Yuri Mamleev memories. Memories of a dead pilot Works in the theater

(1941, 1946, 1947, 1950).

Literature

• Russian ballet and its stars / Ed. E. Surits - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia; Bournemouth: Parkstone, 1998 - 208 p .: ill. ISBN 5-85270-135-1

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• Yuri Utkin
• Yuri Tynyanov

See what "Yuri Fayer" is in other dictionaries:

Fayer, Yuri Fedorovich - Fayer Yuri Fedorovich Date of birth 5 (17) January 1890 (1890 01 17) Place of birth Kiev, Russian Empire Date of death ... Wikipedia

Fire - Fire: Fire (English fire fire) is a slang or colloquial name for a flare. Fire surname. Notable carriers: Fire, Andrew Fire, Yuri Fedorovich ... Wikipedia

FAYER Yuri Fedorovich - (1890 1971) Russian conductor, People's Artist of the USSR (1951). In 1923 he was 63 conductor of ballet performances at the Bolshoi Theater. USSR State Prize (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Fayer Yuri Fedorovich -, Soviet conductor, People's Artist of the USSR (1951). Member of the CPSU since 1941. In 1919 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Since 1906, soloist, violinist and accompanist of various orchestras. Since 1916, soloist of the orchestra, in 1923-63 ... ...

Fire - Yuri Fedorovich, Soviet conductor, People's Artist of the USSR (1951). Member of the CPSU since 1941. In 1919 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Since 1906, soloist, violinist and accompanist of various orchestras. Since 1916, soloist ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

FIRE - Yuri Fedorovich (1890 1971), conductor, People's Artist of the USSR (1951). In 1923 he was 63 conductor of ballet performances at the Bolshoi Theater (in the repertoire of over 50 ballets). State prizes of the USSR (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950). Source: Encyclopedia Fatherland ... Russian history

Fayer Yu. F. - Yuri Fedorovich (5 (17) I 1890, Kiev 3 VIII 1971, Moscow) Sov. conductor. Nar. art. USSR (1951). Member CPSU since 1941. In 1919 he graduated from Moscow. Conservatory in the violin class of G. N. Dulov. Since 1906 violinist and accompanist decomp. orchestras, in 1909 10 ... Musical encyclopedia

Fayer Yuri Fedorovich - (1890 1971), conductor, People's Artist of the USSR (1951). In 1923 he was 63 conductor of ballet performances at the Bolshoi Theater. State prizes of the USSR (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950). * * * FAYER Yuri Fyodorovich FAYER Yuri Fyodorovich (1890 1971), Russian conductor, ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Fayer Yu. F. - FJER Yuri Fedorovich (1890-1971), conductor, pl. art. USSR (1951). In 1923–63 he was a conductor of ballet performances at the Bolshoi Theater (in the repertoire of over 50 ballets). State pr. USSR (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950) ... Biographical Dictionary

Fayer Yu. F. - FÁJER Yuri Fedorovich, Sov. conductor. Nar. art. USSR (1951). Member CPSU since 1941. In 1919 he graduated from Moscow. conservatory; subsequently studied conducting with A. F. Arends. Since 1906, soloist violinist and ... ... Ballet. Encyclopedia

Books

• About myself, about music, about ballet, Yuri Fayer. This book is of interest to everyone who is interested in ballet in one way or another: about himself, about music, about ballet, writes Yuri Fayer - a man with whose name he has been for almost fifty years ...

Many years before entering the Bolshoi Theater, of course, I knew the name of Yuri Fyodorovich Fayer, the most famous Soviet ballet conductor. In 1952 I saw the ballet Romeo and Juliet, which he conducted. Having entered the Bolshoi Theater in 1966, I no longer had to work with him, since he had retired three years earlier. By that time, I knew a lot from the stories about the oddities and some eccentricities of the famous conductor. And now, unexpectedly, the opportunity presented itself not only to see the renowned conductor up close, but also to work a little with him. I usually did not take part in recordings with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. I didn't have time for that. But when I found out that the music for the ballet "Coppelia" by Leo Delibes was to be recorded, I asked me to appoint a few recordings with Fire. By this time, young musicians had come to the orchestra, who, like me, were interested in playing with the legendary conductor.

All of us, now people of the older generation, remember the wonderful myths of the Soviet era. The myth about Stakhanov, the myth about Dzhambul, about Chapaev, Shchors, the myth about the capture of the Winter Palace in 1917 (somehow, in the last period of the "thaw" in the early 60s, a completely outlandish material appeared in the journal Science and Life about that during the capture of the Winter Palace only a few people died, and even then in a crush). But most of the myths were based on the icon-making of real people - was there Alexei Stakhanov? Was. Were there laureates of international competitions - pianists and violinists? There were. So gradually the most famous Soviet theaters - the Bolshoi, Maly, and the Moscow Art Theater - began to acquire something legendary. Well, the conductors, directors, singers, ballet soloists who worked in them ... but there is nothing to say. And without television, even before the war the whole country knew the names of Galina Ulanova, Olga Lepeshinskaya, conductor Yuri Fayer, singers Kozlovsky and Lemeshev, Pirogov and Reisen, Mikhailov and Nelepp. So was that not true? Of course not. It was true, but it was on the basis of this truth that the great myth of the Land of Soviets was built: only there was the best life for a working person - nowhere in the world was there free education, the flourishing of culture, well, and so on ... All these wonderful artists were very important links in one component - the myth of the USSR.

A meeting with a real person-legend is always dangerous, loss of illusion and disappointment. And the loss of cherished illusions for years is always very painful. When I met the real Fire, this could not happen, because this time we were dealing with a special score - the music of Delibes, which Yu.F. Fire has been conducting since the early 1920s (And how could you not believe his fame, when even today we read on the Internet such information about the "legendary conductor" of Soviet ballet ?!

Relatively recently, when my story about the head of the violin ensemble of the Bolshoi Theater Yulia Reentovich was published on the Internet, some of my acquaintances were so upset and even offended, if not outraged - how dare I write this about the People's Artist of the RSFSR, so beloved and popular the whole country, that it was simply terrible on my part - an unforgivable act. It seems that this publication will cause the same feelings in a few of my friends and acquaintances: surprise, disappointment and grief ... Although the main purpose of this publication is to get acquainted with the unique material of Professor G.N. Rozhdestvensky, kindly written by him at my request. Yes, indeed, the loss of favorite illusions is very, very painful.

I remember, back in the early 1970s in Moscow, one lovely lady, quite versed in musical matters, was completely convinced that Yuli Reentovich occupied a place on the violin Olympus very close (if not next to!) With David Oistrakh! My friend took my judgments with confidence, believing me that Reentovich himself was not capable of playing anything more or less worthy of the most modest violin level, and that he made a name for himself only thanks to the talented violinists who made up his ensemble. Moreover, they actively popularized familiar melodies from films, famous violin pieces, appearing on the stage in tailcoats and ballroom evening dresses. It was a very splendid sight. But back to the Fire series.

