Oleg Karavaychuk: biography, works

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk is a musician who is known not only in Russia, but also abroad. However, the first association that comes to mind when you hear his name is by no means the thought of a successful person in the modern sense of the word. Imagination rather gives rise to the image of an eccentric man, unsociable, incomprehensible, living in his own ephemeral world, where there is not a single gram of material. Who he is, what he breathes and what happens in his personal space - read about all this in our article.

Karavaichuk - who is he?

Oleg Karavaichuk is a composer from Russia who has written music for a huge number of films and performances, not only domestic, but also foreign. The author's works are known to many, but the personality of the composer himself remains a mystery that cannot be unraveled. Some consider him a genius, others - an eccentric, a man with oddities. There are legends and rumors about him that turn reality into fiction. One thing can be said absolutely for sure: Oleg Karavaychuk is an extraordinary person, unlike anyone else. He lives in his own world, known to him alone. There is no place for material things in this world. Everything that happens around is not at allthe maestro cares, he is not interested in what they think about him and what they say. He only cares about the music.

Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk was born in December 1927 in Kyiv. He began to hear music from an early age, and when he was five, he wrote his first piece of music. He always said and did what he considered necessary, without looking back at the opinions of others. Dark glasses, a beret, a stretched awkward sweater - his manner of dressing in Soviet times was perceived as something abnormal. The man was often mistaken for a spy and tried to hand over to the police. However, with perestroika came a different perception of Karavaychuk by people. He became a legend, a hero, a character.

Biography

The composer's biography is fraught with many dark stories and white spots. Sometimes it is difficult to judge what is true and what is fiction. There is information that, as a child, Oleg played in front of Stalin himself, and the leader of all peoples gave the boy a white piano.

As a child, the future composer starred in the legendary film "Volga-Volga". Oleg Karavaychuk's parents were intelligent people. Father was engaged in professional music - he played the violin, but the man was arrested when Oleg Nikolaevich was only two years old. The composer practically does not know his father. Karavaichuk's mother also had a conservatory education.

In 1945, Oleg Nikolaevich graduated from the music school in piano in Leningrad. He immediately entered the State Conservatory, where he studied for four years. It must be said that already in his student years Karavaychuk behaved, to put it mildly, outside the box. For example, he often did not agree with the professor, who taught "as expected", and the musician wanted to do as he "felt". The composer Oleg Karavaychuk grew up in harmony with himself and only with himself. He did only what his inner freedom told him to do. At some point, study generally became flour, and Oleg Nikolayevich stopped attending classes. At the final exam at the conservatory, he made a scandal and for many years said goodbye to the big stage.

Activities

Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk worked in cinema for almost two decades. Manifestations of freedom made him a favorite of Russian filmmakers. The composer has more than one hundred and fifty feature and documentary films, to which he wrote music. One of the most successful works are works for the films "Monologue", "City of Masters", "Mom Got Married". Some of Karavaichuk's works, recorded at the studio, were included in two music collections - Concerto Grosso and W altzes and Intermissions. Many of the maestro's musical creations are unknown to the Russian listener, but are widely revered outside of our Motherland. Karavaychuk wrote music for several ballets.

In the early 60s, Oleg Nikolayevich's only public performance took place in the Leningrad Concert Hall. The next time Karavaichuk met with a wide audience only twenty years later - in 1984 the composer performed the music of Beethoven and Mussorgsky on the stage of the Stanislavsky Actor's House.

Up to 1990 concertsKaravaichuk were banned, his writings were confiscated, and his family was persecuted. Probably for this reason, the composer began to avoid excessive communication. He leads a closed lifestyle to this day.

Oleg Karavaychuk: personal life

Some mystery has always surrounded the composer, but we can say with confidence that in the 50s and early 60s he led a “normal” lifestyle, lived in a dacha in Lakhta, courted Leningrad girls.

Almost nothing is known about Karavaichuk's personal life. He has never been married, although there are rumors about a large number of admirers of the composer's work, who vainly sought the attention of the maestro. By the way, Karavaychuk talks about the women he was in love with with interest. Some of them, for example, Catherine II, he dedicated several of his w altzes. Modern female musicians do not inspire. A man laments that the world has changed so much and women have changed with him.

For a long time Oleg Nikolaevich lived with his mother on Vasilievsky Island. It is her maestro who considers the best and real teacher. According to Karavaychuk, mother was a true woman, French blood flowed in her veins, and French was her native language. The woman graduated from the conservatory, was friends with the pianist Horowitz, a musical genius. Mom always understood Oleg, she never forced him to anything, she was just there. According to the composer, he never met such teachers again.

Where and how does he live

After leavingmother from the life of Karavaychuk became a recluse. He has a small house in the village of Komarovo. On a site among dense thickets, you can’t immediately see a tiny rickety hut. The musician does not recognize the modern fashion for huge and, in his words, "dead" faceless houses with bare plots where there are no trees. He pities every blade of grass, birds, animals, saying that they have more life and truth than modern man.

