Lectures for first-year students of the Moscow Conservatory about the Soviet performing school, I begin like this: “Lev Nikolaevich Mikhailov was big, red-haired and different ...” Exactly, different. And there is no way to replace it. Memoirs are not a newspaper genre ....

Lectures for first-year students of the Moscow Conservatory about the Soviet performing school, I begin like this: “Lev Nikolaevich Mikhailov was big, red-haired and different ...” Exactly, different. And there's no way to replace it

M

emuary is not a newspaper genre. What I write is just a memoir. I mean, a little memory. Regarding a small event that did not at all stir up the progressive public and the cultivated layers of compatriots. In Spain, two months before the age of 67, Lev Mikhailov died of illness, drunkenness and loneliness. Musician.

In today's modern Russian culture, there are thousands of outstanding artists. That is, how many artists, so many outstanding ones, since the journalists who praise them rise proportionately on the bumpy PR field. And when a famous TV presenter calls a well-known rock singer a great Russian poet, I inwardly agree. Moreover, the star does not mind, nods his head. Only a corrosive inner voice is sarcastically interested in: who then was Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin? The question hangs unanswered...

In this context, I understand with soldierly certainty: Lev Mikhailov was not great. In that Soviet Union, from which my generation could not unstick, he was the best clarinetist of his time. Or one of the two or three best (there is no prophet in his own country). Perhaps, in terms of skill, someone could compete with him. As for talent and musical wisdom, how can you explain?.. These are subjective things.

But as a saxophonist, he was not brilliant and not great, but simply divine. His records, the recordings that have remained in the music library of the Moscow Conservatory, are not evidence of “thoughtful interpretation” or “penetration into the artistic image”, but luxury and absolute pleasure, refined and not at all necessary for the hard or pseudo-realistic art of those years.

1974

year. Mikhailov, with great difficulty, convinces the authorities to open an academic saxophone class at the conservatory, where he already taught clarinet at that time. With a creak and doubts, but still allowed. As a second specialty: that is, the clarinetist could also practice the saxophone. At the same time, Mikhailov received an invitation to the World Congress of Saxophonists in Bordeaux. And what party committee or district committee could allow him such a trip? That's right: none. Alive, still alive in the brains of the loyal Stalinists were the large-circulation posters "From the saxophone to the knife - one step!". Kabalevsky unexpectedly helped. Considered one of the pillars of Soviet music, he was in favor, influential and well received. As it was explained later, the role of the pillar was too big for him, although his small but warm talent was forgotten undeservedly and carelessly. Turning out to be a decent and persistent man, he then “broke” Mikhailov this trip through the department of culture of the Central Committee.

The first (!) Soviet academic saxophonist at an international forum of this level, among eminent Frenchmen who have taught classical saxophone since the middle of the 19th century, world-famous jazz Americans, brilliant, virtuoso Italians, academic and artistic Czechs ...

No, Mikhailov was not the founder - there were cool saxophonists in Rus', although not many, but they were. But after his performances, they started talking seriously about the Russian school of the saxophone, and this was not only his victory. When he returned, he organized the first classical saxophone quartet in the USSR - an unimaginably gentle and shamelessly bright ensemble, which was perceived, as later, as the first Mercedes on Russian roads.

M

Ikhailov played the clarinet and saxophone with equal brilliance and was unique in this. I well remember the concert at the House of Composers, where he performed "Fantasy" by E. Denisov for four saxophones, "Concert Fantasia" by N. Peiko for two saxophones and a piece by S. Gubaidulina, where he played eight instruments in turn: piccolo clarinet, "A" clarinets ” and “B”, bass clarinet, soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. Everything was written for him, and these were not circus numbers - selfless, brilliant and peculiar in Mikhailov's way of playing music, smart, subtle and precise.

At the same time, sonatas for solo clarinet were dedicated to him.

V. Artemov and E. Denisov. Mikhailov performed these compositions, which were the most complex in terms of technique and language, so clearly and naturally that everything seemed accessible - like the songs of Soviet composers. I remember how he returned from Leningrad, where he played Glazunov's Concerto for saxophone and orchestra with Rozhdestvensky, and said with delight: "Our people love the saxophone, they love it!" Red mustache bristled, eyes sparkled. His recordings of Mozart's clarinet concerto and Glazunov's saxophone concerto are still standards of style and taste. (Few people knew that he was constantly tormented by pain in his right wrist. He outplayed his hand and wore a piece of an old woolen glove to keep warm. No doctors helped, went to healers, then found a Chinese who “squeezed out” points of nerve endings so that they “ disable". Yes, there was no point.)

TO

then he was, this refined virtuoso? Siberian Russian peasant from the village of Berezovka, Krasnoyarsk Territory. From the poor, so hopeless that he was sent to the Novosibirsk Military Music School in order to feed himself. Already from there, by the will of God and the authorities, Levushka was sent to serve in Moscow, in the orchestra of the Ministry of Defense, where he himself prepared for admission to the conservatory. In the 62nd he received the first prize at the competition in Helsinki, in the 63rd - at the All-Union competition. During his conservatory years, he worked part-time in a restaurant big band and fell in love with jazz with his soul. But he never considered himself a jazzman - he was shy.