So, at the time when I participated in these recordings, I did not know anything about Fire's work with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. It seemed to me then that Fire had a rather peculiar command of the sound of the orchestra. He was himself a violinist in the past and of course he perfectly felt the idea of \u200b\u200bthe sound of stringed instruments that he wanted. It also seemed to me that the orchestra sounded in the performance of this score by Delibes softly, transparently (which the score itself greatly contributed to) and, as it were, on the "pedal" of the timpani and their soft sound.

Yuri Fedorovich Fayer - People's Artist of the USSR, four times winner of the Stalin Prizes - conductor-legend of the Soviet ballet

The recording of Coppelia went pretty quickly, in four recording sessions, I think. Then they began to write it down as an "appendage" - two Waltzes by Johann Strauss. Here something completely different was manifested - an almost anecdotal taste, lack of a sense of proportion, incredibly exaggerated decelerations and accelerations, and in general the absence of a general tempo and a single form of work. So some of the anecdotes about him began to be remembered very clearly - now I myself could tell such a story about Strauss Waltzes.

In the early 1960s, my friend Anatoly Agamirov-Sats sometimes met with the then famous Gennady Rozhdestvensky, thinking of going to graduate school at the conducting department. For some reason, nothing came of it, and Agamirov became a music journalist, but meeting with G.N. Rozhdestvensky, he heard from him incredible stories about the famous conductor of the Bolshoi Ballet Yuri Fayer.

Here are some of these stories, told to me by Anatoly Agamirov-Sats from the words of G.N. Rozhdestvensky.

During his first trip to London, Yuri Fedorovich asked Gennady Rozhdestvensky to translate his explanation into English for the orchestra during rehearsals. “I'll explain the drama to them,” he announced. (The word "drama" was very much loved among some conductors in the late 40s and early 50s. This word often appears on the pages of the book "Kirill Kondrashin talks about music and life", published after the death of the conductor by VG Razhnikov. associated with this word, you often ask yourself the question - did people understand its meaning? It seems that they did not quite understand it. But for Yu.F. Fayer this favorite word took on a completely different character - A.Sh.).

Arriving at the theater for a rehearsal of the ballet Romeo and Juliet, he, after the words - "Gennady! Translate! " started something like this:

“It's all on me! I give "one"! Curtain. There is a TIRAPTYCH! ("Triptych", the prologue of the ballet. - A.Sh.) Left she, on the right about n, in the middle this (Father Lorenzo - A.Sh.). It's like Bach - tai nai, nai tai... Yes. Then it ... the servants fight. Yes ... Then Juliet Girl. A very difficult number. This must be played with a very small bow, very small (shows the distance between thumb and forefinger) - she's still a girl! Then ... Then she loves him on stage! "

Prologue in the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” by S.S. Prokofiev

The explanation of "drama" went something like this. It is possible that some of those present in the orchestra and in the hall understood Russian and were probably impressed by the maestro's explanations.

Immediately after landing in New York on the first visit of the Bolshoi Ballet to the United States, when disembarking from the plane, someone said that Yuri Fedorovich was met by his brother Miron. He was terribly worried and said that it was a provocation. “I have no brother, he is dead! Since the age of 22 I wrote in the questionnaires that he died! " “But your brother is still waiting below,” someone told him. Then he suddenly calmed down and said:

"After all, I'm a party member - let him worry!" Naturally, this episode looks different in Fire's book of memoirs, but it seems that this is how it happened. ("About myself, about music, about ballet", a literary recording was made by the talented writer Felix Rosiner. "Soviet Composer", 1974)

Once during a tour in West Germany there was a rumor that Adenauer would award outstanding ballet soloists and some leading figures with "Iron Crosses" (!!!), but that it was inconvenient for party members to accept the award. Yuri Fedorovich was terribly excited when he heard this news. He invited Gennady Rozhdestvensky to his hotel room and asked him about the following:

“Gennady! You tell there - where it is necessary - I will not wear, but let them give! " Of course, it was an ordinary joke, but Yuri Fedorovich's reaction vividly reflected him, and not only his, a very painful attitude towards any insignia.

Yuri Fedorovich was very fond of talking about his patronage to musicians, composers, conductors. It was always the same story, only the names of his protege changed. His story began epic, and ended rather sadly ...

"Aaa ... This one? Yes - my student! I him called, told him everything, showed him, put him on the path. Now he's on me ... t! "

In his "students" he wrote down S.S. Prokofiev: “Once Prokofiev called me. He asks: “Yuri! Why aren't my ballets on? Why doesn't Romeo go, why Cinderella doesn't go?

I told him: “Seryozha! You can't write music like that anymore! " He wrote The Stone Flower. My order, my student ... "

Once at the Bolshoi Theater, Glazunov's one-act ballet The Young Lady-Servant was being prepared for recording. G.N. Rozhdestvensky and violinist-accompanist S.I. Kalinovsky had to play the ballet to Fayer, since due to poor eyesight he could not read the score, but he quickly learned it by heart. The first play of the ballet music was scheduled at Yuri Fedorovich's apartment. Arriving there, Rozhdestvensky and Kalinovsky saw a huge vase with tangerines on the piano in the living room - an incredible rarity in winter Moscow of those years! It was quickly decided to take two tangerines in his pocket.

Fire soon appeared. "A-ah ... Gena! Syoma! Eat tangerines! Here in a vase! " As soon as the artists took a tangerine each, Yuri Fyodorovich called his housekeeper (I think it was his relative): “Berta! he shouted. "They already! " “Already” meant that it was time to remove the vase from the piano.

In 1936, Fire and several other responsible comrades were sent to Berlin to undergo special X-ray examinations, which at that time were done only in Germany. Since Fire suffered from very poor eyesight, it was decided to also send him to Berlin for examination on this subject. After arriving home, at the very first rehearsal at the Bolshoi Theater, he said: "In Berlin, they enlightened my whole head and found absolutely nothing there!" One can imagine the delight of those present from such news! It was a real funny episode, told to me by my father, who was then working as a violinist in the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra.

G.N. Christmas

About Yu.F. Fayere

At one time, I really, as many told me, successfully imitated his manner of speaking, but perhaps I rather tried to penetrate the style of his thinking, born of the "Odessa aura". Everything that you retold from Agamirov's words is sheer truth, which does not need any additions and adjustments.

Before the recording of the ballet "The Young Lady-Servant" in the remote sensing (House of Sound Recording - ASh) with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, he had not the slightest idea about this music. In order to fill this "gap" he invited me to his home and asked me to play the clavier of this ballet on the piano. He himself, having seated himself in an armchair, prepared himself for the "conducting"! The only question he asked me before starting the "process of studying the score" was: "How long is the first number?" I brought to his attention that the number, in all likelihood, goes to "4". And he began to play.

Somewhere in the middle of the number I got one bar on ¾ and I saw how in the next bars his “one”, as expected, did not coincide with my “strong time”. This did not last long. He stopped my game and said, rather annoyed, "Why didn't you warn me about ¾?" I apologized and then everything went like clockwork. We quickly reached the end of the ballet (one act!) And he asked me another important question - "Who starts to play the ballet?" “Oboe,” I replied. At this, the lesson was over and the next morning we met in the DZZ studio, where exactly at 10 o'clock in the morning he confidently "poked" the introduction with an oboe, and then "using the icebreaker method", that is, "overwhelming" came back, tenaciously remembering the development of the melody from instrument to instrument, from group to group, etc.

