Nightingales have a gray life and creative path. To be remembered. Soloviev-gray-haired Vasily Pavlovich. V.P. Soloviev-Sedoy "Moscow Evenings"

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December 3 – Vasily SOLOVIEV-SEDOY

This composer composed many wonderful songs, but among them there is one that made his name immortal. After it, this composer could no longer compose anything and rest on his laurels all his life. But at first, most of the composer’s colleagues did not accept this song, calling it unsuccessful. But when the song went to the people and was sung in almost every home, justice triumphed. The song was called “Moscow Evenings”.

Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy was born on April 25, 1907 in St. Petersburg into a peasant family. His parents were originally from the Pskov region, and moved to St. Petersburg for a better life. The father of the future composer got a job as a senior janitor in house No. 139 on Staro-Nevsky Prospekt, his mother worked as a maid for the famous pop singer Anastasia Vyaltseva. The Solovyov family was musical: the father played several musical instruments (accordion, balalaika), the mother loved to sing and dance. So little Vasya attended his first music universities in the circle of his relatives. He especially loved listening to the gramophone, which Vyaltseva awarded his mother for good service. Among the records that were in the Solovyovs’ house, Vyaltseva’s own records predominated - on them she sang her famous songs: “They won’t snatch you from me”, “Oh, let the world condemn”, “Ah yes troika”, “Under the enchanting your affection”, etc.

Among musical instruments, Vasily preferred the balalaika, which he learned to play in early childhood (he would fall in love with the accordion as an adult). Then, when he was 9 years old, he became interested in the guitar, and he learned to play it in special courses. A little later, the piano will come into his life, which he will fall in love with thanks to the movies. During the years of the Civil War, Vasily would become a passionate film fan and would stay in the cinema for days on end, where films with the participation of Vera Kholodnaya and Charlie Chaplin were shown to the music of pianists playing the piano. Inspired by these viewings, in 1919 Vasily began taking piano lessons from pianist Boris Kamchatov. Thanks to these lessons, Soloviev began to earn his first musical fees by participating in various club evenings (his improvisation on the theme of the romance “A Pair of Bays” was especially successful), and playing in cinemas. In 1925, Soloviev got a job as an improvising pianist at Leningrad Radio and for three years accompanied him at morning gymnastics sessions.

It is worth noting that Vasily’s older brother Sergei also showed great promise as a musician, and his father advised him to follow in the footsteps of his younger brother - to enter a music school. But Sergei did not want this, declaring: “That I, like kids, will run around with a music folder!” As a result, he got a job as a dispatcher in one of the institutions. There I met a group of young slackers who spent all their evenings drinking and having fun. When Sergei ran out of money, he committed embezzlement. And he ended up in prison for three years. It seemed to many then that his fate was broken forever. But he still managed to get back on his feet: he stopped drinking and fought at the front. As fate would have it, both brothers will pass away almost simultaneously.

In 1929, Soloviev entered the Central Music College, having a wealth of practical experience behind him, but with extreme poverty of theoretical knowledge. However, there were a lot of people like him in those years: young and daring people who dreamed of building a new society. But this irrepressible energy often backfired on their owners: they wanted to achieve everything too quickly and did not want to study for a long time. So Solovyov, having entered the technical school, and then the conservatory in the composition class of Pyotr Ryazanov, began to neglect some disciplines and, as a result, received his diploma later than everyone else - due to a failure in a foreign language. However, this was the case not only with Solovyov, but also with many other famous musicians who studied with him: I. Dzerzhinsky, V. Bogdanov-Berezovsky, B. Bitov and others.

Despite the fact that the thirties were a time of rapid rise as a composer, Solovyov walked towards his triumph slowly. His path to fame was a slow process of accumulation of skills, hidden behind an outward carefree attitude. And while the names of some of his fellow peers - Dmitry Shostakovich or Joseph Dzerzhinsky - were already thundering throughout the country, no one knew about Solovyov yet.

Solovyov’s first fame came in 1936, when two of his songs received prizes at the Leningrad mass song competition: “Parade” and “Song about Leningrad.” And the song “The Death of Chapaev” was published on the pages of the newspapers “Smena” and “Red Baltic Fleet”, which was an indicator of its great success among listeners. However, it was still far from popular recognition and glory. In those years, Isaac Dunaevsky was considered the composer whose songs were sung by the whole country. Being only six years younger than Solovyov, he managed to soar so quickly to the very top of the pop Olympus that he seemed to all his colleagues to be a real master. It is no coincidence that Dunaevsky and his constant collaborator, the poet Lebedev-Kumach, were the first musicians to receive high government awards: the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

In those years, Soloviev worked a lot, trying to achieve the glory of his colleagues, with whom he studied at the conservatory. For example, after the success of Dzerzhinsky’s opera “Quiet Don”, he is trying to create the opera “Friendship”, and takes Mikhail Bulgakov himself as a co-author. However, the authors did not go beyond writing the libretto, and the opera about the friendship of collective farmers and border guards never came into being.

At the very end of the 30s, Solovyov wrote the ballet “Taras Bulba”, which was staged by two theaters at once: the Bolshoi in Moscow and the opera and ballet in Leningrad. But this production was not a great success. As it was written about the author of the ballet in one of the articles: “The composer is not devoid of talent, but does not have the skills of a musical playwright in order to take on a monumental stage canvas.” However, it was this ballet that revealed to the musical world the new name of the composer - Solovyov-Sedoy (this name appeared on all the posters for Taras Bulba).

The composer met his wife Tatyana Ryabova in the late 30s. This happened in the Crimea, in Sudak, where they both loved to relax. Their first meeting took place on the beach, where Tatyana (she was a pianist) came with singer Ricci Chertkova, and Solovyov-Seda with friends - composers Joseph Dzerzhinsky and Nikolai Gan. From the very first meeting, friendly relations developed between the young people, and they spent the entire vacation together. And when the time came to part (Solovyov-Sedoy’s trip expired a little earlier), the unexpected happened: the composer decided to stay in Crimea as a “savage” so as not to be separated from Tatyana. He got a job as a concert host, and began to live in one of two houses intended for housing members of the artistic team.

Returning to their native Leningrad, the young people continued their meetings. And two years later they got married.

Real glory came to Solovyov-Sedoy during the hard times of war. Like most of his compatriots, filled with fierce hatred of the enemy, he was ready to give all his strength for an early victory and therefore worked tirelessly. This hatred of the enemy gave the composer unprecedented inspiration, which became the reason for his subsequent triumph. As his biographers later wrote: “In a harsh and courageous time, Solovyov-Sedoy got rid of hesitation and slowness. Courage - a sign of the wartime - made him recklessly bold, and his liberated fantasy went in the direction characteristic of his individuality, his view.”

Already at the end of the summer of 1941, Solovyov-Sedoy wrote his first song, which sounded on all fronts - “Play, my button accordion.” And six months later, another song was written, which was much more successful - “Farewell, beloved city” (“Evening on the roads”). The composer performed this song in March 1942 in a dugout near Rzhev for soldiers of the Kalinin Front, and a few days later, after broadcast on the radio, the whole country was singing it. Several famous performers took the song into their repertoire: the duet Vladimir Bunchikov - Vladimir Nechaev, Klavdiya Shulzhenko.

In the fall of 1942, Solovyov-Sedoy, together with his family - his wife, daughter and his wife's parents - left Leningrad and went to Orenburg. There he soon met the poet Alexei Fatyanov, with whom they brought to light many real masterpieces of song creativity. The first such songs were “Nightingales” and “On a Sunny Meadow”.

In April 1943, Solovyov-Sedoy was summoned to Moscow. The authorities decided to gradually gather in one place the artistic personnel scattered by evacuation to different parts of the country. Soloviev-Sedoy settled in the Moscow Hotel and almost immediately got to work. On these same days, Solovyov-Sedoy received his first official award - the Stalin Prize for the best works of the war years: “Play, my button accordion”, “Evening on the roadstead”, “Song of Vengeance”.

Even before the war, in the late 30s, Solovyov-Sedoy began to collaborate with cinema, but the songs he wrote for some films were not very successful. The situation is completely different after the war. At the very beginning of 1946, the composer wrote two songs for the comedy “Heavenly Slug”, which instantly became all-Union hits. We are talking about the songs “It’s time to hit the road” and “Because we are pilots.” A year later, Soloviev-Sedoy writes another masterpiece - the song “On the Boat”, which is heard in the film “The First Glove”.

However, the composer also had failures. For example, “The Song of the Krasnodonets,” written under the influence of A. Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard,” did not have much success with listeners. It was even criticized for the fadedness of the melody and the lack of individual signs of Solovyov’s “handwriting”. Critics noted that it was strange to know that this song was written by a composer whose fame was equal to Dunaevsky himself.

Apparently, under the impression of such publications, Solovyov-Sedoy from now on will begin to pay less and less attention to civilian songs, switching exclusively to lyrics. As a result, he wrote such songs as: “Where are you now, fellow soldiers?”, “We haven’t been home for a long time,” “A guy is riding on a cart,” “Paths and paths,” “Suffering.” In April 1947, on the eve of Solovyov-Sedoy’s 40th birthday, he was awarded the second Stalin Prize. A year later, he will replace Dmitry Shostakovich as chairman of the Leningrad Composers Organization. True, the new position will not have a very beneficial effect on the composer’s creative potential. Over the course of several months, while he delved into the problems of his new position, he would write several songs that even Soloviev-Sedoy himself considered unsuccessful: “Let’s say goodbye, guys, to our father-commander,” “The sun is rising,” “Wait, who’s coming? » Some of Solovyov-Sedoy’s fellow ill-wishers even rubbed their hands with pleasure: they say, the composer was completely exhausted. Suddenly, at the end of 1948, the country received a new masterpiece of the creative tandem Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy - Alexey Fatyanov, the song “Where are you, my garden?”

In 1950, Solovyov-Sedoy became a candidate for deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which burdened him even more on the social front. And there is even less time left for creativity. Therefore, the composer did not release very many new songs in those years. And there are not a lot of masterpieces among them either. The composer wrote one of them in 1954 for the film “Maxim Perepelitsa”: this is the song “Field Mail” (“On the Road”). And two years later, a work appears that once again makes the whole country talk about the genius of its creator. Although at first the fate of this song was quite difficult.