At the age of twenty-eight, he was invited to lead a class at the Moscow Conservatory. And I entered his apprenticeship in 1972, when he was already thirty-six. He was wonderful, this Leva Mikhailov. Senior students addressed him as "you". Dense, well-cut, with a large receding hairline and sparse reddish hair, he always behaved with that amazing freedom that you see only in the aristocratic minions of fate. In the days of strict ties and business suits, he came to the conservatory in loose sweatshirts and elegantly wrinkled corduroy pants.

When he didn’t want to study with us at all, he made four chairs against the wall, lay down on them, opened the newspaper, commanded: “Gamma in D major!” He turned the page and muttered: “Bad. Four more times." But when he wanted to study, the one-man theater began! Both facial expressions and gestures, combined with all the shades of a great and powerful, sometimes not quite literary language.

WITH

Now I understand that he was a born teacher. His naturalness, which never allowed amikoshonstvo, highlighted that inner freedom, which is naturally limited by innate intelligence. Where this comes from - I can’t imagine, but even today there are such people in distant Russian villages. Not once did we, the students, hear a bad word from him about his colleagues. Almost every week young and venerable composers came to the class and brought their compositions to Mikhailov. If we guys already understood that there was a lot of rubbish among these opuses, then our boss, I think, saw it in the first lines. But never in the inflections of his voice was there any disdain or cynicism, although he had everything in order with humor and a sense of reality.

His wife Natasha served as concertmaster-accompanist in our class - feminine, soft, delicate. And, it seemed, infinitely devoted to Mikhailov. How many chamber premieres they played together, how many students she pulled on herself when he was on tour! Once we, freshmen, listened to the diploma program of a very adult graduate. After he left, Mikhailov suddenly asked: “Well, how do you like it?” (Which, in principle, never did). Somehow I mustered the nerve and blurted out: “If I had played like this in my fifth year, I would have shot myself.” Mikhailov looked with pity and muttered: "What a fool." After some time, the smart and feminine beauty Natasha married this same graduate.

A

our Lev Nikolaevich began to drink more and more seriously. Although he played a lot at that time, and taught excellently. Then Alexander Oseychuk, one of the best current saxophonists, a European-famous jazz musician, graduated from his graduate school. Igor Panasyuk took the place of solo clarinetist in the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. There were others, but my hero somehow grew dim from hour to hour, losing the sparkle in his eyes.

His main work, however, was in the orchestra; in Russia, the brass player could not live in solo concerts. He loved the orchestra! He served in the orchestra of the All-Union Radio and Television, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, second soloist of the State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR. The empty word "orchestrant", which is completely used by today's cult observers, who confidently distinguish the conductor from the piano, does not fit in with him at all.

He was an orchestra artist, and he was surrounded by great artists, whose names were pronounced with respect not only in the vastness of Russia: clarinetist Vladimir Sokolov, flutist Valentin Zverev, horn player Anatoly Demin, oboist Anatoly Lyubimov, bassoonist Valery Popov - brilliant masters who glorified the Russian school of wind instruments contrary to all the conventions that held together a rigid hierarchy of musical authorities.

Once I asked Mikhailov: what does he dislike most of all in the profession? The answer was hard-won: mediocrity at the conductor's stand. When you play with Rozhdestvensky, Svetlanov, you follow them with joy. And when the maestro is empty and resonant, like a big drum, it is boring, heavy and meaningless. Recalling now our conversations, more and more I come to the conclusion that Mikhailov dreamed of a career as a conductor. But for all his looseness and quite adequate self-esteem, he took the profession too seriously. It's a pity. He would be an excellent conductor. And perhaps that would have kept him afloat. As well as from a bad, indistinct decision to seek happiness in foreign lands.

At the beginning of the troubled times, nicknamed "perestroika", the opportunity arose to go to the warm country of Spain, to the newborn orchestra. And there, you see ... It seemed that in Russia the career was over, the euphemism called "the disease of the Russian person" was transmitted by well-wishers, pushing the born leader and warrior into roles that were unbearable and humiliating for him.

And ahead I saw azure distances, a chance to start from scratch, when you are still in strength, have not wasted your mind, talent, or creative energy, and with a new wife ... It soon became clear that there was nowhere to put this energy. And the mind needs a different one, quirky and practical. And talent is good when it is in demand. Otherwise, why would he?

For some, this path turned out to be a success: satisfying, calm, comfortable. For him, it's a road to nowhere. In premature old age and a disease from which it was no longer possible to escape.

He was called to return, kept a place in the conservatory. And pride, and fanaberia, and red mustaches? ..

H

yes, so why am I? Yes, nothing. Reflections in a memoir. There was also a rumor that the progressive public nominated saxophonist Igor Butman for the State Prize. Well, that's right: a man lived in America and is shown on TV. So, if not great, then certainly outstanding.

And my hero - I still don't know what to call him. And at a lecture for freshmen about the Soviet performing school, I usually start like this: "Lev Nikolaevich Mikhailov was ... big, red-haired ... and different." That's it - the other, and it is impossible to replace it. Therefore, let's first listen to Glazunov's Concerto. For saxophone and orchestra...