Having “plowed” the whole ballet in this way (I deliberately do not say “the entire score”, since he had not the slightest idea about it before the end of the recording), he started recording ...

Concepts such as “rate modification”, balance, dynamics did not exist for him. He waved his hands to the music, more no less falling “to the beat” and, apparently, regretting that no one was dancing at this time, since during performances the dancers' movements served him as a “cheat sheet”, successfully replacing the always absent score.

He undoubtedly had a very good musical memory, but it was not a phenomenal memory, like, say, the same Toscanini or Willie Ferrero. The fact is that it took months, if not years, to stage a ballet at the Bolshoi Theater. This required hundreds of rehearsals, from grand piano staging to proofreading and orchestral. He did not miss any of them, so it is not surprising that after thousands of repetitions he memorized the "motive", for this one does not need to be a genius, as they tried to imagine him (especially ballet dancers, for whose "convenience" he was ready for any " musical compromises "- bills, idiotic (I'm not afraid of this word!) tempos, etc., etc.)

The choreographers who collaborated with him, like him, had no idea of \u200b\u200bthe score.

I recall a randomly selected episode from Prokofiev's ballet "The Tale of the Stone Flower" during its production at the Bolshoi Theater by the chief choreographer L.M. Lavrovsky. A number called "Russian Dance" was staged (composed!). At the piano, the most experienced ballet accompanist S.K. Stuchevsky. In the clavier it is written “forte” in black and white, he, of course, plays “forte”. On stage, four dancers practiced a dashing squat. Lavrovsky is not happy. “Why are you dancing like dead fish? More active, this is Russian folk dance! No, no, not that, it will not work that way, I will add four more to you ... So ... brighter, sharper, higher than the knees, "etc. Wiping their sweat, the dancers leave for a break, after which everything is the same - "brighter, more active ..." And so every God day, from morning to night.

Finally the first rehearsal with the orchestra begins. The dancers have already been brought up to condition by Lavrovsky, as they say. They dance much more "dashingly" than the "Red Banner Alexandrov Ensemble" and stomp their boots with all their might, great! But choreographer Lavrovsky is again dissatisfied. "Yura! Yura! - he shouts to Fire, - what's the matter, where is your temperament? You can't hear the orchestra at all, have you come here to sleep? " And indeed - THE ORCHESTRA IS NOT HEARING - because, according to Prokofiev's score, the theme is played by one flute (and also "forte", as indicated in the clavier, but ONE flute), and the accompaniment is entrusted to the harp and triangle, therefore, the ORCHESTRA is NOT HEARING for the rumble of eight pairs of boots! But Lavrovsky thinks differently - "this Prokofiev is completely out of his mind, what is it like to re-instruct!" And obedient Fire gives the order to B.M. To Pogrebov, an excellent musician who played cymbals in the orchestra, for tomorrow's rehearsal, “fix” the Prokofiev score - give the melody to all the strings, and the accompaniment with brass and drums, making the most of Pogrebov's “native” instrument - cymbals.

At the next rehearsal, Lavrovsky says in a conciliatory tone - "Well, that's another matter ..." It's in the bag. And such "corrections" are made dozens of times, as a result of which there is no stone unturned from Prokofiev's score ... Why? Because neither the director nor the conductor (!!!) have ever seen the score!

The same thing happened at the Bolshoi Theater with two other masterpieces by Prokofiev - the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella (the latter staged by R. Zakharov). Both ballets, by the grace of Yu.F. Fayer went through the “crucible” of the Pogrebovskaya purge, as a result of which, in addition to “corrections”, a new painting “Mantua” (!), Composed by accompanist A.D. Zeitlin, and the ingenious last page of Cinderella, with her divine “pianissimos” of the celesta, as if “melting” in the sky, turned into a vulgar “May Day apotheosis” with a roaring gang and the roar of percussion instruments, crowned with Pogrebov’s “native” cymbal!

A little more about Lavrovsky's "musicality".

People's Artist of the USSR three times winner of the Stalin Prizes Leonid Mikhailovich Lavrovsky

Once, for some reason, he “fired up” with the desire to stage Bela Bartok's ballet The Wonderful Mandarin. In the course of the production, which took place in exactly the same conditions (from a musical point of view) as the described "Tale of the Stone Flower", difficulties arose with the musical material - the choreographer could not find a ballet recording anywhere to truly "comprehend" Bartok. Finally, oh my joy, the recording appeared and the choreographer rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that half of the ballet had to be rearranged. The fact is that on the first side of the record brought by Lavrovsky from Finland (then still with a speed of 33 revolutions) SUITA from The Wonderful Mandarin was recorded, and on the second side there was Stravinsky's Fireworks, to the music of which Lavrovsky staged his ballet in rapture , not noticing a rather significant difference between the style of Bartok and Stravinsky and, again, not bothering to look at the score, or, at worst, the clavier!

And now it’s completely funny, it doesn’t fit into any gate!

At one time at the Bolshoi Theater the Czech conductor Zdenek Halabala staged an opera by V.Ya. Shebalin's "The Taming of the Shrew." Rehearsals with the orchestra took place at the Branch of the Bolshoi Theater, and Halabala lived in the Metropol Hotel. Each time, after finishing a rehearsal at the Branch, Halabala THROUGH THE BIG THEATER went to the Metropol and left the score of The Taming of the Shrew on the piano in the conductor's room of the Bolshoi Theater.

At the same time, Fire in the building of the Bolshoi Theater rehearsed with the Khachaturian's Spartak Orchestra.

One fine day, having entered as usual, on the way to the Branch in the conductor's room of the Bolshoi Theater, Halabala did not find her on the piano. All searches for the score did not lead to anything ... Ch.P.! A scandal all over Europe, the author's handwritten Shebalin score has disappeared, it's a joke!

The rehearsal for "The Taming" at the Branch has obviously been canceled. WHAT TO DO? - as N.G. Chernyshevsky and V.I. Lenin.

Only towards the end of the rehearsal day, the famous worker of the Bolshoi Theater orchestra, Fedya Kukuev, discovered the score of "The Taming" on the conductor's stand of the Bolshoi Theater. On it, Fire successfully rehearsed "Spartak" !!!

These notes by Professor G.N. Rozhdestvensky give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe technology of creating myths and legends about the great and famous.

It seemed to me that in my time, it was unheard of to create a ballet "to the music of Prokofiev" called "Ivan the Terrible", glued together by M.I. Stockings with a stopwatch in hand. I could not have thought then, and even to this day, until I received these notes from Gennady Nikolaevich, that something like that, and even worse, was done at the Bolshoi Theater long before I came there! Right, nothing is new in this world.

Photo from the book by Yu.F. Fayera - "About myself, about music, about ballet"

But then, like most of the young musicians of the theater, I was fully convinced of the infallibility of the myth called "Yuri Fyodorovich Fayer".