In 1956, the country hosted the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, and during its holding, documentarians were supposed to shoot a film called “In the Days of the Spartakiad.” It was for this film that Solovyov-Sedoy and his new co-author, poet Mikhail Matusovsky, were supposed to write a song. The composer went to his dacha in Komarovo and wrote the music fairly quickly. Then the text appeared.

However, when the film was released across the country, the musical community greeted “Moscow Nights” with hostility, calling it unsuccessful. The strangest thing is that for some reason the composer himself also came to the same conclusion. And when in the summer of 1957, during the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, this song was supposed to be performed at the International Song Contest, Solovyov-Sedoy did not even come there, believing that “Moscow Evenings” would not receive any of the awards. And imagine his surprise when he was suddenly informed that the song had been awarded the First Prize and the Big Gold Medal. From that moment on, a truly triumphant march of this song began not only in its homeland, but also far beyond its borders. Performed by Vladimir Troshin, “Moscow Evenings” became a kind of calling card of the world’s first state of workers and peasants. In 1959, Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded the Lenin Prize.

In the 60s, Solovyov-Sedoy worked a lot and actively. In those years, operetta came into fashion, so the composer could not ignore this genre. And in ten years he composed seven operettas. However, none of them had great success. An attempt to create music for the ballet “Festival” ended in failure in 1964, after which Solovyov-Sedoy did not write any more ballets.

After the triumphant success of “Moscow Evenings,” Soloviev-Sedoy wrote more than a dozen songs, but none of them could compare with “Evenings” or with other songs the composer created earlier. Therefore, in those years, fashion on the Soviet stage was dictated by other composers, from the galaxy of young ones: Oscar Feltsman, Arkady Ostrovsky, Alexandra Pakhmutova, Ian Frenkel, Andrey Eshpai, Arno Babajanyan, Veniamin Basner, Vladimir Shainsky, Alexander Zatsepin, Mikael Tariverdiev, Mark Fradkin.

However, the authority of Solovyov-Sedoy in the musical world is still indisputable. He holds several high positions at once: he is the secretary of the Union of Composers of the USSR (since 1957), secretary of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR (since 1960). He speaks a lot and often at various forums of the musical community, where he speaks very critically about many phenomena in the world of music. For example, in 1968 he criticized bards, in particular Vladimir Vysotsky: “I’m not against the guitar, I’m not against amateur performances, I’m not against “minstrels” and “bards”. But I am firmly opposed to the imposition of tongue-tiedness, a thieves' vocabulary, a hoarse whisper, a musical primitiveness on our youth... When a young metropolitan actor, who has successfully played a role in a film or theater, travels around cities and villages with his home-grown repertoire, singing dubious songs about anti-fairy tales and thieves' friendship is a natural disaster. They imitate it, taking it for the latest fashion statement, and the force of detonation becomes destructive.”

And here is another excerpt from Solovyov-Sedoy’s speech, which is very relevant even today: “A lot is written and talked about abroad about “mass culture,” about the fact that the true culture of Raphael and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Petrarch is alien and inaccessible to the people, that people need the Beatles, comics, digests, westerns, that is, all that surrogate of art that is easily digestible, easily intoxicating and easily fooled. Barbaric attempts to retell “Hamlet” on five pocket-size pages or “The Odyssey” on three, to give drawings with short, machine-gun-like dialogues instead of a novel, story or short story, jazz screams instead of painting - all these are manifestations of the famous and sinister “mass culture” “...I am not speaking out against anyone personally. I am against the propaganda of what is denied by the entire structure of our life.”

In the mid-70s, Solovyov-Sedoy’s health deteriorated significantly. His vascular disease worsened, and he was in the hospital endlessly. The last time he landed there was in the early autumn of 1979. And at the same time with his brother Sergei, who undermined his health in his mature years when he abused alcohol. In recent years, he no longer drank, but it was too late - the addiction had undermined his strength.

The brothers were in different hospitals, and in order not to upset them, they were not told anything about each other’s illness. Solovyov-Sedoy could not walk and the only thing he could do was move his fingers over the blanket, like on a keyboard. Seeing this, his relatives even tried to give him the opportunity to work at least a little: they invented stands and music stands. But the composer no longer had any strength left. And he was no longer destined to finish his last work - the children's opera "Terem-Teremok".

Solovyov-Sedoy died December 2, 1979, outliving his older brother by almost a month: Sergei died on the anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7.

December 5 – Alexander KAYDANOVSKY

This actor starred with the most famous directors of Soviet cinema, was extremely famous, but always stood apart in the ranks of Russian cinema stars. Playing daring and independent people in films, he was the same in real life: often, trying to defend his independence, he quarreled with colleagues and directors, broke ties with friends, and left the women he loved. Much later it would become clear that each of his steps left a deep scar on his heart. As a result, at the 49th year of life, this heart will not withstand a third heart attack.

Alexander Kaidanovsky was born on July 23, 1946 in Rostov-on-Don into a working-class family. When Alexander was little, his parents divorced, and the boy first lived with his mother, and then moved to live with his father’s new family. This instability, the inability to live in a normal and friendly family greatly affected Alexander’s character: on the one hand, he matured early, on the other, his desire for independence would make his character explosive and impulsive. Because of this, in the end his personal destiny will not work out.

At school, Kaidanovsky did not shine with great success and, when he graduated from 8th grade, he entered the Dnepropetrovsk Welding College named after B. Paton. He acted more out of despair than out of vocation: his dream was to go somewhere far away from his parents, so as not to sit on their necks. However, studying at the technical school did not last long. A year later, in 1961, Kaidanovsky left it and returned to his native Rostov. There he soon entered the art school.

While still a second-year student, Kaidanovsky suddenly got married. His wife was his peer Irina Bykova, who studied in a drama club and also planned to become an actress in the future. Their acquaintance happened right on stage. Alexander was invited to their drama club as an actor to play the main role in a play where Irina played his lover. As a result, as often happens, their stage love grew into real love. Their romance lasted more than two years, but Alexander was in no hurry to propose marriage. He was afraid of repeating the fate of his parents, who were never able to save the family, although at first they also loved each other very much. Instead, Kaidanovsky once announced to Irina that he was going to go to Moscow to study as an artist there. “Rostov is not the city where you can make a career,” he explained his decision to his beloved. Irina was ready to go with him, but Alexander dissuaded her, explaining that he would call her later - when he could get settled in a new place. So in the summer of 1965 he ended up in Moscow, where he entered the Moscow Art Theater School on his first visit.

Kaidanovsky did not study at the Studio School for long - only a few months. Then he quarreled with one of the leaders and transferred to the Shchukin School. He lived in a dormitory, where his roommates were the future stars of Soviet cinema Leonid Filatov, Boris Galkin and Vladimir Kachan. Filatov later spoke of Kaidanovsky as follows: “We were friends with him. Although it was a difficult friendship, and he was a difficult person, I admired him and looked up to him. Kaidanovsky was an incredible man - he could swear masterfully, chat in gangster jargon, and could talk to you all night about literature, about things that no specialist here knew..."

Unlike most of his refined peers who studied with him in the same school, Kaidanovsky was known as a daring and fearless person. Everyone knew that he was not afraid of anyone: neither teachers, nor street hooligans, and if possible, he could easily stand up for himself. And one day his friends were able to see with their own eyes Kaidanovsky’s courage.

It was in the fourth year. Kaidanovsky, in the company of his roommates - Filatov, Galkin and Kachan - returned to the hostel at night. Their path ran through the famous Maryina Roshcha, which in those years was known as one of the most criminal places in the capital. Not far from the Rizhsky station, six guys suddenly accosted them. In principle, four friends could have easily fought off the hooligans, but they had knives in their hands, which radically changed the situation. In the end, the only way to escape was to escape. However, Kaidanovsky acted differently. He walked up to the guy who first pulled out the knife and grabbed the blade with his bare hand. Blood splashed onto the ground, but Kaidanovsky didn’t even blink an eye and continued to squeeze the blade harder and harder. And there was something so terrible in his face that the guys gave up and chose to retreat.

At the school, Kaidanovsky was considered one of the most talented students and began to be invited to films much earlier than many of his classmates. He played his first role in the film “The Mysterious Wall”. And although the role was tiny - he played a young researcher - a start had been made. Soon he was invited to his film adaptation of Anna Karenina by the patriarch of Soviet cinema, Alexander Zarkhi. Kaidanovsky got the role of Jules Landau. Then the young actor starred in another film adaptation: “First Love” by I. Turgenev.

Therefore, when Kaidanovsky graduated from college in 1969, he was already known in theater circles as a promising actor. As a result, he was accepted into the troupe of the famous Vakhtangov Theater. Moreover, they took him not just as an ordinary extra, but as a contender for the role of Prince Myshkin in the play “The Idiot”. However, Kaidanovsky never had the chance to play this role. As it turned out, the first performer of the role, the famous actor Nikolai Gritsenko, was not going to give it up to anyone and, as soon as he learned that some yesterday’s student was laying claim to it, he did everything in his power to prevent this from happening. They say that even the sick Gritsenko got out of bed and went to the theater - just so as not to give the role to someone else. As a result, the young actor had to play roles from the “food is served” category.

Meanwhile, the actor’s personal life did not stand still. Having received a small room in a semi-basement on Arbat, Kaidanovsky summoned Irina to his place. She was already pregnant with his child at that time, so the young couple officially sealed their relationship. On August 26, 1970, their daughter Dasha was born. After the birth of the child, the young people thought that the authorities would meet them halfway and give them better housing, but this did not happen. Therefore, for several more years they had to live in this semi-basement room, infested with rats. According to eyewitnesses, the housing looked terrible. It was below ground level, with a tiny kitchen with a slanted ceiling, the ceiling was formed by a ladder, and in the part where the ladder stuck into the floor there was something like a closet. Oddly enough, Kaidanovsky even found reasons to joke. When friends came to visit him, he took them around his “mansions” and very funny, in the spirit of Dostoevsky, described the home.

Having become an actor in a prestigious theater, Kaidanovsky led a bohemian lifestyle. He invited fellow actors to his house (fortunately, his room was located next to the Vakhtangov Theater), and he himself disappeared for days in different companies. Sometimes he didn’t even spend the night at home, which his young wife didn’t like. Kaidanovsky’s earnings at that time were small, and one-time invitations to film in different films were random. Therefore, the family was frankly in poverty. But Kaidanovsky paid little attention to this, continuing to live the way he liked. And he reacted nervously to all his wife’s comments.

