Isaak Dunaevski
Isaac Dunaevsky was born in the town Lokhvytsya in Poltava region. Soon parents noticed the boy’s abilities in music and encourage him in every way. The first lessons he took from an amateur musician Gregory Polanski, who played in the theater orchestra of the People's House. Little Isaac was taken to plays and concerts, which took place here quite often. They left in his memory a lasting impression, and firstly discovered the great world of art: here boy for the first time heard the works of Frederic Chopin, Peter Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Edward Grieg and other prominent local and foreign composers.
When he was 10 years Isaac studied at Kharkov in the private music school. Higher education he got in the local
conservatory in 1919. Kharkov has made a great impression on the future composer with diversity of artistic life. There was a conservatory, a theater, particularly opera. Every year, Department of the Russian Musical Society conducted in dozens of concerts, operas, where were Fyodor Chaliapin, Leonid Sobinov. The conductor stood Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Taneyev. It was from that time Isaac Dunaevski began to dream to write for musical theater. In connection with the events of the Civil War, when life in the city become more complicated, Isaac moved for a few months in his native Lokhvytsya, and plunged into the midst of cultural and artistic life. In particular, he spoke in the local newspaper "The News" as a publicist promoting musical culture, and encouraging contemporaries to possess comprehensive knowledge, to respect the artistic heritage of previous generations. He also became one of the organizers of the People's University of Culture and is given to work in it reading lectures.
Isaac Dunaevsky also participated in performances of the local theater troupe. He even had to play the role of a doctor Chebutikin in the play by Anton Chekhov "Three Sisters". Lohvichani really liked the piano virtuoso playing their illustrious countryman. By the way, this musical instrument that is more than 100 years now stored in Lokhvitskiy museum of Skovoroda. The composer did not break ties with his native province. He helped with literature to music school in Lokhvitsa, which was organized in the postwar years. Now it bears his name. Grateful lohvichane to anniversaries countryman musical evenings, concerts and festivals. At home, the birthplace of the composer, there is a memorial plaque in his name.
The composer fruitfully worked with director Grigory Alexandrov, who was well aware that Isaac Dunaevsky for him - a real "gold mine". Alexandrov create movies-utopia, the Soviet "Hollywood" stories.
But the creative life of the composer was not easy, despite the fact that he bathed in the rays of glory, received from the then government high state awards.
In the music of Isaac Dunaevsky really affected a whole era, which was also heroic, and dramatic. He gave all his talent to the people of the country in which he lived and worked. His music has also had educational value in the light of the aesthetic values of the era. However, only few people knew what was going on in the soul of a composer who could not know how Stalin's repressive machine robbed the lives of millions in any innocent people, among whom were a lot of people of art and culture. Not surprisingly that a song dedicated to the tyrant Stalin, he wrote, without enthusiasm, it was a tribute to the time. When Stalin was listening the "Song of Stalin" for the first time, he said: "Comrade Dunaevsky put all his remarkable talents to this song about Comrade Stalin for nobody to sing it at all".
There were years when the composer was subjected to criticism in the press, blaming him for the departure from a clearly defined "party line" and the capture of light music, which is supposedly only to meet "members of bourgeois society." Although not that creative work of the talented composer has fallen to a very ideologically time (he had constantly to write essays on the official order), Isaac Dunaevsky filled each of his new work of sublime melodies, which are loaded with energy and optimism of contemporaries. A list of these works is very long. It is worth to remember that he wrote music for 280 films, many of which became classics not only in the USSRS, but also in the world cinema.
Among the most popular films were "Jolly Fellows" (1934), "Circus", "Children of Captain Grant" (1936), "A Rich Bride" (1937), and «Volga-Volga» (1938). He also wrote 12 operettas, which are staged on the Musical Theatre of Ukraine also in our time. More than 100 songs written by the composer to perform choral groups, constantly heard from the stage and speakers.
Sometimes they sound now. To the best examples of creativity of the composer's last years of his life belong "Roads and road", "Fly, pigeons", "How were you", "School Waltz", "Oh blooming viburnum" and others that evoke poignant emotions, because they conquer the contemporaries of his lyrical, melodic and unique range of human emotions that permeate the hearts of many music lovers. It so happens that most of the time an extremely gifted composer was forced to write songs and marches on the topic of the day. He could sit down and write the greatest symphonic works. This, in particular, said Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) while listening to his overture to the film "Children of Captain Grant". It was carrying a huge surge in the beautiful and dynamic music, which by force of sound and technique could be compared with some musical pieces, V.A. Mozart, R. Wagner, P. Tchaikovsky, E.Grieg.
Isaac Dunaevsky paid more attention to popular music, songwriting, that was meeting needs of society at that time. If he had lived longer, he would have began to write big symphonic works, for he was endowed with a unique melodic gift. In the works for films and musical comedies, his music was intertwined with the symphonic genre. Some fragments of the composer's operettas are completed musical works, that’s why they are often performed in concerts separately. His works are characterized by complex melodic harmonies and subtle way, they require a high performer vocal skill and great voice resources while at first glance seem easy.
Dmitriy Shostakovich was sorry that Dunaevski with his great talent a little appealed to symphonic works. The
composer understood this and wrote bitterly February 8, 1953, in his letter to I. Seroi: "I have had great success in the concert of the song, which took place the day before in the Hall of Columns in Moscow... This success makes me very happy. But what means my joy compared to my sorrow, my own great dissatisfaction? I am not a creator anymore. I still have spontaneous skill that allows me to stay ageless lion in the song. But these same songs, multiplied by my orchestral skills and thinking, could give cantatas, oratorios, poems, etc. And I'm sitting and doing for years, in fact, clientele. I'm angry, very angry at myself. And this anger, apparently, my only salvation, my only hope for exemption from my creative labaz...”.
Isaac Dunaevsky died in the prime of his creative powers. The fact that his work has developed in line with the ideologically motivated factors, of course, is fettered by a great talent of the composer. His lyrics and unique melodies always born in the hearts of people more aesthetic experiences and loaded them by force of life-affirming spirit.