And these notes, so kindly written at my request by G.N. Rozhdestvensky, give us a documentary idea of \u200b\u200bthe cruel reality of the life of the Theater 15-20 years before I started working there.

I did not know and do not know the story of Fire's retirement, but his year coincides with the year escorting on the pension of the Bolshoi Theater (this is exactly how - then there were special pensions of the Bolshoi Theater) of the former chief conductor - A.Sh. Melik-Pashayev was born in 1963, and therefore, humanly, I felt sorry for the old and helpless person with whom I was recording the ballet Coppelia.

I remember in the early 70s a New Year's telegram on the bulletin board: “Happy New Year to my beloved Bolshoi Theater Orchestra! Forgotten Fire ". All the funny stories immediately drifted off to the side, as in the Chaplin film, and it became sad ... And the myth continued to live. And it seems to continue ...

Notes:

It was hard then not to believe in "uplifting deception." Even today, after reading such information, woven from real facts, which were the basic part of the myth-legend, one of the many myths of the Soviet era:

“People's Artist of the USSR (1951), laureate of four Stalin Prizes (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950). This wonderful master devoted himself entirely to ballet. For half a century, he stood at the console of the Bolshoi Theater. Together with the Bolshoi Ballet, he had to perform in France, England, USA, Belgium and other countries. Fire is a true ballet knight. His repertoire includes about sixty performances. And even in rare symphony concerts, he usually performed ballet music. Fire came to the Bolshoi Theater in 1916, not as a conductor, but as an orchestra artist: he graduated in violin from the Kiev Musical College (1906), and later from the Moscow Conservatory (1917). Fire considers A. Arends to be his real teacher, who in the first decades of the 20th century was the chief ballet conductor of the Bolshoi Theater. Fire made his debut in Coppelia by Delibes with the participation of Quiz Krieger. And since then, almost every of his performances has become a notable artistic event. What is the reason for this? This question is best answered by those who worked side by side with Fire.

Director of the Bolshoi Theater M. Chulaki: “I don’t know any other conductor in the history of choreographic art who would lead the music of ballet performances so powerfully and together with dance. For ballet dancers, dancing to Fire's music is not just a pleasure, but also confidence and complete creative freedom. For the listeners, when Y. Fayer is at the console, this is the fullness of emotions, a source of emotional uplift and active perception of the performance. (the volume level of the orchestra under the direction of Yu.F. Fayer was really very high, which, according to the ex-director of the Bolshoi Theater, contributed to the "active perception of the performance", as well as was the "source of enthusiasm" for the audience.- A.Sh) The uniqueness of Y. Fayer lies precisely in the happy combination of the qualities of an excellent musician with an excellent knowledge of the specifics and technology of dance. "

Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya: “Listening to the orchestra under the direction of Fayer, I always feel how it penetrates into the very soul of the piece, subordinating not only the orchestra artists, but also us, the dancing artists, to its intention. That is why in the ballets conducted by Yuri Fedorovich, the musical and choreographic parts merge, forming a single musical and dance image of the performance. " Fayer has an outstanding merit in the formation of Soviet choreographic art ( it would be more correct to say - in the formation of the Soviet ballet repertoire,because the ballet of the Mariinsky Theater, like that of the Bolshoi, continued the glorious traditions of the centuries-old Russian Imperial Ballet- A.Sh)... The conductor's repertoire includes all classical samples, as well as all the best that has been created in this genre by contemporary composers. Fire worked closely with R. Glier ("Red Poppy", "Comedians", "The Bronze Horseman"), S. Prokofiev ("Romeo and Juliet", "Cinderella", "The Tale of the Stone Flower"), D. Shostakovich ("The Bright Stream"), A. Khachaturian ("Gayane", "Spartak"), D. Klebanov ("Aistenok", "Svetlana"), B. Asafiev ("The Flame of Paris", "Bakhchisarai Fountain", "Prisoner of the Caucasus "), S. Vasilenko (" Joseph the Beautiful "), V. Yurovsky (" Scarlet Sails "), A. Kerin (" Laurencia ") and others.

But I remember the painting "Mantua"! The first time I saw the ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi Theater in the fall of 1952, I remember thinking - really such did Prokofiev write the music? Who could have known that this is not the author, but an "artistic supplement" ...

Yuri Fedorovich Fayer

Legend and reality

Many years before I entered the Bolshoi Theater, of course, I knew the name of Yuri Fedorovich Fayer, the most famous Soviet ballet conductor. In 1952 I saw the ballet Romeo and Juliet, which he conducted. Having entered the Bolshoi Theater in 1966, I no longer had to work with him, since he had retired three years earlier. By that time, I knew a lot from the stories about the oddities and some eccentricities of the famous conductor. And now, unexpectedly, the opportunity presented itself not only to see the renowned conductor up close, but also to work a little with him. I usually did not take part in recordings with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. I didn't have time for that. But when I found out that the music for the ballet Coppelia by Leo Delibes was to be recorded, I asked me to appoint a few recordings with Fire. By this time, young musicians had come to the orchestra, who, like me, were interested in playing with the legendary conductor.

All of us, now people of the older generation, remember the wonderful myths of the Soviet era. The myth of Stakhanov, the myth of Dzhambul, Chapaev, Shchors, the myth of the capture of the Winter Palace in 1917 (somehow, in the last period of the "thaw" in the early 60s, a completely outlandish material appeared in the journal Science and Life about that during the capture of the Winter Palace, only a few people died, and even then in a stampede). But most of the myths were based on the icon-making of real people - was there Alexei Stakhanov? Was. Were there laureates of international competitions - pianists and violinists? There were. So gradually the most famous Soviet theaters - the Bolshoi, Maly, and the Moscow Art Theater - began to acquire something legendary. Well, and the conductors, directors, singers, ballet soloists who worked in them ... but there is nothing to say. And without television, even before the war the whole country knew the names of Galina Ulanova, Olga Lepeshinskaya, conductor Yuri Fayer, singers Kozlovsky and Lemeshev, Pirogov and Reisen, Mikhailov and Nelepp. So was it not true? Of course not. It was true, but it was on the basis of this truth that the great myth of the Land of the Soviets was built: only there was the best life for a working person - nowhere in the world was there free education, the flourishing of culture, well, and so on ... All these wonderful artists were very important links in one component - the myth of the USSR.

A meeting with a real person-legend is always dangerous, loss of illusion and disappointment. And the loss of cherished illusions for years is always very painful. When I met the real Fire, this could not happen, because this time we were dealing with a special score - the music of Delibes, which Yu.F. Fire has been conducting since the early 1920s (And how could one not believe his fame, when even today we read on the Internet such information about the "legendary conductor" of Soviet ballet ?!

Relatively recently, when my story about the head of the violin ensemble of the Bolshoi Theater Yulia Reentovich was published on the Internet, some of my acquaintances were so upset and even offended, if not outraged - how dare I write this about the People's Artist of the RSFSR, so beloved and popular all over the country that it was just a terrible thing on my part - an unforgivable act. It seems that this publication will cause the same feelings in a few of my friends and acquaintances: surprise, disappointment and grief ... Although the main purpose of this publication is to get acquainted with the unique material of Professor G.N. Rozhdestvensky, kindly written by him at my request. Yes, indeed, the loss of favorite illusions is very, very painful.

