Zakharchenko, Victor Gavrilovich

Artistic director of the State Academic Kuban Cossack Chorus. Member of the Presidential Council on Arts and Culture. Professor, Doctor of Arts

Address: 5 Krasnaya St., Krasnodar, Russia, 350063

Phone: +7 (8612) 55-75-03, fax: 68-31-47

Date and place of birth. Born on March 22, 1938 at the village of Dyadkovskaya, Krasnodar Krai. Education. Glinka State Conservatory, Novosibirsk, postgraduate course at the Gnesins Institute of Music, Moscow (1965).

Education. Glinka State Conservatory, Novosibirsk, postgraduate course at the Gnesins Institute of Music, Moscow (1965).

Career. Says Victor Zakharchenko: "Being a born Cossack, I has been listening to Cossack and spiritual songs since childhood… From the very beginning, I was eager to become a musician-and in my heart of hearts always knew that eventually my wish will come true."

As early as a student at the Novosibirsk Conservatory he began to work as senior choirmaster at the State Siberian Chorus, a position he held till 1974. Since 1974 he has been working as artistic director of the State Academic Kuban Cossack Chorus.

Victor Zakharchenko is dedicated to folk culture and folk music; as one of his first priorities he participates in the works of the Presidential Council on Arts and Culture.

Decorations, honorary titles. The recipient of more than 25 Russian and foreign awards and decorations, including the Sign of Honor Order (1981), the Order of Red Banner of Labor (1987), the Order of Friendship (1998), the For the Services to Motherland of 4th degree (2004); the laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1991), the International Award of St Andrew Foundation (1999), the Boyan Award of the Slavonic Unity international association (1998); holds titles of Honored Worker of Arts of the Russian Federation (1997) and the Adygei Repulic (1998), People's Artist of Russia (1984) and Ukraine (1994).

Publications. The author of more than 200 musical compositions and over 1000 folk songs arrangements; published numerous works concerned on folk music.

Family. Married to Vera A. Shubina; their family includes daughters Victoria (1961), Natalia (1972), Vera (1983); grandsons Victor and Andrei.

Hobbies. Chess and books.

Plans. "To compose new songs and arrangements, to record Cossack songs and to create new concert programs."

WHAT ARE YOU, VICTOR ZAKHARCHENKO?

That's quite a question.

My opinion is that nobody, including Victor Gavrilovich himself, could answer it.

Indeed, let's consider it.

A prominent scientist? Professor, Doctor of Arts, the author of a number of scientific works on ethnic music, a folklorist, unique expert possessing the most up-to-date methodology, who deciphered thousands of folk songs in Kuban and Siberia…

An outstanding choir-master? A disciple of the great Vladimir Minin, having reached the peak in his trade, the rigorous and demanding leader of the State Kuban Cossack Chorus which for over three decades now has been indisputably the best among the similar Russian choruses in this country and which has traveled the globe far and wide…

A composer? An inspired Russian music maker whose songs people listen to standing with tears in their eyes…

And all those are of equal dimension, equal significance. So, there is no answer. We witness an unbelievable reality - a man living three different lives simultaneously. And these are only the obvious lives; I know of the forth and the fifth ones… I know of Zakharchenko's intense spiritual, philosophical, ethical search, of his philosophical and theological study, of his profound knowledge of the Russian classical literature, of his ardent love for symphony music, of his reverence for the art of Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev…

And there, in the beginning, in the native Cossack settlement of Dyadkovskaya, there was a new accordion and the child's rapturous tears over it. And there was a dream, a 100% Russian one. Look and think, folks.

Phoenix

All his life, starting from the glorious Siberian decade which we now seem to have forgotten a little, Victor Zakharchenko has been composing songs. There were lucky achievements, for example "Bread Is Above All", there were semi-achievements… Let us not forget that those were the Soviet times with their constant Communist supervision, dictate and ideological pressing. But in spite of everything the spring-well of music was not drying up.

In the middle of the 90-ies there happened a terrible disaster. Zakharchenko got in a car accident. His life was hanging by a thread. Weeks and months of veritable martyrdom were going by. The recovery went on slowly, accompanied by severe sufferings. Another man might as well have kicked the bucket, as the saying goes. But Zakharchenko, like Phoenix, rises from the ashes. And he rises transformed, spiritually enlightened, with his heart wholly turned to God. The Life and Truth shone upon him with their primordial light.

A miracle happened. As if some invisible obstacle had disappeared and there came a waterfall, a flood of songs, a powerful stream carrying everything before it. As if Somebody drives the composer's hand - there is not a single failure. A succession of masterpieces, beautiful melodies, staggering musical ideas, high inspiration. And all this is happening now that pop-culture dominates in the composers' creative work of our country.

No, this is not the old story about Don Quixote. This is another case, quite different and new. We are witnessing a spiritual event of an all-national dimension.

It even seems that all Zakharchenko's preceding life was just a preparatory prelude to this act of overwhelming creative work. But that would be unfair - for the prelude is far too good, too beautiful in itself.

The Song Symphony

Victor Zakharchenko doesn't simply write songs. He creates a Song Symphony of stunning philosophic depth.

Zakharchenko casts aside casual lyrics and turns to the source of the Russian classical poetry. Bloc, Tyutchev, Pushkin, Esenin, Tsvetayeva, Lermontov, Delvig, Nekrasov, Rubtsov, Alexey Tolstoy, Severyanin by themselves can give rich, multidimensional parameters to a song. So, it might seem only natural just to use their texts, write music to them and enjoy a success. But our composer - a wise folklorist - isn't going just to exploit the classical poetry. Zakharchenko makes a subtle move. He finds the musical key to the Russian poets not on the path of a mere composer's interpretation of the lyrics, but applies to them a folkloric method of mastering, bearing in mind that there exist already numerous Russian folk songs to the verses by Nekrasov, Polonsky, Pushkin and Lermontov. Creatively using this folkloric experience, Zakharchenko makes an impersonal interpretation of the poets, brings them into some universe of folk consciousness, dissolving their individual aspects in the universal one. On the one hand the composer "dies" in the poet, and on the other the poet disperses, fertilizing the folk element. Thus appears a symphonically complex concept.

The roots of Zakharchenko's Song Symphony are fed by the depths of his personality, intellect, spiritual experience, the richness of which gives him the right to appeal directly to the nation. In his Symphony Zakharchenko naturally, without trying to make a lofty "prophet" out of himself, acts as a powerful integrator of the national spirit. He talks to the people in their own tongue in an ingenuous, straightforward manner, using distinct, aphoristically concise forms of expression - and scores an impressive artistic victory.

Only once, though, in the songs to the lyrics of his recent contemporary Nikolay Rubtsov, there appears something Zakharchenko's very own and burningly personal. This note of the heart's pain about the present life of the Russian people is unforgettable. It's like the author's voice ringing out in the sudden silence in the middle of a symphony.

Another pain of Victor Zakharchenko - a hereditary Kuban Cossack, for whom Russia and Ukraine are indivisible - is their separation into two states. The split runs right across his heart. Perhaps for this reasons his most touching songs were composed to the lyrics by Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka - the songs which make both Russian and Ukrainian audiences stand up and cry. Who but ordinary people of Russia and Ukraine grieve over the absurdity and insanity of our breaking?

I congratulate all who live in Russia today.

The creative work of Victor Zakharchenko is an unexpected miracle, performed by the Russian spirit on the border between XX-th and XXI-st centuries.

Inside this box, on two discs, is a part of this miracle.