Kaidanovsky's explosive and impulsive character once almost sent him to jail. This happened in 1970, shortly before the birth of his daughter. Then the premiere of the television play “Drama on the Hunt” based on A. Chekhov was shown on Central Television, where Kaidanovsky played Count Karneev. Soon after the show, a group of artists involved in the teleplay - Vladimir Samoilov, Yuri Yakovlev and Alexander Kaidanovsky - decided to “wash up” this matter. For this purpose, they went to a very popular restaurant among Muscovites near the River Station. The party was in full swing when Kaidanovsky needed to leave. In the corridor, an elderly warrior suddenly became attached to him, who began to claim that Kaidanovsky some time ago... stole whitewash from him. As a result, a fight broke out, from which the younger Kaidanovsky emerged victorious. But this victory turned out to be Pyrrhic. The vigilante sued him.

The trial of Kaidanovsky took place a month later. Since the management of the Vakhtangov Theater did not want to protect the young actor, the theater’s coryphaeu Mikhail Ulyanov took on this mission. It was he who spoke at the trial as Kaidanovsky’s public defender. Without this, the actor would probably have been put behind bars for two years for hooliganism, since at that time hooligans were not particularly spared. And so, after Ulyanov’s passionate speech, the judges considered it best to forgive the defendant and gave him a suspended sentence. However, soon after this, Kaidanovsky was forced to leave the Vakhtangov Theater.

In the early 70s, Kaidanovsky’s first marriage broke up. Irina’s patience was filled with the betrayal of her husband, who became interested in the popular actress Valentina Malyavina, who played in the same Vakhtangov. From the outside, this novel was more like a volcanic eruption - so many passions and nerves were concentrated in it. Things got to the point that one day the lovers decided to voluntarily die - they cut their wrists. They managed to be saved, although just a little more - and Soviet cinema would have forever lost two of its talented actors, and the first gossips of the capital would have had an excellent opportunity to sharpen their tongues on this tragedy. After this incident, Kaidanovsky noticeably lost interest in Malyavina, and their romance ended successfully. When this happened, Kaidanovsky was already known throughout the country, having played one of his best film roles - Captain Lemke in Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “A Friend Among Strangers, a Stranger Among Our Own.”

It was not by chance that Kaidanovsky got into this role. Mikhalkov drew attention to him back in the mid-60s, when they studied together at Shchuk. And when in 1973 Mikhalkov was allowed to make his first full-length film, he decided to take all his friends and acquaintances into it, including Kaidanovsky. He was in excellent shape then - he served in a cavalry regiment at Mosfilm, so the role of a desperate White Guard captain chasing Bolshevik gold was given to him without much difficulty. And when the film was released on the wide screen in November 1974, several participants in this film became famous: Yuri Bogatyrev, Konstantin Raikin and Alexander Kaidanovsky.

By the mid-70s, Kaidanovsky had already become one of the most sought-after actors in Soviet cinema. True, he was offered monotonous roles to play: either aristocrats, or White Guard officers, or even criminals, as was the case in the series “The Investigation is Conducted by Experts” (case No. 6 “Blackmail”). But the actor was happy with each new role, since it not only increased his fame, but also brought significant material income. But Kaidanovsky needed money. Just not for various elements of a beautiful life - dachas, cars, etc. - but for books. At that time, Kaidanovsky had an excellent library, and he brought books from everywhere his cinematic fate took him.

In the summer of 1974, Kaidanovsky went to the Urals, where the action film “The Lost Expedition” was to be filmed. His partner on the set was a young “Pike” student, Evgenia Simonova, who fell in love with Kaidanovsky almost at first sight. Returning to Moscow, they got married. And on November 5, 1976, their daughter Zoya was born. But this joyful event did not save their marriage from imminent collapse. Kaidanovsky himself was to blame for this, who once again proved that he was absolutely unsuited to family life.

It is likely that Kaidanovsky would still have starred in the roles of aristocrats and White Guard officers if director Andrei Tarkovsky had not met on his creative path in the late 70s. Considered one of the most complex and serious directors in Soviet cinema, he was able to discern in Kaidanovsky what all his other colleagues were unable to do - the tragedy of an extraordinary personality rushing about in search of his own “I.” The result of this collaboration was the film “Stalker”, where Kaidanovsky played the main role. After this film, another actor, Alexander Kaidanovsky, was revealed to the world - complex and no longer able to act in ordinary films, even with good directors.

In the early 80s, Kaidanovsky entered the Higher Directing Courses with Andrei Tarkovsky. However, their union did not last long: in 1984, the famous director left his homeland forever. When he sent Kaidanovsky an invitation to Moscow to star in “Nostalgia,” the actor was not allowed to join him: either because of “immorality” (he got into a drunken fight with someone in a restaurant again), or for ideological reasons (in the acting Among the Polish Jew Kaidanovsky was considered a dissident). As a result, this role was played by the more trustworthy Oleg Yankovsky.

After finishing his directing courses, Kaidanovsky made the film “A Simple Death” based on Leo Tolstoy. The film turned out to be not only heavy in its plot, but also difficult to perceive. Therefore, it was classified as an elite cinema. At a festival in the Spanish city of Malaga in 1988, he was awarded one of the prizes. After that, Kaidanovsky made two more films: “The Guest” (1987) and “The Kerosene Man’s Wife” (1988), which, like his debut film, were received coolly by the general audience. Other films made box office sales in those years: “Interdevochka”, “Little Vera” and other blockbusters of the perestroika years.

But as an actor, Kaidanovsky allowed himself to act in films of different genres: in the costume historical film “New Adventures of the Yankees at the Court of King Arthur”, the detective film “Ten Little Indians”. Since the early 90s, when Russian cinema became self-sufficient and Kaidanovsky needed funds for new productions, he began accepting invitations from foreign directors. And in the first half of the 90s he starred in several such films: “November” (Poland - France), “The Devil’s Breath” (Spain), “The Magic Shooter” (Hungary), “Confession to a Stranger” (France).

One of the largest composers in the field of mass Soviet song, Vasily Pavlovich Solovyov-Sedoy, was born in 1907 in St. Petersburg, in the family of a janitor. Since childhood, he played by ear, first on the harmony and then on the piano. In 1929 he was accepted into the Leningrad Music College. two years later, Soloviev-Sedoy already studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1936 in the class of Professor P. Ryazanov. A number of works by Solovyov-Sedoy date back to the 1930s: the ballet "Taras Bulba", the symphonic poem "Partisanism", pieces for piano, music for a number of films and productions, as well as over sixty romances and songs. Even then, the song was the leading genre in the composer’s work “The Best of the Songs of the 30s” - “The Death of Chapaev” to the words of Z. Alexandrova and “Taiga” to the words of V. Gusev.

During the Patriotic War, the composer's talent revealed itself especially brightly. Solovyov-Sedoy immediately became one of the most popular composers: his lyrical and comic songs were heard at the front and in the rear, and were often broadcast on the radio. In the post-war years, the work of Solovyov-Sedoy reaches a new stage of development. The composer writes music for films and creates a number of wonderful songs. Among them are the courageous soldier's "On the Road" (words by M. Dudin), the popular lyrical "Moscow Evenings" (words by Matusovsky), the fighting song about peace "If only there were boys of the whole earth" (words by L. Oshanin), the lively "March of the Nakhimovites" ( words by N. Gleizarova).

“Play my button accordion”, “Evening on the roadstead”, songs-memories about your beloved, about friends, about your homeland “When you sing a song”, “Nightingales”, “We haven’t been home for a long time”, humorous lyrical songs “Like behind the Kama river", "In a sunny clearing". For the creation of these songs, which became widespread among the people, Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded the honorary title of Lenin Prize laureate in 1959. In the last years of his life, the composer wrote the ballets “Taras Bulba” and “Russia Entered the Port”, operettas “True Friend”, “The Most Treasured” and “Olympic Stars”. Soloviev-Sedoy died in 1979.

V.P. Soloviev-Sedoy "Moscow Evenings"

During the war, there was an urgent need at the front for a lyrical, soulful song. The fighters who fought for the honor and freedom of their homeland could not help but think about their home, where they left their parents, children, and beloved ones... It was in the genre of lyrical song that Solovyov-Sedoy’s great talent manifested itself unusually clearly.

V. Solovyov-Sedoy is a composer of bright lyrical talent. His song “Moscow Evenings,” written in collaboration with the poet M. Matusovsky, still remains the most popular of all lyrical songs of the post-war period. Its fate is in many ways similar to the fate of Dunaevsky’s best songs of the 30s. It was written in 1956 and was performed for the first time in the film “In the Days of the Spartakiad.” However, the song immediately “separated” from the screen. M. Matusovsky's text does not belong to the list of achievements even within the strictly defined framework of “song poetry”. And if the hand of an outstanding master musician had not touched them, this text would have been abandoned in the sea by the then versifier of production.

Like many of Solovy-Sedoy’s lyrical songs, “Moscow Evenings” you want not to sing, but to hum in a low voice. The “hero” of the song openly talks about his feelings for his beloved and for his dear native landscape near Moscow. And all this is very simple, from the depths of the soul.

The melody seems quite uncomplicated: the beginning is in minor, the transition is in parallel major, and the triadic-chord intonation basis can be found in many songs of those years of diversity.

The beginning of the melody, its first four measures, combine the playing of a minor triad and the purely Russian quarto-fifth triad of the ending. This is followed by a peculiar version of it in parallel major, reaching a higher tone. And the subsequent “hysterical” intonation, returning to the main key of an ancient romance, but only for a short moment. Emphasizing the melodic peak with its expression, it receives no further continuation - the melody returns to a broad state and closes with the previously sounded trichord ending.

The song achieves unity of music and text. It is performed dreamily, slowly. Gradually unfolding, the melody reaches its climax at the words “If only you knew how dear the evenings near Moscow are to me.”

The composer very subtly emphasizes these important words for the song. Expressive pauses divide the phrase into three parts, which gives it a thoughtful character: “If only you knew... how dear I am... evenings near Moscow.”

The bright ascending movement of the melodic minor at the beginning, the original syncopation in the middle and the smooth rounding of the melody at the end of the phrase also convey the content of the poetic words of the song.