The musician loves privacy. He claims that it is here, in the midst of nature, that one can freeze and dissolve, and there is no better state for him. In moments of complete emptiness, when there are no dreams or thoughts, music comes.

Karavaychuk Oleg Nikolaevich says: “Everyone wanted to make me smart, correct.” And he didn't need it. When the maestro sits down at the instrument, his fingers begin to live a life completely separate from the whole world. Those around him recognize Karavaychuk's genius, and he claims: “I don't feel that this is brilliant. I just play, and the music itself flows from the soul. I don't feel like a genius, and if I feel like one, I won't play like that.”

About music

Oleg Nikolaevich writes music at night, in the midst of silence. Nothing prevents him, and in order to create, no special atmosphere is required. To questions about whether there are crises or torments in his creative life, the maestro replies that everything turns out unexpectedly for him, music just comes at a moment when a man is in a state of boredom.

Hetries not to think about music, because it conveys inner psychology. According to Karavaychuk, a note enriched with philosophy is much worse than just a note. You can’t think much about music, you can’t feel or give meaning, you just need to play. When inspiration comes, the main thing is to have something at hand - no matter what it will be - a music notebook or the remnants of old wallpaper.

He has an absolute form, over which others have been struggling for years - this is what Oleg Karavaychuk often tells his interlocutor. The Madman's W altz is one of the composer's works, which gives the listener the best idea of the hurricane of passions raging in the author's soul. The great ones first make a sketch, then refine the shape, and Karavaychuk can instantly play, as if on a roll - “even from the bed, even from the coffin.” Before touching the instrument, his hands draw something in the air.

Maestro Concerts

Every month Oleg Karavaychuk's concerts are held at the Museum-apartment of the artist Brodsky. However, it is difficult to call the musician's performances concerts in the usual sense of the word. Every time it is improvisation, without a definite program, without rehearsals. At musical evenings, the composer mixes his own compositions with the immortal works of the classics, serving it with an individual sauce, in a manner of performance peculiar to him alone.

By the way, before the concert, Karavaychuk often asks to remove the first rows from the hall - his instrument makes too powerful sounds, and the maestro is inadvertently afraidstun your audience. But this is perhaps the only reason why the composer remembers the listener. By his own admission, the musician, he does not perceive anyone at concerts. To abstract from the fuss, Karavaychuk puts a pillowcase on his head during a performance. In recent years, it was in this form that the viewer contemplated it. Today, they say, the maestro has cooled off this habit, but he often allows himself something unusual at a performance - for example, playing lying down.

What's inside

Karavaichuk exists in his own world filled with music. He does not have a TV, he does not read newspapers, he is not interested in what is happening around him, what is written about him - he is also not interested. However, there are things that influence a musician, such as painting. Karavaychuk admits that this is a powerful force that can drive you crazy. He was very impressed by visiting art galleries during his visit to Spain. The musician also fell in love with the national Spanish dance - flamenco.

He idolizes Petersburg. The composer has a special perception of this city. Karavaychuk shares that the city on the Neva makes an incredible impact on a person on a gray day, with gray and menacing clouds. This is a formidable dullness, from which it breathes greatness. But below - the usual "seryatina" and "pathetic human being."

The musician has practically no friends. He often repeats: “I live according to Pushkin. God, deliver me from my friends, and I will rid myself of my enemies.” “… Appearance does not matter to me” - therefore, Oleg Karavaychuk never thinks about how he looks. The musician gives an interviewreluctantly. In his own words, there is no narcissism in him. The maestro doesn't have favorite photos, and he doesn't like to look at them.

Karavaichuk has a special relationship with cinema. He hardly looks at it. The musician says that, like music, cinema shouldn't turn into a platform with ideas, the screen should just show something.

Why am I playing?

Currently, Karavaychuk participates only in those projects that interest him creatively. In whatever financial situation the maestro is, he refuses commercial offers. The main thing for himself in music, he considers not skill at all. His idea is to guide people to the world of beauty and intangibility. “…When I play, something starts to sprout in the listener and he hears the world.”

He was treated with prejudice for a long time, and only after a visit to the UK, where Karavaychuk spoke on the BBC radio station for a Russian audience and delighted radio hosts with his energy, he was appreciated at home.

Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk worked with Vasily Shukshin, Ilya Averbakh, Kira Muratova. The maestro was friends with the avant-garde musician Sergei Kuryokhin, Shostakovich, and studied with Richter. He is an unusual person, not just a composer - he is wider and deeper than this concept. However, all that physically remains of his many years of work, in addition to work in the cinema, are two CDs. Rumor has it that at home the maestro has a whole mountain of reels with his own recordings.

Of course, his talent has won some awards. For example, in 2002 Karavaychuk received the Golden Ram for the music for the film Dark Night, and in 2009 he received the Sergey Kuryokhin Award for Merit in the Development of Contemporary Art. In 2010, the maestro was nominated for the Steppenwolf Award in the Something category. However, by and large, Karavaychuk is outside the social system. He does not distinguish between work and life, because music for him is this very life. And for that he deserves immense respect.