Translated material
Even Lenin sang with him
Tikhon Khrennikov died
Composer Tikhon Khrennikov died in Moscow at the age of 95. The mention of his name can evoke in some people a pleasant nostalgia about the great Soviet style, life-affirming art, and the ideal image of the country and people. Others will recall with indignation Khrennikov's notorious forty-three years of rule over the Union of Composers of the USSR, of which he was appointed general secretary by order of Stalin. They will remember the devastating speeches against Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich. They will also remember an interview with the newspaper “Zavtra” ten years ago, in which the composer firmly said: “I consider the “avant-gardists” to be sectarians. This is not a line of great art, these are sects..."The image of Tikhon Khrennikov perfectly correlates with the utopia and dystopia of the Soviet past.
The composer's biography itself is perceived as a cultural myth, a film script about an ideal Soviet man. Born in 1913 in small, modest Yelets, into a poor middle-class family. He was the tenth child of his parents. At the age of fourteen, Khrennikov, who was already writing music, had the opportunity to travel to Moscow and showed his compositions to Mikhail Fabianovich Gnesin. He entered the Gnessin Music College, then entered the second year of the Conservatory, where he studied piano with the great Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1933, he made his debut before the public - it was a production of the anti-fascist play “Mick” at the Natalia Sats Children's Theater, a performance for which he wrote the music.
As in an exemplary biography of an exemplary Soviet person, the creative path of composer Tikhon Khrennikov was full of glorious achievements for the glory of Soviet art, the people and the party. In 1939, the premiere of the opera “Into the Storm,” which featured the vocal part of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was attended by Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. Music for the films “The Pig Farmer and the Shepherd” (1941), “At Six O’Clock in the Evening After the War” (1944), the plays “Much Ado About Nothing”, “A Long Time Ago” became popular among all. On Victory Day 1945, the composer took part in the famous radio broadcast - then Khrennikov, together with Matvey Blanter, were in units of the 1st Belorussian Front under Army Commander Chuikov, who were advancing on Berlin. In the already captured city, one of Chuikov’s deputies suggested going to the Berlin radio station. Simonov, Dolmatovsky, Blanter and Khrennikov went. Poets read poetry, Khrennikov sang.
Since 1948, Tikhon Khrennikov was the General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, and from 1957 to March 1992, he was the First Secretary of the Board of the Union of Composers of the USSR. In the 70s, he was president of the Association of Musical Figures under the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies, was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, deputy chairman of the Committee for Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR in the field of literature, art and architecture, a member of the Soviet Peace Committee, deputy chairman of the board of the Society of Soviet -German friendship and cultural ties.
During the period 1950–1990, the patriarch of Soviet music wrote a huge number of ballets, symphonies, concerts and operas. Khrennikov's merits are highly appreciated by the state. People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor Tikhon Nikolaevich Khrennikov was awarded four Orders of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, and the Order of Honor. Winner of the Lenin Prize, four State Prizes of the USSR, the State Prize of the RSFSR, the Presidential Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art, the Russian National Olympus Prize in the category "Outstanding Worker of Our Time".
And very extraneous in this exemplary biography are not only the facts of Khrennikov’s controversial actions as Secretary General of the Union of Composers (he scolded Shostakovich, and invited the modernist Stravinsky to the USSR in 1962, helping some members of the union avoid repression), but also the tragic pages family biography. One of Khrennikov’s brothers, Gleb, studied at the Moscow Conservatory before the revolution to become an opera singer, volunteered for World War I and died near Dvinsk. Two other brothers - Nikolai and Boris - were arrested in 1937 and, despite all the efforts of the then already famous Khrennikov, they also died. These facts help to overcome polar stereotypes in the perception of the personality and work of the composer Khrennikov, as well as the history of the country as a whole.
The funeral of Tikhon Khrennikov will take place in his hometown - Yelets (Lipetsk region). Farewell to the composer is scheduled for Thursday, August 16, in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.