Soviet composer V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy (real name Solovyov) was born on April 12 (25), 1907 in St. Petersburg. He was born into a simple peasant family. His grandfather, Pavel Solovyov, remembered serfdom and the reform of 1861. My father, also Pavel and also a peasant, after serving in the tsarist army, went “to the people” - to St. Petersburg. He lived in poverty for a long time and took on any job. Happiness smiled on him when he got a job as a janitor in a house on the Obvodny Canal. The composer's mother Anna Fedorovna is a Pskov peasant. In St. Petersburg, where she came to work, she married Pavel Solovyov. He was already working as a senior janitor on Nevsky Prospekt, at house 139, when the second son in their family, Vasily, was born. Anna Fedorovna knew many Russian folk songs and loved to sing them. For a long time, before moving to Staro-Nevsky, she worked as a maid for the famous singer. A peasant daughter, who in her youth herself served as a maid, Vyaltseva noticed Anna Solovyova’s musicality and, sincerely becoming attached to her, was ready to hire her as a chorus girl. But fate decreed otherwise: Anna had to raise children and be the mistress of the family. And Pavel resolutely opposed his wife’s musical career. In the end, Anna left Vyaltseva’s place, receiving from her a gramophone as a gift and the records she had sung: “If I want, I’ll love,” “Veterochek,” “Gay-yes Troika.” Often Anna Fedorovna, while doing housework, played records given to her by Anastasia Vyaltseva:

Gay - yes three, fluffy snow,
The night is frosty all around.

The love for singing and the ability to sing beautifully, with soul, remained with her throughout her life. From his mother and Aunt Anastasia, his father’s younger sister, Vasily Pavlovich inherited a love for Russian song. In his declining years, he often admitted: “I am closer to the peasant singing song.” His childhood friend, the friend of his whole life, Alexander Fedorovich Borisov - People's Artist of the USSR, the great Russian Soviet actor - called the janitor's room, where the colleagues of the father of the future composer gathered, the first music university.

In his childhood, Vasily Solovyov heard a lot of sad songs from Pskov in the village, where he was sent to his mother’s parents. But more often he spent the summer in his father’s homeland - in the village of Kudryavtsevo. In the summer, Vasya’s hair completely faded from the sun and turned white, for which the boys in the yard called him “Grey.” The yard boys liked the nickname “Sedoy”, and from then on Vasily was called that only. Who thought then that the yard nickname would become a creative pseudonym and merge with the surname, making it known throughout the country and the world - Solovyov-Sedoy?! N. Sazonov, cellist of the Mariinsky Opera Theater orchestra, lived in their house. With his help, Vasily first became familiar with great art. This is how he managed to see and hear Fyodor Chaliapin in the operas “Boris Godunov” and “The Barber of Seville”.

When Vasya was eight years old, he asked his father to buy him a balalaika from a music store - the only musical instrument known among peasants at that time. “Tears were streaming down my face,” the composer later recalled. “My father finally gave up, went into the store and bought me a simpler balalaika.” After his father’s precious gift, Vasya mastered the guitar and then the piano. Vasily was introduced to the piano by silent films. In house 139 on Staro-Nevsky, where the Solovyovs lived until 1929, the Elephant cinema opened, where they showed silent films with the participation of Buster Keaton and Vera Kholodnaya. Noticing a piano near the screen, Vasily begged the projectionist to allow him to try the keys and quickly picked out “The Moon Is Shining” by ear. The admiring mechanic allowed him to sit down at the instrument every morning, and Vasily began to carry films, helped to “play” them, and cleaned the hall. Such activities helped Vasily Pavlovich when, after the revolution and the death of his mother, he was engaged in musical improvisation in cinemas. Quite soon, Vasily Solovyov had his own piano “repertoire”, and the owner of the cinema invited him to accompany films with music for a fee. It was useful during the hungry years of the Civil War.

From twelve to sixteen years old, Vasily Solovyov played the role of a tapper, trying to play famous dances in his own way, varying the music. At first Vasily did not intend to be a musician, but dreamed of becoming a shipbuilder. But the early death of his mother and his father’s illness forced him to go to work: from the age of 16 he began working as an improvising pianist in clubs, an accompanist in cinemas, and then, from 1925, at the Leningrad Radio to accompany morning exercises. So music became his profession. According to Vasily Pavlovich himself, he began to study composing music late - in 1929, when he was already 22 years old. This year he entered the Central Music College in the composition department. The path opened before Vasily Solovyov to comprehend the secrets of musical art, to express and professionally polish his talent.

At the technical school, Vasily Solovyov studied in the class of Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov, an outstanding teacher and mentor of many Soviet composers. Ivan Dzerzhinsky, Nikolai Gan, Nikita Bogoslovsky (studied with Solovyov-Sedy), and later Sviridov passed through his hands. The technical school was a famous musical institution. At different times, major musician-researchers taught there: B.V. Asafiev, V.V. Shcherbakov, their young colleagues, also famous and authoritative in musical circles: Yu.N. Tyulin, Kh.S. Kushnarev, M.A. Yudin. It is no coincidence that when the composition department of the technical school closed in 1931, all its students were transferred to the Leningrad Conservatory. The composition class of P.B. has also been preserved. Ryazanov. Solovyov-Sedoy learned a lot from him, as a bearer of classical musical culture, a master of improvisation - adaptations of Russian folk songs.

Already being an outstanding master of the song genre, V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy recalled Ryazanov’s lessons: “He taught us form using works of fiction. Reading to us Chekhov’s story “Vanka,” Ryazanov especially noted that the presentation, rich in humorous details, ends with an essentially tragic ending (the boy’s letter to his grandfather will not reach his grandfather), and discussed with us how such a structure of the story could be reflected in music. Another story by Chekhov - “Polinka” - served as an example of a “polyphonic” form based on the “counterpoint” of external and internal action. We analyzed the structure of the novel “Anna Karenina” by Tolstoy , also drawing conclusions for music." Solovyov-Sedoy’s sensitivity to the Russian literary word, especially poetic, was unique. He never composed the so-called musical fish, to which the words of the song were adjusted. If the text was not musical, did not have free musical breath, he resolutely rejected it.

During his conservatory years, V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy created many musical works. By 1935, there were already twenty-four of them: music for the theater, a lyric poem for a symphony orchestra, pieces for violin and piano, a piano concerto, etc. Vasily Pavlovich was first noticed as a songwriter at the Leningrad mass song competition in 1936, when he Graduated from the Conservatory. Two of his songs at once - “Parade” to the words of A. Gitovich and “Song of Leningrad” to the words of E. Ryvina - were awarded the first prize. Very soon others appeared - “Come out to the bay today”, “For a friend”, “Song about Lenin”. The songs of the young author Solovyov-Sedoy were sung by famous singers: Irma Yaunzem in 1935, at the decade of Soviet music at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, accompanied by an orchestra of folk instruments, sang his heroic ballad “The Death of Chapaev”, Leonid Utesov sang for the first time his songs “Two Friends Served” and "Cossack cavalry". But none of the named songs, like his ballet “Taras Bulba” (S.M. Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre, 1940, 2nd ed. - 1955), received recognition among the people - did not become mass.

In the thirties the country was being built. Attention to the song increased, but to a marching, inviting, cheerful song. Soviet song in those years was more a means of mass propaganda than a means of spiritual revelation and relaxation. And in Soviet poetry, the lyrical direction of Solovyov-Sedoy was not visible. In the early 1930s, Marina Tsvetaeva correctly noted: “Mayakovsky is not capable of a song, because he is entirely motor, percussive and loud... Pasternak is not capable of a song, because he is overloaded, oversaturated and, most importantly, single-handed... The melodious beginning of Russia is frustrated in small and short-lived streams must find a single channel, a single throat..."

However, the author of these songs was noticed by the great I. Dunaevsky. He was able to discern in him an extraordinary musical gift. The poet Alexander Churkin, whose poems Solovyov-Sedoy wrote more than one song, witnessed such a dialogue between Utesov and Dunaevsky in the late 1930s. “Perhaps you are the only one,” said Utyosov, “who can compose such a melody that people will sing it right on the way from the concert.” “No, why?” Dunaevsky objected. “A new star is rising on the Leningrad musical horizon - young Solovyov-Sedoy. I don’t want to be a prophet, but I’m sure: he is destined for a great voyage...” So Vasily Solovyov - the son of a janitor and a maid-servant - became world famous composer.

The melodious beginning of Russia found a single direction with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It would seem that in war there is no time for poetry. But it was the war, as the most terrible spiritual test of the people, that demanded Russian lyrical song. The song is sing-song, drawn-out, intimate. During the Great Patriotic War, it was precisely this song that turned out to be close to the soldier’s psychology. It spiritually connected the warrior with his family and friends, from whom the war separated him. It was like a prayer, without which one cannot strengthen one’s spirit before mortal combat.

On June 22, 1941, the war began, and the very next day the poetess L. Davidovich brought Solovyov-Sedoy poems entitled “Dear Outpost.” They were written before the war and corrected, so that the necessary verse was obtained:

But the evil enemy pack
It rose above us like a cloud
Dear outpost
She rose for her homeland.

On the third day of the war, June 24, Soloviev-Sedoy composed the melody of this song. He rushed to his friend - an actor at the Drama Theater. Pushkin to Alexander Borisov, they found an accordion player, and that same evening the song was already sounding from loudspeakers over their hometown. The new song “Play, my button accordion” performed by Alexander Borisov replaced the popular song “Clouds have risen over the city” performed before the war by Mark Bernes. Borisov sang the song in a not strong, but surprisingly rich intonation voice. During the war years, Vasily Pavlovich became convinced that to spread a song among the people, one needs not only and not so much voice skills as acting skills; Without them, it is impossible to create an “image” of a song, it is impossible to “play” it so that it fits the soul and is accepted by it. Solovyov-Sedoy’s first lyrical war song received a response from the people, and is still sung to this day. Then, one after another, many wonderful songs, beloved by the people, appear: “Evening on the roads” (lyrics by A.D. Churkin, 1941), “Vasya Kryuchkin” (lyrics by V. Gusev), “What are you yearning for, comrade sailor” (words by V. Lebedev-Kumach), “Like beyond the Kama, beyond the river” (words by V. Gusev), “Don’t worry yourself, don’t worry” (words by M. Isakovsky) and others. They were often performed in front of soldiers on the front line, with sailors tapping out the melody of “Evenings on the Roadstead” in Morse code. And the famous Marlene Dietrich, when much later she heard his song “Nightingales,” said: “I missed this song so much during the war!” It is no coincidence that Georgy Zhukov himself jokingly called the composer “Marshal of the Song.”