I remember, back in the early 1970s in Moscow, one sweet lady, quite versed in musical matters, was completely convinced that Yuli Reentovich occupied a place on the violin Olympus very close, (if not close!) To David Oistrakh! My friend reacted to my judgments with confidence, believing me that Reentovich himself was not able to play anything more or less worthy of the most modest violin level, and that he made a name for himself only thanks to the talented violinists who made up his ensemble. Moreover, they actively popularized familiar melodies from films, famous violin pieces, appearing on the stage in tailcoats and ballroom evening dresses. It was a very magnificent sight. But back to Fire's series of recordings.

So, at the time when I participated in these recordings, I did not know anything about Fire's work with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. It seemed to me then that Fire had a rather peculiar command of the sound of the orchestra. He was himself a violinist in the past and, of course, he perfectly sensed the idea of \u200b\u200bthe sound of stringed instruments that he desired. It also seemed to me that the orchestra sounded in the performance of this score by Delibes softly, transparently (which the score itself greatly contributed to) and, as it were, on the "pedal" of the timpani and their soft sound.

Yuri Fyodorovich Fayer - People's Artist of the USSR, four times winner of the Stalin Prizes - the legendary conductor of the Soviet ballet

The recording of Coppelia went pretty quickly, in four recording sessions, I think. Then they began to write it down as an "appendage" - two Waltzes by Johann Strauss. Here something completely different appeared - an almost anecdotal taste, a lack of a sense of proportion, incredibly exaggerated decelerations and accelerations, and in general the absence of a general tempo and a single form of work. So some of the anecdotes about him began to be remembered very clearly - now I myself could tell such a story about Strauss Waltzes.

In the early 1960s, my friend Anatoly Agamirov-Sats sometimes met with the then famous Gennady Rozhdestvensky, thinking of going to graduate school at the conducting department. For some reason, nothing came of it, and Agamirov became a music journalist, but meeting with G.N. Rozhdestvensky, he heard from him incredible stories about the famous conductor of the Bolshoi Ballet Yuri Fayer.

Here are some such stories told to me by Anatoly Agamirov-Sats from the words of G.N. Rozhdestvensky.

During his first trip to London, Yuri Fedorovich asked Gennady Rozhdestvensky to translate his explanation into English for the orchestra during rehearsals. “I will explain the drama to them,” he announced. (The word "drama" was very popular among some conductors in the late 40s and early 50s. This word often appears on the pages of the book "Kirill Kondrashin talks about music and life", published after the death of the conductor by VG Razhnikov. associated with this word, you often ask yourself the question - did people understand its meaning? It seems that they did not quite understand it. But for Yu.F. Fayer this favorite word took on a completely different character - A.Sh.).

Arriving at the theater for a rehearsal of the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" he, after the words - "Gennady! Translate! " started something like this:

“It's all on me! I give "one"! Curtain. The TIRAPTYCH is coming! ("Triptych", the prologue of the ballet. - A.Sh.) Left she, on the right about n, in the middle this (Father Lorenzo - A.Sh.). It's like Bach - tai nai, nai tai... Yes. Then it ... the servants fight. Yes ... Then Juliet Girl. A very difficult number. This must be played with a very small bow, very small (shows the distance between thumb and forefinger) - she's still a girl! Then ... Then she loves him on stage! "

Prologue in the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” by S.S. Prokofiev

The explanation of "drama" went something like this. It is possible that some of those present in the orchestra and in the hall understood Russian and were probably impressed by the maestro's explanations.

Immediately after landing in New York on the first visit of the Bolshoi Ballet to the United States, when disembarking from the plane, someone said that Yuri Fedorovich was met by his brother Miron. He was terribly worried and said that it was a provocation. “I have no brother, he is dead! Since the age of 22 I wrote in the questionnaires that he died! " “But your brother is still waiting below,” someone told him. Then he suddenly calmed down and said:

"After all, I'm a party member - let him worry!" Naturally, in Fire's book of memoirs, this episode looks different, but it seems that this is how it happened. ("About myself, about music, about ballet", a literary recording was made by the talented writer Felix Rosiner. "Soviet Composer", 1974)

Once, during a tour in West Germany, there was a rumor that Adenauer would be awarding outstanding ballet soloists and some leading figures with "Iron Crosses" (!!!), but that it was inconvenient for the party members to accept the award. Yuri Fedorovich was terribly excited when he heard this news. He invited Gennady Rozhdestvensky to his hotel room and asked him about the following:

“Gennady! You tell me there - where it is necessary - I will not wear it, but let them give it! " Of course, it was an ordinary joke, but Yuri Fedorovich's reaction vividly reflected him, and not only his, a very painful attitude towards any insignia.

Yuri Fedorovich was very fond of talking about his patronage to musicians, composers, conductors. It was always the same story, only the names of his protégé changed. His story began epic, and ended rather sadly ...

“A-ah-ah ... This one? Yes - my student! I him called, told him everything, showed him, put him on the path. Now he's on me ... t! "

In his "students" he wrote down S.S. Prokofiev: “Once Prokofiev called me. He asks: “Yuri! Why aren't my ballets going on? Why doesn't Romeo go, why Cinderella doesn't go?

I told him: “Seryozha! You can't write music like that anymore! " He wrote The Stone Flower. My order, my student ... "

Once at the Bolshoi Theater, Glazunov's one-act ballet The Young Lady-Servant was being prepared for recording. G.N. Rozhdestvensky and violinist-accompanist S.I. Kalinovsky had to play the ballet to Fayer, since due to poor eyesight he could not read the score, but he quickly learned it by heart. The first performance of the ballet music was scheduled at Yuri Fedorovich's apartment. Arriving there, Rozhdestvensky and Kalinovsky saw a huge vase with tangerines on the piano in the living room - an incredible rarity in winter Moscow of those years! It was quickly decided to take two tangerines in his pocket.

Fire soon appeared. "A-ah ... Gena! Syoma! Eat tangerines! Here in a vase! " As soon as the artists took a tangerine each, Yuri Fyodorovich called his housekeeper (I think it was his relative): “Berta! He shouted. "They already! " “Already” meant that it was time to remove the vase from the piano.

In 1936, Fire and several other responsible comrades were sent to Berlin to undergo special X-ray examinations, which at that time were done only in Germany. Since Fire suffered from very poor eyesight, it was decided to send him also to Berlin for examination on this subject. After arriving home at the very first rehearsal at the Bolshoi Theater, he said: "In Berlin, they enlightened my whole head and found absolutely nothing there!" One can imagine the delight of those present from such news! It was a real funny episode, told to me by my father, who was then working as a violinist in the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra.

About Yu.F. Fayere

At one time, I really, as many told me, successfully imitated his manner of speaking, but perhaps I rather tried to penetrate the style of his thinking, born of the "Odessa aura". Everything that you retold from Agamirov's words is sheer truth, which does not need any additions and adjustments.

