Inexhaustible

And this year the Triumph Award has found worthy laureates

This year's Triumph Award, as almost always, was without discoveries, scandals or surprises. Every year at a press conference, Radio Liberty columnist Marina Timasheva asked the jury: “Why didn’t they give the prize to Boris Pokrovsky?” She achieved her goal, the oldest Russian director, the 96-year-old founder of the Triumph Chamber Musical Theater, finally received it.

From the world of music, the youngest current triumphant is 35-year-old pianist Alexander Melnikov, not exactly a big name, but a thoughtful, subtle, intelligent musician, one of the younger Richterites, who regularly plays at the December Evenings festivals (he was already a laureate in 2001, but of the youth “Triumph”).

The rest of the laureates, in accordance with the traditions of Triumph, do not need comments on their deeds: the artist Tatyana Nazarenko is today called a pop star of the Russian art scene, she already has almost all the official regalia that exist in art: the State Prize and the status of a full member of the presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts, the title of professor of painting and the title of Honored Artist of Russia, but Konstantin Raikin and Oleg Yankovsky are simply favorites of the public since the times of the Soviet Union, although their newest - and now mostly theatrical - works are not so well known.

What’s interesting is this: in recent years, jury members apparently haven’t read anything. For the umpteenth time, writers are missing from the list of awardees, and now they are not even among the triumphant “youth.”

Recently, the names of the 20 laureates of the youth “Triumph” have turned out to be the most mysterious and attractive for discussion. Usually, few people are familiar with the names of musicians, vocalists and ballet dancers - by the way, they are most often very young. But since in this nomination the winners are the nominees of each jury member, without discussion or voting, one can only guess about the reasons and internal foundations of the decisions. The jury members themselves usually remain silent about their protégés, and it’s difficult to understand why the little-known (and not quite young) theater critic Sergei Konaev, or the animator Stepan Shushkalov, distinguished themselves in their eyes, or what Marina Smirnova, a philologist, does, and why they are nominated It is never possible to reach the same level as such already venerable professionals as Evgeny Stychkin, Victoria Isakova, Konstantin Bogomolov or cellist Boris Andrianov.

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore - this is the format of this award, which is still stable and unchanged in its essence, the laureates of which, as always, were announced in December, and will be awarded in January with the same, one hopes, inevitability with which the day will finally begin increase.

Gleb MYSHKIN