Captivated by K. Simonov’s poem “Wait for Me,” Soloviev-Sedoy wrote music for it, suffering a complete failure, as did other composers: whoever tried to set this poem to music then - M. Blanter, M. Koval, V. Muradeli , A. Novikov, I. Dzerzhinsky, Y. Dobrusin, A. Zhivotov, V. Nechaev, V. Rodin. Music critics and political workers often met the lyrical masterpieces of Solovyov-Sedoy with hostility. They say that in wartime the country needs marches and loud patriotic songs glorifying “Comrade Stalin.” However, Soloviev-Sedoy did not back down, declaring that “sadness and sadness can be no less mobilizing.”

The composer's song "Evening on the roadstead" has become truly popular. She glorified his name. In August 1941, V. Solovyov-Sedogo, together with the poet A.D. The Churkins were sent to the port, where they, like thousands of Leningraders, took away logs and cleaned the area to reduce the danger of fire from incendiary bombs. At the end of the working day, we sat down to rest on board the unloaded barge. It was a late Leningrad evening. Nothing reminded me of the war. In the bay, shrouded in blue haze, a ship stood in the roadstead. Quiet music could be heard from it: someone was playing the accordion. When we were heading home, the composer said: “Wonderful evening. Worth a song.” Upon returning home, Churkin began to write poetry, Solovyov-Sedoy - music. The composer found the intonation of the song in the words that appeared to him as if by themselves: “Farewell, beloved city, we are leaving for the sea tomorrow!” In them I heard the aching sadness of parting with my native Leningrad. Three days later a new song was born - “Evening at the roadstead”. The composer and poet carried it to Zodchego Rossi Street, to the house of composers. There the song was found too calm, even mournful and, as was said, not meeting the requirements of wartime.

Solovyov-Sedoy put the song aside. The song “Evening at the Roadstead” had been lying in his suitcase for a year. When the blockade ring closed around Leningrad, Solovyov-Sedoy, who had recently been evacuated to Orenburg, again presented his song to his colleagues. They called her "gypsy". The composer put the song aside again. Only in March 1942 she received front-line baptism and became a national one. Here's how it happened. Solovyov-Sedoy, with the front-line theater brigade “Yastrebok” he created, gave a concert in a soldier’s dugout. It was one and a half kilometers to the front line. Listeners - no more than thirty soldiers. The concert was already coming to an end when the composer decided to sing “Evening on the Roadstead” himself with an accordion. He accompanied himself. He sang quietly, addressing the soldiers:

Let's sing, friends, because tomorrow we'll go hiking
Let's go into the predawn fog.
Let's sing more cheerfully, let him sing along to us
Gray-haired battle captain.

When the chorus sounded for the third time - “Farewell, beloved city!”, all the listeners took it up in quiet voices. The author was asked to dictate the words, and then sing the song along with everyone. This has never happened before in the composer’s life: people sang his song, which they had never heard before. Within a few days the song spread on all fronts. Her words were transmitted via field telephones by signalmen. At night on the phone they sang it to the accordion. The song was sung at the front and in the rear, it became beloved by the people. The song "Evening on the roadstead" has long been recognized as one of the masterpieces of Russian Soviet song art. But musicologists are still searching for the secrets of its amazing musical simplicity and power.

Solovyov-Sedoy had an extraordinary literary gift. A number of his songs were composed by him based on his own poems. In one of them, he defines the spiritual purpose of the song for a soldier who is ready to look death in the eye and defeat it:

Not a happy song, but a sad tune
Remember your dead friends,
If you remember your friends, you will win them differently,
Soldiers are a special people!
We don’t cry from pain, we cry from song,
If the song reaches the heart.

Vasily Pavlovich considered the meeting in 1942 with the poet Alexander Fatyanov to be a great event in his life, a turning point for creativity. In his poems, the composer said, he heard Russian speech, Russian nature, saw and felt the Russian Soviet way of life that was close to him. A. Fatyanov, born in the ancient city of Vyazniki, was a poet of the Russian soul, Russian lyricism. Fatyanov composed poetry in the same way as Solovyov-Sedoy composed music. If there could be co-authors created by life to work together, it would be Alexey Fatyanov and Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy. Together they created forty songs, many of them included in the golden fund of Soviet and world song culture.

In the last years of the war, Solovyov-Sedoy wrote several wonderful songs based on the words of A.I. Fatyanova - “In a Sunny Meadow” (1943), “Nightingales” (1944), “We haven’t been home for a long time” (1945) and others. The pinnacle of their creativity can be called their most famous song “Nightingales”. In 1943, Fatyanov wrote lyrical poems about nightingales, in which he expressed the unity of man, nature, and the living world in anticipation of the triumph of life over death:

Well, what is war for a nightingale -
The nightingale has its own life.
The soldier does not sleep, remembering the house
And the green garden above the pond,
Where the nightingales sing all night,
And in that house they are waiting for a soldier.

Fatyanov read the poems to Solovyov-Sedoy, and he heard music in them. The composer wrote the song in one sitting. It became a hymn to life in war. Everything in it is sadness for one’s home, the feeling of spring, the expectation of victory, and the hard work of a soldier. And a tender feeling of love for the Soviet soldier:

Nightingales, nightingales,
don't disturb the soldiers
Let the soldiers
get some sleep...

The song quickly reached the forefront. In it, a national feeling is conveyed through personal experience, the melody is melodious and broad, and the intonation is confidential. All this is typical for the song creativity of Solovyov-Sedoy. His wartime songs became folk songs. They are distinguished not only by their light sadness, but also by the spaciousness of their free sound and extraordinary emotional strength.

In collaboration with V.M. Gusev Solovyov-Sedoy creates the song “Like Beyond the Kama River” (1943), with S.B. Fogelson - “Sailor Nights” (1945), with M.V. Isakovsky - “Hear me, good one” (1945), with A.I. Fatyanov - “The accordion is singing beyond Vologda” (1947), “Where are you, my garden” (1948). He writes songs based on the words of poets A.D. Churkina, M.L. Matusovsky, V.I. Lebedev-Kumach, and others.

The first post-war years were typical for Vasily Pavlovich with the appearance of songs written for films: “Heavenly Slug” (1945), where the now immortal song “It’s time to hit the road” (words by S.B. Fogelson) sounded, as well as the film “The First Glove” (1946). In 1947, Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded a second time the State (Stalin) Prize of the USSR for the songs “We haven’t been home for a long time,” “The nights have become bright,” “It’s time to hit the road,” “A guy is riding on a cart.” The first time he received the State Prize was in 1943. In 1945, the composer was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Having composed the song “Where are you now, fellow soldiers?” (1947, words by A.I. Fatyanov), Solovyov-Sedoy developed a cycle from her, calling it at first “The Return of the Soldier,” then finding a more general, epic name - “The Tale of the Soldier.” The cycle was first performed by K. Shulzhenko in November 1947.

After the war, Soloviev-Sedoy worked a lot for cinema. He created songs for such popular films as "Happy Sailing!" (1949), “Lyubov Yarovaya” (1953), “World Champion” (1954), “Good Morning” (1955), “Maxim Perepelitsa” (1955), “She Loves You” (1956), etc. In total he became a songwriter for fifty films. The composer became widely famous for his songs written for the musical comedies “One Fine Day” (1955), “Dzhigit Girl” (1955), “The Herdman’s Song” (1956), and “Shelmenko the Batman” (1971).

Solovyov-Sedoy becomes a prominent public figure. Since 1950, he has devoted a lot of time to parliamentary work - on March 12, 1950, he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (3rd-5th convocations). In 1948-1964 he was the chairman of the board of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Composers. In 1957-1974 - Secretary of the Union of Composers of the USSR, since 1960 - Secretary of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR. The former slender and blond Vasya from a peasant family turns into a Soviet dignitary, becomes overweight, loves to drink and eat well. However, prizes and awards that rained down on the composer, beloved by the people, as if from a cornucopia, still did not prevent him from remaining cheerful and ironic. Solovyov-Sedoy helped young composers and colleagues a lot. They said that almost all members of the Leningrad Composers' Union received apartments thanks to him. After the appearance of the devastating resolution of the Central Committee “On the fight against formalism in music,” it was Solovyov-Sedoy who saved many composers from repression. He was harsh in his words, speaking from high stands, and never read a speech from a piece of paper, which was common in those years. I didn’t want to move to Moscow. He said: “They’ll put me in prison for my language in Moscow. I won’t last long.”

In the mid-1950s, the whole world was fascinated by Solovyov-Sedoy’s new song called “Moscow Evenings.” This song is based on the words of M.L. Matusovsky was written in 1956. It was one of the five songs that created the musical background of the chronicle-documentary film “In the Days of the Spartakiad” (about the first Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR). Soloviev-Sedoy assessed it as just another good song - nothing more. “Evenings near Moscow”, which became a real calling card of our country throughout the world, were initially not appreciated by either the author himself or his colleagues. The musical council of the Tsentrnauchfilm film studio sent him an unpleasant letter: “You wrote a sluggish, inexpressive song...” And Mark Bernes flatly refused to perform it: “Well, what kind of song do you have that is “heard and not heard”?” When “Moscow Nights” received the Big Gold Medal at the international song competition, which was held during the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in the summer of 1957, it came as a complete surprise to the author.

They said that the song was originally called “Leningrad Evenings,” but this is not so, because its words were written by Muscovite Matusovsky. It was then that Leningraders began to take offense: how is it, our fellow countryman, that he called his most famous song “Moscow Evenings”? Little did he know that this would be the most famous song! She lay there for two years, no one needed. Then Troshin appeared, who sang so well that no one has surpassed him to this day. It is no coincidence that Solovyov-Sedoy’s “Moscow Nights” was later included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most performed song in the world.

