the authors of the exhibition, Vladimir Krizhetsky, says: "Okudzhava belonged with the 19th century. It's not that he lagged behind the times. That was his character, the values he stood by. He was very modest, always kept his word and above all valued dignity and honor." Once attracted to historical prose, Okudzhava wrote almost nothing else for 20 years. Among his historical novels are "A Gulp of Freedom", "Travels of Dilettantes", "A Rendezvous with Bonapart".
The fourth, last, hall is dedicated to his friends, including the well-known poets and performers of their songs Alexander Galich, Yuri Vizbor and Vladimir Vysotsky, and writers Vladimir Voinovich, Vasily Aksyonov and Anatoly Pristavkin, who have made a name in the world. Together they opposed the totalitarian regime and greeted democratic changes in Russia. But Okudzhava was never involved in politics. In his last years he used to say: "Now is not my time. I am not critical of it but I fail to understand many things." But for Russians, remain true the words uttered by writer Viktor Astafiev: "Bulat Okudzhava's voice will always be there. Let his song of goodwill and compassion reign on earth..." .
 

ALFRED SCHNITTKE DEAD

This country's foremost avantgarde composer Alfred Schnittke has died in Hamburg at the age of 64.
He will be remembered as the author of monumental thought-provoking symphonies and a series of innovative concertos for piano and strings.
We have more from our culture correspondent Larisa Roshina: The Russian conductor Georgi Rozhdestvenski who was the first to lead the public performance of many of Schittke's works describes his dead friend as a giant on a par with the greatest classical composers of the past and an incarnation of all the best that can be found among this country's decimated intellectual class.
Schnittke was an artistic philosopher of no mean parts. There being no answer, he used to say, is the best answer to the fundamental questions posed by the primordial chaos around us.
Since the early 1980-ies, he has been working in Germany where he emigrated after two decades of struggling to make his voice heard from under the muzzle imposed on him by this country's intolerant Communist regime.
Schnittke was born into the family of ethnic Germans in the town of Engels on the river Volga. In 1958 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and worked there until 1972. He tried many music genres, but gave preference to large forms like symphonies, concertos, operas, oratorios and ballets.
Schnittke was an honorary member of the Berlin, Muenchen, Hamburg and Bavaria Academy of Arts, and of the Swedish Royal Academy. In 1998 he was awarded a prestigeous Gloria prize set up by the association the Russian Performance School and an international jury headed by the famous cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich.
Alfred Schnittke went through many ordeals during his life. In the past months he was seriously ill. He could neither speak nor move, but the most incredible thing was that his volcanic genius continued to express itself in music. His Ninth Symphony prepared for premiere in Moscow by Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky became Schnittke's artistic feat.

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