Before recording the ballet "The Maid-Maid" (House of Sound Recording - ASh) with the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, he had no idea about this music. In order to fill this "gap" he invited me to his home and asked me to play the clavier of this ballet on the piano. He himself, having seated himself in an armchair, prepared himself for the "conducting"! The only question he asked me before starting the "process of studying the score" was: "How long is the first number?" I brought to his attention that the number, in all likelihood, goes to "4". And he began to play.

Somewhere in the middle of the number I got one bar on and I saw how in the next bars his “one”, as expected, did not coincide with my “strong time”. This did not last long. He stopped my game and said, rather annoyed, "Why didn't you warn me about ¾?" I apologized and then everything went like clockwork. We quickly reached the end of the ballet (one act!) And he asked me another important question– "Who starts to play ballet?" "Oboe",– I answered. At this, the lesson was over and the next morning we met in the DZZ studio, where exactly at 10 o'clock in the morning he confidently "poked" the introduction with an oboe, and then "using the icebreaker method", that is, "overwhelming" came back, tenaciously remembering the development of the melody from instrument to instrument, from group to group, etc.

Having “plowed” the whole ballet in this way (I deliberately do not say “the entire score”, since he had not the slightest idea about it before the end of the recording), he started recording ...

Concepts such as “rate modification”, balance, dynamics did not exist for him. He waved his hands to the music, more no less falling “to the beat” and, apparently, regretting that no one was dancing at this time, since during performances the dancers' movements served him as a “cheat sheet”, successfully replacing the always absent score.

He undoubtedly had a very good musical memory, but it was not a phenomenal memory, like, say, the same Toscanini or Willie Ferrero. The fact is that it took months, if not years, to stage a ballet at the Bolshoi Theater. This required hundreds of rehearsals, from grand piano staging to proofreading and orchestral. He did not miss any of them, so it is not surprising that after thousands of repetitions he memorized the "motive", for this one does not need to be a genius, as they tried to imagine him (especially ballet dancers, for whose "convenience" he was ready for any " musical compromises " – bills, idiotic (I'm not afraid of this word!) rates, etc. etc.)

The choreographers who collaborated with him, like him, had no idea of \u200b\u200bthe score.

I recall a randomly selected episode from Prokofiev's ballet "The Tale of a Stone Flower" during its production at the Bolshoi Theater by the chief choreographer L.M. Lavrovsky. A number was staged (composed!) Called "Russian Dance". At the piano, the most experienced ballet accompanist S.K. Stuchevsky. In the clavier it is written “forte” in black and white, he, of course, plays “forte”. On stage, four dancers practiced a dashing squat. Lavrovsky is not happy. “Why are you dancing like dead fish? More active, this is Russian folk dance! No, no, not that, it will not work that way, I will add four more to you ... So ... brighter, sharper, higher than the knees, "etc. Wiping their sweat, the dancers leave for a break, after which everything is the same - "brighter, more active ..." And so every God day, from morning to night.

Finally the first rehearsal with the orchestra begins. The dancers have already been brought up to condition by Lavrovsky, as they say. They dance much more "dashingly" than the "Red Banner Alexandrov Ensemble" and stomp their boots with all their might, great! But the choreographer Lavrovsky is again unhappy. "Yura! Yura! He shouts to Fire, – what's the matter, where is your temperament? You can't hear the orchestra at all, have you come to sleep here? " And indeed - THE ORCHESTRA IS NOT HEARING - because, according to Prokofiev's score, the theme is played by one flute (and also "forte", as indicated in the clavier, but ONE flute), and the accompaniment is entrusted to the harp and triangle, therefore, the ORCHESTRA is NOT HEARING for the rumble of eight pairs of boots! But Lavrovsky thinks differently - "this Prokofiev has completely lost his mind, what is it like to re-instruct!" And obedient Fire gives the order to B.M. To Pogrebov, an excellent musician who played cymbals in the orchestra, for tomorrow's rehearsal, “fix” the Prokofiev score - give the melody to all the strings, and the accompaniment with brass and drums, making the most of Pogrebov's “native” instrument - cymbals.

At the next rehearsal, Lavrovsky speaks in a conciliatory tone.– "Well, that's another matter ..." It's in the bag. And such "corrections" are made dozens of times, as a result of which there is no stone unturned from Prokofiev's score ... Why? Because neither the director nor the conductor (!!!) have ever seen the score!

The same thing happened at the Bolshoi Theater with two other masterpieces by Prokofiev - the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella (the latter was staged by R. Zakharov). Both ballets, by the grace of Yu.F. Fire passed the "crucible" of the Pogrebov purge, as a result of which, in addition to "corrections", a new painting "Mantua" appeared in "Romeo and Juliet" (!), composed by accompanist A.D. Zeitlin, and the ingenious last page of Cinderella, with her divine “pianissimos” of the celesta, as if “melting” in the sky, turned into a vulgar “May Day apotheosis” with a roaring gang and the roar of percussion instruments, crowned with Pogrebov’s “native” cymbal!

A little more about Lavrovsky's "musicality".

People's Artist of the USSR three times winner of the Stalin Prizes Leonid Mikhailovich Lavrovsky

Once, for some reason, he “fired up” with the desire to stage Bela Bartok's ballet The Wonderful Mandarin. In the course of the production, which took place in exactly the same conditions (from a musical point of view) as the described "Tale of the Stone Flower", difficulties arose with the musical material - the choreographer could not find a ballet recording anywhere to truly "comprehend" Bartok. Finally, oh my joy, the recording appeared and the choreographer rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that half of the ballet had to be rearranged. The fact is that on the first side of the record brought by Lavrovsky from Finland (then still with a speed of 33 revolutions) SUITA from The Miraculous Mandarin was recorded, and on the second side there was Stravinsky's Fireworks, on whose music Lavrovsky staged his ballet in rapture without noticing a rather significant difference between the style of Bartok and Stravinsky and, again, not bothering to look at the score, or, at worst, the clavier!

And now it’s quite a curiosity, it doesn’t fit into any gate!

At one time at the Bolshoi Theater, the Czech conductor Zdenek Halabala staged an opera by V.Ya. Shebalin "The Taming of the Shrew." Rehearsals with the orchestra took place at the Branch of the Bolshoi Theater, and Halabala lived in the Metropol Hotel. Each time, after finishing a rehearsal at the Branch, Halabala THROUGH THE BIG THEATER went to the Metropol and left the score of The Taming of the Shrew on the piano in the conductor's room of the Bolshoi Theater.

At the same time, Fire in the Bolshoi Theater was rehearsing with the Khachaturyan's Spartak Orchestra.

One fine day, having entered as usual, on the way to the Branch in the conductor's room of the Bolshoi Theater, Halabala did not find her on the piano. All searches for the score did not lead to anything ... Ch.P.! A scandal all over Europe, the author's handwritten Shebalin score has disappeared, it's a joke!

The rehearsal for "The Taming" at the Branch has obviously been canceled. WHAT TO DO? - as N.G. Chernyshevsky and V.I. Lenin.