“Moscow Evenings” became a symbol song, the musical emblem of Russia for the whole world. They were performed for piano at the concerts of the American pianist Van Clyburn. The famous figure in English jazz, Kenny Ball, made a jazz arrangement of Solovyov-Sedoy’s song and released a record with the recording entitled “Midnight in Moscow.” When in 1966 the young Soviet vocalist Eduard Khil sang “Moscow Nights” at the International Variety Competition in Rio de Janeiro, the audience picked up the song from the second verse. Today it has been known and sung in almost all countries of the world for half a century. What is the secret of the enormous popularity of “Moscow Evenings”? It lies in the truth that Solovyov-Sedoy always followed in his work: only the truly national becomes international.

When Solovyov-Sedoy turned 60 years old, his friend, poet Mikhail Matusovsky, surprised him. He arrived in Leningrad, where the composer’s anniversary was celebrated at the Philharmonic, and went up on stage in a carefully pressed suit, but with a soldier’s duffel bag. He took it off his shoulder and began to take out gifts for the hero of the day: “Moscow Nights” soap, powder, cologne, perfume, candy, cigarettes and everything - “Moscow Nights”! The audience greeted this joke with laughter and applause. It became clear to everyone that no composer in our country had ever had such clear evidence of nationwide popularity. Then they said that Vasily Pavlovich himself was eventually so “sick” of this song that he even ran away from home, because it was regularly performed under the windows of his dacha in Komarovo. Indeed, almost every day people came there with a button accordion and sang “Moscow Nights.” But the composer, of course, did not run away anywhere, although in the last years of his life he grumbled: “Did I really only write “Moscow Nights”?” But he really didn’t like his song “If only the boys of the whole earth” (1957) because he couldn’t stand pathos. But this was such a peculiar action of Dolmatovsky and Bernes: they pestered Solovyov-Sedoy with these poems, and he didn’t even have time to really finalize the song before they immediately recorded it and the very next morning it was played on the radio.

In 1959, Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded the Lenin Prize for the songs “On the Way” (1955), “Milestones” (1955), “If only the boys of the whole earth” (1957), “March of the Nakhimovites” (1949), “Moscow Evenings” ( 1956). In the drama and puppet theater, the composer created music for twenty-four plays. In the cinema, V. Solovyov-Sedoy during these years was the author of music for the films “The Most Expensive” (1957), “The Next Flight” (1958), “The Tale of the Newlyweds” (1959), “Beware, Grandma!” (1960), “In Difficult Hours” (1961), “Spring Troubles” (1964), “The Don Tale” (1964). The composer created several song cycles: “The Tale of a Soldier” (1947), “Northern Poem” (1967), “Bright Song” (1972), “My Contemporaries” (1973-1975). In 1967 V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR, and in 1975 - Hero of Socialist Labor. The composer was awarded 3 Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star and medals.

In the 1950-1970s, Solovyov-Sedoy wrote songs for operettas and musical comedies, incl. “The Most Treasured” (1952), “Olympic Stars” (1962), “Eighteen Years” (1967), “At the Native Pier” (1970), wrote music for popular science films and documentaries, for dramatic performances and radio shows (about 40), created the ballet “Russia Entered the Port” (1964). He collected a wonderful library, loved cars, he always had new Volga models. He loved fishing and mushrooms.

V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy loved his native Leningrad very much. The composer believed that the very architecture of the city on the Neva consists of melodies. “I walk,” he wrote, “through Leningrad, which is familiar to tears, and I hear the soft cello part of the Lion Bridge, the drum roll of the Suvorov monument, the oboes of Palace Square, the whisper and rustle of the leaves of the Alexander Garden...” The great composer admitted: “I love my city until self-forgetfulness. My theme is Leningrad. My affection is Leningrad. My pride is Leningrad." He dreamed that his song about his hometown, written to the words of A. Fatyanov, would live for a long time:

Over Russia the sky is blue,
The sky is blue over the Neva.
In the whole world there is no, no more beautiful
My Leningrad!

In recent years, the composer has not worked as intensively as before. One of the latest works by V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy, which he did not have time to finish, became the music for a puppet show based on S. Marshak’s fairy tale “Terem-Teremok”. In the last 4 years of his life, Solovyov-Sedoy was seriously ill. The illness, fortunately, did not prevent us from celebrating the 70th anniversary of his birth in 1977. Friends and artists came to the composer’s house on the Fontanka River embankment No. 131, and all this was shown on television from apartment No. 8, in which the composer lived. He died in Leningrad on the night of December 2, 1979. The composer was buried on the Literary Bridge of the Volkovsky Cemetery, and his best childhood friend, actor Alexander Borisov, was buried near him in 1982. The monument at the composer’s grave was erected in 1985 (sculptor M.K. Anikushin, architect F.A. Gepner).

V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy is one of the outstanding masters of Soviet song, one of the most Soviet and most Russian composers. He wrote about 400 wonderful songs, permeated with a feeling of love for the Motherland. Many of them still sing. He entered the history of world musical culture as a song chronicler of the Soviet people, one of the founders of Soviet musical culture, its classic. Another great Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian wrote to him: “From our era, only a few will remain in the history of music. Among the very few, you will remain, Homer of our era.” Rarely do the greats say this about the greats. But the composer survived his songs, which in our country have become truly popular. This is a whole era in the country's musical culture.

I am for broad folk art, because I am sure: the people are an excellent mentor not only in the field of language, but also in the field of music. But I am firmly against musical fakes, against that tearful anguish that is often transmitted in whispers into microphones on some dance floors and concert stages. I am against the vulgarization of the song, against the violation of the unity of its poetic and musical image, folk roots, national identity...

V.P. Soloviev-Sedoy, 1964

Vasily Pavlovich Solovyov-Sedoy was born on April 25, 1907 into the family of Pavel and Anna Solovyov in St. Petersburg at house 139 on Staro-Nevsky Prospekt. His parents come from peasant backgrounds.After serving in the tsarist army, my father went “to the people” - to St. Petersburg. He lived in poverty for a long time and took on any job. Happiness smiled on him when he got a job as a janitor in a house on the Obvodny Canal.Mother, a native of the Pskov region, knew many Russian folk songs and loved to sing them. These songs played a big role in the musical development of the future composer. Shortly before moving to Staro-Nevsky, Anna got a job as a maid for the famous singer Anastasia Vyaltseva. Having sincerely become attached to Anna, Vyaltseva would have helped to appoint her as a chorus girl, but her husband resolutely opposed this, and in the end Anna left Vyaltseva’s place, receiving from her a gramophone as a gift and the records she sang: “If I want, I’ll love you,” “Veterochek,” "Hey, three."

The first musical instruments that Vasily learned to play as a boy were the balalaika (a precious gift from his father) and the guitar.In the summer, Vasya’s hair would completely fade from the sun, and his father would affectionately call him grey, grey. The yard boys liked the nickname “Sedoy”, and from then on Vasily was called that only.

At the age of seven, he met and became friends with the son of a neighbor’s washerwoman, Sasha Borisov. This friendship with Alexander Borisov lasted throughout his life.

N. Sazonov, cellist of the Mariinsky Opera Theater orchestra, lived in their house. With his help, Vasily became familiar with great art. He managed to see and hear Fyodor Chaliapin in the operas "Boris Godunov" and "The Barber of Seville".

Vasily was introduced to the piano by silent films. A small cinema "Elephant" opened in house 139, where they showed films with the participation of Buster Keaton and Vera Kholodnaya. Noticing a curiosity on the screen - a piano, Vasily begged the projectionist to allow him to try the keys and quickly picked out "The Moon Is Shining" by ear. The admiring mechanic allowed him to sit down at the instrument every morning, and Vasily began to carry films, helped to “play” them, and cleaned the hall.

Such classes helped Vasily Pavlovich a lot when, after the revolution and the death of his mother, he was engaged in musical improvisation in cinemas in his independent life, then he accompanied gymnastics lessons in an art studio, and later on the radio he also accompanied broadcasts of radio gymnastics.

The radio committee was then located on the Moika, not far from Nevsky Prospekt. It was a good two kilometers from his apartment on Zhukovsky Street to the radio. I had to get up early, at about five in the morning, in order to be able to walk to the studio by six. Trams had never run this early before. “Once,” recalls Vasily Pavlovich, I was two minutes late. The announcer who was supposed to broadcast the program said out loud, without turning off the microphone, everything he thought about me. However, then there were such morals that the announcer received a ... just a reprimand."

Vasily continued his musical education at the Third College of Music inclass of Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov, an outstanding teacher and mentor of many Soviet composers.Solovyov-Sedoy studied in the composition department together with Nikita Bogoslovsky. At the technical school he became friends with Ivan Dzerzhinsky and Nikolai Gan. In 1931, the entire course was transferred to the conservatory.Already an outstanding master of the song genre, Solovyov-Sedoy recalled Ryazanov’s lessons: “He taught us the form using works of fiction. While reading Chekhov’s story “Vanka” to us, Ryazanov especially noted that the presentation, rich in humorous details, ends with an essentially tragic ending (the boy’s letter will not reach his grandfather), and discussed with us how such a structure of the story could be reflected in music. Another Chekhov story, “Polinka,” served as an example of a “polyphonic” form based on the “counterpoint” of external and internal action. We analyzed the structure of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, also drawing conclusions for the music.”

While studying at a music college, Vasily Pavlovich composed the song “The Machine” based on the poems of A. Bezymensky. “Wanting to reproduce the monotonous hum of the machine, I wrote the first four measures on the staff, and then added repetition marks.

The young and inexperienced pianist who accompanied the performer (all of them were technical school students) did not notice the signs of repetition and, after playing four bars, leaned back in her chair. The vocalist selflessly finished the song without accompaniment..."

For the first time, Vasily Pavlovich was noticed as a songwriter at the Leningrad mass song competition in 1936: the first prize was awarded to “Parade” to the words of A. Gitovich and “Song about Leningrad” to the words of E. Ryvina. Famous singers sang Solovyov-Sedoy’s songs: Irma Yaunzem sang his song “The Death of Chapaev” in 1935 at the decade of Soviet music in Moscow; Leonid Utesov sang his songs “Two Friends Served” and “Cossack Cavalry” for the first time. On June 22, 1941, the war began, and the very next day the poetess L. Davidovich brought Solovyov-Sedoy poems entitled “Dear Outpost.” They were written before the war and corrected, so that the necessary verse was obtained:

But the evil enemy pack

It rose above us like a cloud

Dear outpost

Rose for the Motherland

On July 24, Soloviev-Sedoy composed the melody of this song. I rushed to my friend, actor of the Pushkin Drama Theater Alexander Borisov, they found an accordion player, and that same evening the song was already sounding from loudspeakers over his hometown. The new song “Play my button accordion” replaced the song “Clouds have risen over the city” performed by Mark Bernes before the war, which was popular before the war.

