Composer Grigory Ponomarenko: biography, features of creativity and interesting facts

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

Grigory Ponomarenko is a composer who left a huge legacy after his sudden departure. There is probably not a single person in Russia who has never heard this name, and even more so songs set to music composed by a genius. In 2016, Grigory Fedorovich would have turned 95 years old, but fate decreed otherwise - he did not live up to 75. However, his compositions are still alive - they are loved not only in our country, but also abroad.

Biography

The future People's Artist of the USSR and the great composer was born in the village of Morovsk in Ukraine into a peasant family. Abilities and a sincere interest in music manifested themselves in the boy as a child. When he was 5 years old, he secretly from his uncle, who was a famous musical master-nugget, played instruments that accidentally fell into his hands. And at the age of 6, he struck fellow villagers who had gathered for gatherings with his daring playing the button accordion. This happened when his uncle, Maxim Terentyevich, decidedrest after work in the circle of neighbors. The boy learned musical notation at the age of eight, when he sang in the church choir.

Of course, the zeal for music did not go unnoticed, and the uncle took his nephew to his family in the city of Zaporozhye, where in 1933 little Grisha became a student of the professional accordion player Alexander Kinebas. At the age of fourteen, a teenager is accepted as a musician in the city House of Pioneers. While working there, he often had to accompany tourists who came to see the sights of Zaporozhye, and one day, noticing the boy’s talent, the leader of a group of schoolchildren from Kyiv suggested that the button accordion player move to the capital of Ukraine.

In Kyiv

This city has long attracted young Gregory, and he immediately agreed. Upon arrival, Grigory Ponomarenko got a job as an accordionist in a jazz orchestra. And here his gift did not go unnoticed, and his extraordinary abilities were duly appreciated by the musician of the song and dance ensemble of the border troops of Ukraine, after which the boy was auditioned by the artistic director Semyon Semyonovich Shkolnik. Having shown outstanding musical abilities, Grigory was accepted into the ensemble.

First songs

Grigory Ponomarenko worked in this field for many years - until 1949. During these years, many works were created. It was here that he wrote his first songs. Musicians can read the notes of Grigory Ponomarenko to such songs as “Horsemen passed along the wide street”, written in 1938, “Death for death”,composed three years later and others.

Together with the ensemble, Grigory Ponomarenko toured, more often along the western borders of the country, the composer went through the whole war with him. Defending the honor and independence of the country, he distinguished himself, therefore he was assigned to the awards: in his arsenal there are two medals and one order.

Music director

After working in the ensemble, Grigory Ponomarenko, whose biography is so rich in events, worked for two years as an accordion soloist in the Osipov Folk Orchestra, this was in Moscow. But his true vocation was still singing. Therefore, in 1952, already in Kuibyshev, he had the opportunity to take the place of musical director of the Volga Folk Choir thanks to his acquaintance with the outstanding choirmaster Miloslavov. Here his outstanding organizational skills were revealed, and he wrote wonderful songs, beloved by us.

On the poems of the poet V. G. Alferov, the composer revealed to the world “Ivushka” (the one that is green above the river), and it was written in 1957. In collaboration with V. P. Burygin, “Oh, the Volga River” was born in 1959. Further, in the same year, with V. Bokov, the composer wrote "Young Agronomist". Starting from this period, a joint program with Bokov for the Orenburg Folk Choir is being prepared for a whole year. It was at this time that his famous song by Grigory Fedorovich “Orenburg Downy Shawl” appears.

By 1961, the composer had created more than 60 songs - this rich experience was embodied in the first song collection.

Volgograd

Since 1963, Grigory Fedorovich has been living in Volgograd for ten years and is the leader of the Folk Choir at the Palace of Culture at the Tractor Plant. Here he met the poetess Margarita Agashina. Their joint work was fruitful - the first song called "What was, it was" sounded on the All-Union radio. This happened in 1964, and the legendary Lyudmila Zykina became the performer. During this period, many songs were written that glorified the name of the composer not only throughout the country, but also far beyond its borders. Songs such as "Give me a handkerchief", "Where can I get such a song" and other people sang by entire nations.

Stay in Volgograd gave the talented composer a reason to pay closer attention to the work of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. The musical compositions created at that time are a real treasure of national culture: “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry”, “Golden grove dissuaded”, “Here it is stupid happiness” and many others. The first performers of Ponomarenko's songs were K. Shulzhenko, L. Zykina, I. Kobzon, L. Leshchenko and others.

Other shapes

In 1971, the composer plunged into work on creating music for the films "Stepmother", "Russian Field", "Fatherlessness", filmed on the basis of the Moscow Film Studio. Seven years later, he writes music for the play based on the play by A. Sofronov "Hurricane", where E. Bystritskaya, beloved by many, became the prima. At the same film studio, a film about the composer's work called "Where can I get such a song" was shot.

Ponomarenko's outstanding talent also manifested itself in works of a different format - he wrote 5 operettas, music for the choir of a spiritual orientation "All-Night Vigil", oratorios for a mixed choir and orchestra, concertos for bayan, pieces for an orchestra of folk instruments, quartets.

Kuban hospitality

In 1972, Grigory Fedorovich was invited by the first secretary of the Regional Committee of Krasnodar Zolotukhin to the festival "Kuban Musical Spring". Kuban received the composer very cordially, he liked this prosperous, hospitable region, and in the same year, at the end of summer, Ponomarenko felt like a local composer, as they say. It was in the Kuban that many beautiful songs appeared, written in a single creative impulse with the Kuban poets.

His songs about the Kuban land were received with great reverence by a famous person - the head of the Russian song choir, People's Artist of the USSR - Kutuzov, and immediately became part of the band's repertoire. In the capital of the Kuban, Krasnodar, Ponomarenko created a cycle of songs based on Blok's poems, continued to work on Yesenin's poems - these songs are in Kobzon's repertoire. The following works to the words of T. Golub, O. Bergolts, G. Gerogiev, N. Dorizo and others have long become the heart of the spiritual life of our compatriots: “Do not wake the cranes of the widows of Russia”, “But I only now understand”, “Song to the native land”, "Krasnodar street Krasnaya".

Composer Grigory Ponomarenko, whose biography and work is the property of our country, tragically died incar accident on January 7, 1996. But his works continue to live. For example, in 2010, 641 compositions created by this brilliant person sounded around the world.