Only towards the end of the rehearsal day, the famous worker of the Bolshoi Theater orchestra, Fedya Kukuev, discovered the score of "The Taming" on the conductor's stand of the Bolshoi Theater. On it, Fire successfully rehearsed "Spartak" !!!

***

These notes by Professor G.N. Rozhdestvensky give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe technology of creating myths and legends about the great and famous.

It seemed to me that in my time, it was unheard of to create a ballet "to the music of Prokofiev" called "Ivan the Terrible", glued together by M.I. Stockings with a stopwatch in hand. I could not have thought then, and even to this day, until I received these notes from Gennady Nikolaevich, that something like that, and even worse, was done at the Bolshoi Theater long before I came there! Right, nothing is new in this world.

Photo from the book by Yu.F. Fayera - "About myself, about music, about ballet"

But then, like most of the young musicians of the theater, I was fully convinced of the infallibility of the myth called "Yuri Fyodorovich Fayer".

And these notes, so kindly written at my request by G.N. Rozhdestvensky, give us a documentary idea of \u200b\u200bthe cruel reality of the life of the Theater 15-20 years before I started working there.

I did not know and do not know the story of Fire's retirement, but his year coincides with the year escorting on the pension of the Bolshoi Theater (this is how - then there were special pensions of the Bolshoi Theater) of the former chief conductor - A.Sh. Melik-Pashayev was born in 1963, and therefore humanly I felt sorry for the old and helpless person with whom I was recording the ballet Coppelia.

I remember in the early 70s a New Year's telegram on the bulletin board: “Happy New Year to my beloved Bolshoi Theater Orchestra! Forgotten Fire ". All the funny stories immediately drifted off to the side, as in the Chaplin film, and it became sad ... And the myth continued to live. And it seems to continue ...

Notes:

It was hard then not to believe in "uplifting deception." Even today, after reading such information, woven from real facts, which were the basic part of the myth-legend, one of the many myths of the Soviet era:

“People's Artist of the USSR (1951), laureate of four Stalin Prizes (1941, 1946, 1947, 1950). This wonderful master devoted himself entirely to ballet. For half a century, he stood at the console of the Bolshoi Theater. Together with the Bolshoi Ballet, he had to perform in France, England, USA, Belgium and other countries. Fire is a true ballet knight. His repertoire includes about sixty performances. And even in rare symphony concerts, he usually performed ballet music. Fire came to the Bolshoi Theater in 1916, not as a conductor, but as an orchestra artist: he graduated from the Kiev Musical College (1906) in violin, and later from the Moscow Conservatory (1917). Fire considers A. Arends to be his real teacher, who in the first decades of the 20th century was the chief ballet conductor of the Bolshoi Theater. Fire made his debut in Coppelia by Delibes with the participation of Quiz Krieger. And since then, almost every of his performances has become a notable artistic event. What is the reason for this? This question will be best answered by those who worked side by side with Fire.

Director of the Bolshoi Theater M. Chulaki: “I don’t know any other conductor in the history of choreographic art who would lead the music of ballet performances so imperiously and together with dance. For ballet dancers, dancing to the music of Fire is not just a pleasure, but also confidence and complete creative freedom. For the audience, when Y. Fayer is at the console, this is the fullness of emotions, a source of emotional uplift and active perception of the performance. (the volume level of the orchestra under the direction of Yu.F. Fayer was really very high, which, according to the ex-director of the Bolshoi Theater, contributed to the "active perception of the performance", as well as was the "source of enthusiasm" for the audience.– A.Sh) The uniqueness of Y. Fayer lies precisely in the happy combination of the qualities of an excellent musician with an excellent knowledge of the specifics and technology of dance. "

Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya: “Listening to the orchestra under the direction of Fayer, I always feel how it penetrates into the very soul of the piece, subordinating not only the orchestra artists, but also us, the dancing artists, to its intention. That is why in the ballets conducted by Yuri Fedorovich, the musical and choreographic parts merge, forming a single musical and dance image of the performance. " Fayer has an outstanding merit in the formation of Soviet choreographic art ( it would be more correct to say - in the formation of the Soviet ballet repertoire,because the ballet of the Mariinsky Theater, like the Bolshoi, continued the glorious traditions of the centuries-old Russian Imperial Ballet– A.Sh)... The conductor's repertoire includes all classical samples, as well as all the best that has been created in this genre by contemporary composers. Fire worked closely with R. Glier (The Red Poppy, The Comedians, The Bronze Horseman), S. Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Tale of the Stone Flower), D. Shostakovich ("The Bright Stream"), A. Khachaturian ("Gayane", "Spartak"), D. Klebanov ("Aistenok", "Svetlana"), B. Asafiev ("The Flame of Paris", "Bakhchisarai Fountain", "Prisoner of the Caucasus "), S. Vasilenko (" Joseph the Beautiful "), V. Yurovsky (" Scarlet Sails "), A. Kerin (" Laurencia ") and others.

But I remember the painting "Mantua"! The first time I saw the ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi Theater in the fall of 1952, I remember thinking - really such did Prokofiev write the music? Who could have known that this is not the author, but an "artistic supplement" ...

Dear unknown reader!

What can be said about a person based on the results of his earthly life?

"Either good or nothing but the truth" - this is the full phrase said by the once famous ancient Greek politician and poet Chilo from Sparta.

The publishing group "Tradition" presents to your attention the last earthly work of Yuri Mamleev - "Memories".

The story of one person is always a confession to be weighed on the great scales of a psychopomp to determine the future road.

Events, dates, people ...

Through the variegated fabric of time sequences, an inquiring mind will trace the difficult stages of the formation of human incarnation in this sublunary world.

Undoubtedly, every reader will find in this book his own delightful strings and his contradictions. However, the common desire will be to compare how earthly lives correspond to the high bar for acquiring the highest virtues.

From terrible Shatunov through personal Gambit to personal revelation of Eternal Russia - this is the quintessence of Yuri Mamleev's path. This is the prism through which Memories are reflected in Eternity as a living tissue of becoming.

God bless you, Yuri Vitalievich!

Acknowledgments

Thank you very much for your help with this book.

Igor Dudinsky,

Ilya Egarmin,

Sergey Zhigalkin,

Timofey Reshetov,

as well as all photographers capturing moments of history

Part one. At home

I do not believe in the universal dream,

Turning this horror into peace

I stand at a mysterious door

For which I will become myself.

Yuri Mamleev

December 11, 1931. The day when I appeared in this world, or, as they say, was born. My parents came from different families. Father, Vitaly Ivanovich Mamleev, was of noble origin. I remember well his mother, my grandmother, a landowner from the Penza province. Mine came from a family of Old Believers merchants. Her maiden name is Romanova. However, this family quickly became Europeanized, and by the beginning of the 20th century all traces of the Old Believers had smoothed out; my maternal grandmother, Polina Kuzminichna, my great-grandmother Zinaida, and her sister Elena were already living a completely modern life.