Solovyov-Sedoy’s sensitivity to the Russian literary word, especially poetic, was unique. He never composed the so-called musical fish, to which the words of the song were adjusted. If the text was not musical, did not have free musical breath, he resolutely rejected it.

During his conservatory years, Solovyov-Sedoy created many musical works. By 1935 there were already twenty-four of them: music for the theater, a lyric poem for a symphony orchestra, pieces for violin and piano, and a piano concerto. But none of his songs received recognition among the people - they did not become widespread. However, their author was noticed by Dunaevsky. He was able to discern in him an extraordinary musical gift.

The poet Alexander Churkin, whose poems Solovyov-Sedoy wrote more than one song, witnessed such a dialogue between Utesov and Dunaevsky in the late thirties.

“Perhaps you are the only one,” said Utyosov, “who can compose such a melody that people will sing it right on the way from the concert.”

- No, why? - Dunaevsky objected. — A new star is rising on the Leningrad musical horizon - young Solovyov-Sedoy. I don’t want to be a prophet, but I’m sure: he is destined for a great voyage...

During the war, Solovyov-Sedoy created many wonderful songs: “Evening on the roads”, “Vasya Kryuchkin”, “What are you yearning for, comrade sailor”, “Like across the Kama, across the river”, “On a sunny clearing”, “Don’t disturb “Don’t worry yourself,” and others. Captivated by K. Simonov’s poem “Wait for Me,” Soloviev-Sedoy wrote music for it, suffering a complete failure, as did other composers: whoever tried to set this poem to music then - M. Blanter, M. Koval, V. Muradeli , A. Novikov, I. Dzerzhinsky, Y. Dobrusin, A. Zhivotov, V. Nechaev, V. Rodin.

In August 1941, V. Solovyov-Sedogo, together with the poet A. Churkin, was sent to the port, where they, like thousands of Leningraders, took away logs and cleaned up the area to reduce the risk of fire from incendiary bombs. At the end of a long day of work, we sat down to rest on board the unloaded barge. It was a late Leningrad evening. Nothing reminded me of the war. In the bay, shrouded in blue haze, a ship stood in the roadstead. Quiet music could be heard from it: someone was playing the accordion. When they went home, the composer said: “Wonderful evening. Worth a song."

Upon returning home, Churkin began to write poetry, Solovyov-Sedoy began to write music. The composer found the intonation of the song in the words that appeared to him as if by themselves: “Farewell, beloved city.” In them I heard the aching sadness of parting with my native Leningrad.

Three days later a new song was born - “Evening at the roadstead”. The composer and poet took it to Zodchego Rossi, to the house of composers. There the song was found too calm, even mournful and, as was said, not meeting the requirements of wartime.
Solovyov-Sedoy put the song aside.

The song “Evening at the Roadstead” had been lying in his suitcase for a year. After the blockade ring closed around Leningrad, Solovyov-Sedoy, who had recently been evacuated to Orenburg, again presented his song to the judgment of his colleagues. They called her "gypsy". The composer put the song aside again. In March 1942, she received front-line baptism and became a national figure.

Here's how it happened. Solovyov-Sedoy and the Yastrebok theater team he created gave a concert in a soldier’s dugout. It was one and a half kilometers to the front line. Listeners - no more than thirty soldiers. The concert was already coming to an end when the composer decided to sing “Evening on the Roadstead” himself with an accordion. He accompanied himself. He sang quietly, addressing the soldiers:

Let's sing, friends, because tomorrow we'll go hiking
Let's go into the predawn fog.
Let's sing more cheerfully, let him sing along to us
Gray-haired battle captain.

When the chorus sounded for the third time - “Farewell, beloved city!”, all the listeners took it up in quiet voices. The author was asked to dictate the words, and then sing the song along with everyone. This has never happened before in the composer’s life: people sang his song, which they had never heard before. Within a few days the song spread on all fronts. Her words were transmitted via field telephones by signalmen. At night on the phone they sang it to the accordion. The song was sung at the front and in the rear. She became beloved by the people.

The song “Evening on the roadstead” has long been recognized as one of the masterpieces of Russian Soviet song art. But musicologists are still searching for the secrets of its amazing musical simplicity and power.

Solovyov-Sedoy was demanding of the poetic word. He had an extraordinary literary gift. A number of his songs were composed by him based on his own poems. In one of them, he defines the spiritual purpose of the song for a soldier who is ready to look death in the eye and defeat it:

Not a happy song, but a sad tune
Remember your dead friends,
If you remember your friends, you will win them differently,
Soldiers are a special people!
We don’t cry from pain, we cry from song,
If the song reaches the heart.

Vasily Pavlovich considered the meeting in 1942 with the poet Alexander Fatyanov to be a great event in his life, a turning point for creativity. In his poems, the composer said, he heard Russian speech, Russian nature. He saw and felt the Russian Soviet way of life that was close to him. A. Fatyanov, born in the ancient city of Vyazniki, grew up in the Mstera forests, was, like Yesenin, a poet of the Russian soul, Russian lyricism.

Fatyanov composed poetry in the same way as Solovyov-Sedoy composed music. If there could be co-authors created by life to work together, it would be Alexey Fatyanov and Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy. Together they created forty songs, many of them included in the golden fund of Soviet and world song culture.

The pinnacle of their creativity can be called their most famous song “Nightingales”. It was created in 1943. Blood was still flowing and Soviet boys were dying, but victory was already close. Everyone understood this at the front and in the rear. And everyone knew that they would have to pay a heavy price for victory.

Fatyanov wrote lyrical poems about nightingales, in which he expressed the unity of man, nature, and the living world in anticipation of the triumph of life over death:

Well, what is war for a nightingale?
The nightingale has its own life.
The soldier doesn't sleep
remembering the house
And the green garden above the pond,
Where the nightingales sing all night,
And in that house they are waiting for a soldier.

Fatyanov read the poems to Solovyov-Sedoy, and he heard music in them. Fatyanov’s lines evoked dramatic reflections in the composer: “Dying is always hard. It is doubly difficult to die on the eve of victory, without waiting for its triumph. We talked a lot about this, and suddenly... nightingales, lyrics...". In one sitting, Solovyov-Sedoy wrote a song. It became a hymn to life in war. Everything is in it - sadness for one’s home, and the feeling of spring, and the expectation of victory - the end of the damned war, and the hard work of a soldier. And a tender feeling (don’t be embarrassed to say this) of love for the Soviet soldier:

Nightingales, nightingales,
don't disturb the soldiers
Let the soldiers
get some sleep...

The song quickly reached the forefront. In it, a national feeling is conveyed through personal experience, the melody is melodious and broad, and the intonation is confidential. All this is typical for the song creativity of Solovyov-Sedoy. His songs of the war years became popular because the soil in which they grew was folk—Russian lyrical song. It is distinguished not only by its light sadness, but also by the spaciousness of its free sound and extraordinary emotional strength. When you listen to “Nightingales” by Solovyov-Sedoy accompanied by a choir, it seems that the song flies into the sky, higher and higher, into the transcendental distance.

The post-war years were typical for Vasily Pavlovich with the appearance of songs written for films: “Heavenly Slug”, “The First Glove”. In 1947, he was awarded the State Prize for the second time for the songs “We haven’t been home for a long time,” “The nights have become bright,” “It’s time to hit the road,” “A guy is riding on a cart.”

The first time he was awarded the State Prize was in 1943. In 1945, the composer was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Having composed the song “Where are you now, fellow soldiers?”, Solovyov-Sedoy developed a cycle from it, first calling it “The Return of the Soldier,” then finding a more general, epic name - “The Tale of the Soldier.” The cycle was first performed by Klavdiya Shulzhenko at the Central House of Artists in November 1947.

Since 1950, he has devoted a lot of time to parliamentary work - on March 12, 1950, he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The song “Moscow Evenings” was written in 1956. It was one of the five songs that created the musical background of the chronicle-documentary film “In the Days of the Spartakiad” (about the first Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR). Soloviev-Sedoy assessed it as just another good song - nothing more. He was sincerely surprised when “Moscow Nights” received first prize and a Big Gold Medal at the international song competition, which was held during the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in the summer of 1957.

“Moscow Nights” became a symbolic song. A musical symbol of Russia for the whole world. They were performed for piano at the concerts of the famous American pianist Van Clyburn. The famous figure of English jazz Kenny Ball made a jazz arrangement of Solovyov-Sedoy’s song and released a record with a recording called “Midnight in Moscow.”

When in 1966 the young Soviet vocalist Eduard Khil sang “Moscow Nights” at the International Variety Competition in Rio de Janeiro, the audience picked up the song from the second verse. Today it has been known and sung in almost all countries of the world for half a century.

In 1959, Solovyov-Sedoy was awarded the Lenin Prize for the songs “On the Way”, “Milestones”, “If only the boys of the whole earth”, “March of the Nakhimovites”, “Moscow Evenings”. In the drama and puppet theater, the composer created music for twenty-four plays.

In the sixties of the twentieth century, Solovyov-Sedoy was alarmed by the penetration of mass Western culture into the Soviet spiritual world.

His thoughts in those years: “Abroad now they write and talk a lot about mass culture, about the fact that true culture is alien and inaccessible to the people: Raphael and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Petrarch, that the people need the Beatles, comics, digests, westerns, that is all that surrogate art that is easily digestible, easily stupefies and easily fools. Barbaric attempts to retell “Hamlet” on five pocket-size pages or “The Odyssey” on three, to give drawings with meek, machine-gun-like dialogues instead of a novel, story or short story, jazz screams instead of music, hoarse whispers instead of a song, a rough drawing instead of painting - these are all manifestations of famous and sinister popular culture.I am for broad folk art, because I am sure: the people are an excellent teacher not only in the field of language, but also in the field of music. But I am firmly against musical fakes, against that tearful anguish that is often transmitted in whispers into microphones on some dance floors and concert stages. I am against the vulgarization of the song, against the violation of the unity of its poetic and musical image, folk roots, national identity... Ellochka had thirty words in her vocabulary. Many song writers have no more lyrics, and even less in their musical arsenal - everything is sung on the same note. But the cannibal Ellochka had, at least, the advantage that she did not require a platform... I am not against the guitar, not against amateur performances, not against minstrels and bards. But I am resolutely against the imposition of tongue-tied language, thieves’ vocabulary, hoarse whispers, and primitive music on our youth” (1965).