This family blossomed pretty quickly. My mother and aunt received an excellent education and were in no way inferior to representatives of noble families. They often traveled to Paris. Just at the beginning of the revolution, my mother graduated from high school, which meant that she was fluent in several foreign languages. Education in the tsarist gymnasium was given brilliantly, with such diplomas in Soviet times, they were admitted to a higher educational institution without further ado. As far as I can judge, my mother's family did not have any particular friction with the Soviet regime, despite their merchant origin. My aunt, then still a medical student, and my mother, later a student of the Faculty of Economics and Geography at Moscow State University, accepted the revolution. I remember how Elena Petrovna, my mother's sister, was indignant that, they say, it is not clear why some people can own factories and factories, while others cannot? This, they say, is unfair. In short, revolutionary fervor has taken possession of many, regardless of their origin. Neither my mother nor my aunt, of course, were ardent revolutionaries - they were educated, gentle girls from Russian families and just wanted to study. As a result, Elena Petrovna successfully graduated from medicine, married a professor of medicine and became a professor herself. She had a son, Volodya, and a daughter, Irina; the daughter was born in the early forties. Mom, speaking five foreign languages, successfully translated and worked at the Department of Economic Geography of Moscow State University.

As for his father, his profession was more exotic - he was a psychopathologist. Not a psychiatrist, but a psychopathologist - this is a broader concept that encompasses any disturbances in the human psyche, including those that have nothing to do with mental illness proper, but are simply certain distortions of character, say, under the influence of the environment or other factors. Apparently, he was a born psychologist, since he was a man of inner orientation. Our apartment in Yuzhinsky Lane was literally inundated with literature on psychiatry and psychopathology, which I studied with interest in my early youth. Among other things, the father was an athlete, a very physically strong man, which cannot be said about the mother.

I remember Yuzhinsky as my first habitat. This name was given to the lane by the Soviet authorities in honor of the actor Alexander Yuzhin-Sumbatov, who once lived here. And before the Soviet era (as now) the lane was called Bolshoi Palashevsky. It received this name because in pre-Peter the Great times, executioners lived in this place. When our family was here, it was already a lane not without aesthetic moments, and its ancient history faded from human memory. At one end, Yuzhinsky went out onto Pushkin Square; School No. 122 was located nearby, where I graduated from the tenth grade. Another exit, through the perpendicular Bogoslovsky Lane - straight to Tverskaya Boulevard, marked by Russian classics and therefore itself became a classic. In this place, tenderness and historical depth were surprisingly combined. Here the feeling that many great people of Russia - poets, writers - passed along this very boulevard. The boulevard was crowned with the famous monument to Pushkin. Dostoevsky also spoke here with his famous "Speech on Pushkin".

Nearby were the Patriarch's Ponds, also a typical Moscow place. When I was there, this whole area, that is, from the beginning of the 30s to the beginning of the 70s of the twentieth century, was exactly the real old Moscow with its small bakery, low houses. The stamp of the Russian urban spirit lay on everything; Russian writers and poets who have been here could not help but create a completely unique aura of this place. It was a place of rest and calm immersion in creativity, in other worlds.

Our family occupied house number 3, which was demolished in the late 60s. It was a plastered two-story (not counting the basement) building of the early 20th century. Apartment No. 3 was located on the top floor and consisted of six rooms, if not more. Earlier, before the revolution, the family of a gymnasium teacher lived here. The apartment was equipped with conveniences - telephone, toilet, kitchen. We were the only ones who occupied two rooms. The rest huddled closer together. We are father, me and mother. Nearby was the room of Polina Kuzminichna's grandmother, a wonderful and educated woman - it was not for nothing that her second husband, after the death of the first, was an artist of the old Russian direction - realistic, but very Moscow, gentle, in the spirit of Moscow churches and courtyards. His painting "The Cathedral of Christ the Savior" hung in his grandmother's room. I called Polina Kuzminichna “big grandmother”. And the "little grandmother" was her father's mother, a kind-hearted Russian landowner who almost descended from the pages of Goncharov's novel "The Break". She lived in a house not far from us, in a tiny room.

The apartment in Yuzhinsky was my home - they knew me there since childhood and were mostly friendly. As a child, I had a friend Vadim, my age. His mother, Sofya Naumovna, a kind and educated woman, made friends with my grandmother. I must say that all these people were born before the revolution, and therefore the imprint of the Russian consciousness (I am not saying that they were all Orthodox, believers; this is another question) lay on them, and this significantly softened the concrete everyday life. In the face of my grandmother and my mother, who was born around 1900 (my father was also born around this time), I saw the faces of old Russia, which was essentially eternal.

Yuri Fedorovich Fayer was famous as a conductor, but no less distinguished for his eccentric behavior. It would seem that the angelic patience that he showed to careless orchestras could well end in a violent explosion that threatened a downright universal catastrophe. At one of the rehearsals before the big Soviet holiday, he stood at the conductor's stand for about fifteen minutes, and the orchestra members all wandered, talked and did not in any way express their readiness to start work.

At first, Yuri Fedorovich muttered something to himself, then knocked with the conductor's baton on the console and, finally, throwing his working instrument on the floor, shouted:

You don't respect the conductor in me! How can I work with you ?!

Then he quickly left the orchestra pit and disappeared into the dressing room. The orchestra members announced a break for themselves and dispersed - some to smoke, some to the buffet, and some just to chat “for life”. After the break, the violinist raised his voice:

Comrades! This is no longer possible! We will not let Yuri Fedorovich let down, but ourselves, and therefore our families ... Let's decide something about this.

And what, in fact, to decide? - entered the timpani. - We must not play the fool at rehearsals, in the hope that we will play normally, but work! Then Fire will be calm, and we will be fine!

It is necessary to send the elected deputies to Fire and apologize to him, - someone else suggested.

Without postponing the matter indefinitely, three were chosen for the deputy mission, and the orchestra's elect went to Fire's dressing room. However, Yuri Fedorovich was not found anywhere, and the watchman learned that he had already left, saying in parting that the rehearsal would be tomorrow.

The next day, Yuri Fyodorovich showed up exactly on time, but on the way to the orchestra pit he felt anxiety. The fact is that there was a dead silence, not disturbed by conversations or tuning the instruments.

Damn it, ”Fire muttered. - Did they decide to leave me? .. And where am I going to get a new orchestra? ..

He stepped into the orchestra pit and froze in confusion. The entire orchestra, down to the last man, was in place with instruments ready for rehearsal. After standing a minute or two, Fire went to the conductor's stand. In complete silence, he muttered:

The second act from the seventh note - and began to conduct.

To the surprise, if not to the admiration of the conductor, the orchestra played harmoniously, according to the notes and obeying every movement of Fire's hands. As soon as the conductor stopped, and with lightning speed came dead silence. Somewhat confusedly, Fire said:

Once again from the same place!

The orchestra sounded again, so much so that there was absolutely nothing to complain about. The conductor dropped his hands, and silence reigned again. Then Yuri Fyodorovich lowered his head and began to mutter something displeased. Then he jumped up and shouted:

Listen! Are you playing the fool?

The answer was the same deep silence as before.

Or are you holding me for a fool? Stop immediately! Absolutely no respect for the conductor!

In his hearts, Fire broke the conductor's baton and rushed to the management.

I don’t understand a damn thing ... - said one of the orchestra members. - Will you please him! ..