In the last years of his life, the composer did not work as intensively as before. One of his last works, which he did not have time to finish, was the music for a puppet show based on the fairy tale “Terem-Teremok” by Samuil Marshak. In the last 4 years of his life, Solovyov-Sedoy was seriously ill. The disease, fortunately, did not prevent us from celebrating our 70th anniversary in 1977. Friends and artists came to the composer’s house on the Fontanka River embankment No. 131, and all this was shown on television from apartment No. 8, in which the composer lived.

He passed away on the night of December 2, 1979. He is buried on the Literary Bridge, and his best childhood friend, actor Alexander Borisov, was buried next to his grave in 1982.

Interview with Vasily SOLOVIEV, grandson of the composer.

— After all, the song was originally called “Leningrad Evenings”?

- Initially - “Moscow Region”, the words were written by Muscovite Matusovsky. It was then that the Leningraders began to take offense: how is it, our fellow countryman, that he called the most famous song “Moscow Evenings”? Little did he know that this would be the most famous song! She lay there for two years, no one needed. Then the stars aligned: Troshin appeared, who sang in such a way that no one has surpassed him to this day.

— Is it true that Vasily Pavlovich himself was eventually so sick of the song that he even ran away from home because it was regularly performed under his windows?

- It's about the dacha in Komarovo. People came with a button accordion and sang “Moscow Nights”. These were excursionists from holiday homes, and the program included choral singing. Grandfather, of course, did not run away anywhere, but in the last years of his life he grumbled: “Did I really just write “Moscow Nights”?”

— Did he have a treasured song?

— There is one song that is unknown, because he himself composed the words to it - no one sang it except him. The song is a war song, in it he formulated a thought that was the basis of his work: “We don’t cry from grief - we’ll cry from a song, as long as the song reaches the heart.”

— Did he even write poetry?

— He composed an endless number of humorous poems, even indecent ones, and epigrams. He worked with poets as equals, sometimes half of the text was his, or the key line, for example: “Farewell, beloved city, we’re leaving for the sea tomorrow!” He forced poets to redo texts twenty times.

He really didn’t like the song “If only the boys of the whole earth” because he couldn’t stand pathos. Well, it was such an action by Dolmatovsky and Bernes: they pestered with these poems, and the grandfather didn’t even have time to really finalize the song, when they immediately recorded it and in the morning it was played on the radio. They asked my grandfather for songs - Utesov loved him more than Dunaevsky, and Bernes joked: “Vasya, write me a song, I’ll vulgarize it.”

— There were rumors about the extraordinary library of Solovyov-Sedoy...

— Grandfather collected a wonderful library. He was completely obsessed with detective stories, and few of them were published at that time. Therefore, he found an underground office in Moscow, where he purchased foreign detective stories typed on a typewriter in terrible translations. He collected more than a hundred such volumes, and when he read all the detective stories he could get in Russian, he began buying them in Polish - and read them with a dictionary!

— Another passion - cars?

— We always had new Volga models. My grandfather drove the car, but then drivers began to appear, who, by the way, occupied a very serious place in his life. He even has a driver’s song: “Don’t believe, my friend, that drivers are unreliable friends.” The driver became a member of the family, I remember them all. Grandfather loved fishing and mushrooms - who should he go with? With a driver.

— Do you know your family tree?

- No, I only know that my grandfather’s father was the senior janitor at Nevsky, 139, where Vasily Pavlovich was born. I recently heard a story that my great-grandfather lay in a lethargic sleep for a year, but the family never told anything like that. They also said that my grandfather was two meters tall, but he was shorter than me!

— Were you tormented by music as a child?

- No, I successfully jumped off. Grandma Tanya, a pianist, sat me down at the piano a couple of times, I said: “Leave me alone,” and that’s all. Now I regret it.

— Did your grandfather influence your choice of profession?

- No, parents, because they were actors. They played in the capital's "Theater of Facial Expression and Gesture", it was a troupe of deaf people, because my mother was born deaf.

My childhood is like a Mexican TV series: my dad left us a few months before I was born. I went to Moscow to the Shchukin School and there I met the daughter of conductor Yuri Silantiev - a paradox! - She was also deaf. Then I was born, and my mother got married a second time. They told me that this was my dad. At the same time, all my life I had another grandmother Maria, an Armenian, but I did not wonder who she was. At the age of twelve, leafing through the prospectus of the Theater of Mimicry and Gesture, I saw a photo of a man with her last name: “Who is this?” - "My son". Then my mother divorced her second husband. One day Grandma Tanya says to me: “Do you know that Grandma Maria’s son and your mother decided to get married?” “Wonderful,” I answer. That's when I found out who my dad is. Now he is no longer there, and my mother is 75 years old and lives in Moscow.

I have four children. No one is showing any special talent in music yet, well, someday they will show up.

— Peter celebrated the composer’s centenary very modestly — with a concert at the Variety Theater. In my opinion, this scale does not correspond to Solovyov-Sedoy’s contribution to the culture of the city, and indeed the country. Have you tried to do something?

— A year ago a concert was planned at Oktyabrsky, but it won’t happen because the city administration did not provide financial support. We did everything with enthusiasm. There was a very good concert in the capital's Tchaikovsky Hall with the Vivaldi Orchestra. Singers and actors - 82-year-old Troshin, 92-year-old Zeldin, Sklyar, Leonidov, Kortnev - performed for free. On the banner of the hall they placed the image of the director of the orchestra, and not the composer, because “the people will not come!” There were a lot of people - the hall was full! For a concert in the Kremlin, Shvydkoy gave 300 thousand rubles - this is Joseph Kobzon’s fee for one performance. And again everyone worked with enthusiasm.

— It’s impossible to find a CD with a recording of Solovyov-Sedoy’s music, but it was released for the 100th anniversary?

— This is a gift option, but I want a new one, especially since the concerts had very interesting performers and arrangements, even rap. What happiness I saw on people’s faces when they listened to Solovyov-Sedoy’s songs!

I regret one thing: when I was young, I didn’t have a heart-to-heart talk with my grandfather. Now I would ask him a huge number of questions. When you live nearby, you don’t understand the scale of a person, and even the fact that he can leave.

Song creativity of V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy

Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy (1907-1979) Outstanding Soviet Leningrad composer and songwriter. There are over 400 of them.

from the biography Born into a family of peasant origins; As a child, my father gave me a balalaika and a guitar, and thus a love for music was born; The mother loved folk songs and introduced her son to them; Since 1925 he worked as an accompanist in silent films; In 1929 he entered the Music College;

Briefly from the biography In 1931 - Transferred to the Leningrad Conservatory; In 1936 – Graduates from the conservatory; During the war years he lived in Chkalov (Orenburg); In 1948-74. – Held administrative positions in the Union of Composers.

Pre-war songs: “Parade” lyrics. A. Gitovich “Song about Leningrad”, lyrics. E. Ryvina In 1936, both songs were awarded a prize at the Leningrad competition. "Song about Leningrad"

Military songs: “Evening on the Roadstead” lyrics. A. Churkin “Vasya Kryuchkin” lyrics. V. Gusev “What are you yearning for, comrade sailor” lyrics. V. Lebedev-Kumach “Like beyond the Kama, beyond the river” lyrics. V. Gusev “In a sunny clearing” lyrics. A. Fatyanova “Don’t worry yourself, don’t worry” lyrics. M. Isakovsky “Nightingales” lyrics. A. Fatyanova And others...

Post-war songs “We haven’t been home for a long time” “The nights have become bright” “It’s time to hit the road” “A guy is riding on a cart” “Where are you now, fellow soldiers?” (later the cycle “The Tale of a Soldier”)

Friendship with the poet I considered the meeting with the poet Alexander Fatyanov to be a great event in my life. In his poems the composer heard Russian nature. For him, Fatyanov, like Yesenin, was a poet of Russian soul and lyricism. Together they created 40 songs. Photo from the 40s.

Legendary song “Moscow Evenings” Written in 1956 for the film “In the Days of the Spartakiad” about the first Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR. In 1957 at the song festival she was awarded first prize and a large gold medal. It soon became a symbolic song of Russia and was performed all over the world. Record cover

The famous song "Because we are pilots"

70's record cover.

Soloviev-Sedoy with friends, late 40s. P.B. Ryazanov and his students: Nikita Bogoslovsky, Nikolai Gan, Ivan Dzerzhinsky. (A. Fatyanov)

Peculiarities of song creativity: Sensitivity to the Russian literary word, poetic text; I have always composed music based on textual content; Simplicity, beauty, harmony, melodic language.

Music for cinema Many films, including: Heavenly Slug, 1945, World Champion, 1954. “She loves you!”, 1956 “The next flight”, 1958 “Careful, Grandma!”, 1960 “The Don Tale”, 1964. "Virineya", 1968 “The Unfamiliar Heir”, 1974 "Sweet Woman", 1976 “Taiga Tale”, 1979

Movie posters: 1945 1954 1976

Silver coin with a face value of 2 rubles. 2007

Titles and awards: People's Artist of the USSR (1967); Hero of Socialist Labor (1975); Lenin Prize laureate (1959); State Laureate USSR Prize (1943, 1947); Awarded 3 Orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star.

Postage stamp 1982

Conclusions: Made a huge contribution to the development of Soviet culture; He developed the art of song as the basis of Russian nationality; His songs are loved and recognizable in Russia, the countries of the former USSR, as well as throughout the world; The songs brought people together and helped raise the people's spirit during the war.

References: Kremlev Yu. V.P. Solovyov-Sedoy essay on life and creativity", l,: Soviet composer, 1960. Sokhor A. “V.P. Soloviev-Sedoy”, Music, 1977. Khentova S. “Solovyev-Sedoy in Petrograd-Leningrad”, Lenizdat, 1984 http://www.solowyev-sedoy.narod.ru - “V.P. Soloviev-Sedoy" http://chtoby-pomnili.com/page.php?id=623 - "What would they remember"