|
EARTH LP 016
Mikael TARIVERDIEV. "The Irony of Fate", original score
Earth Records, UK, 2016
Side 1
1. Overture / Увертюра ***
2. What Is Happening To Me / Со мною вот что происходит ****
3. Hope / Надежда *
4. Expectation Of The New Year / В ожидании нового года *
5. No One's Home / Никого не будет в доме ****
6. Snow Over Leningrad / Снег над Ленинградом *
7. Along My Street For Many Years / По улице моей который год ****
8. The Third Stroitelnaya Street / На Третьей Улице Строителей *
Side 2
1. On Tikhoretskaya / На Тихорецкую состав отправится **
2. Happy New Year / C Новым годом! *
3. I Like / Мне нравится ****
4. Aria For A Moscow Guest / Ария московского гостя ****
5. The Last Waltz / Последний вальс *
6. I Asked The Mirror / Хочу у зеркала спросить ****
7. I Asked The Ash Tree / Я спросил у ясеня ****
8. Do Not Leave Your Lover / C любимыми не расставайтесь *
9. Melody / Мелодия *
Words from verses by:
Side 1/Track 5 Boris Pasternak, 1/7 Bella Akhmadulina, 1/2 Evgeniy Evtushenko, 2/3 M. Cvetaeva, 2/4 Alexander Aronov, 2/7 V. Kirshon, 2/6 M. Tsvetaeva
* with the Ensemble Melodia conducted by George Garanyan
** based on the verses by Mikhail Lvovsky. Performed by Alla Pugatcheva, Valentina Talizina, Lya Akhedjakova
*** with the Orchestra Of Cinematography conducted by Konstantin Krimetz
**** with Alla Pugatcheva (vocal) and Sergey Nikitin (guitar and vocal)
THOUGH 'STAR' IS A WORD OFTEN APPLIED TO MAJOR players in the cinematic world, as far as I'm aware, Russia's Eldar Ryazanov is the only film director to have actually had an asteroid named after him. But that was only one of many accolades he was awarded during his lifetime. When he died in November 2015, he left behind an astonishing fifty year, thirty movie legacy which included some of the most popular Russian films of the modern age. And of all of them, the one that remains the most popular is The Irony of Fate, a comedy made for Mosfilm in 1975. It is still shown on television every single New Year's Eve when it is watched and loved by Russians young and old. It is his It's a Wonderful Life or perhaps his Miracle on 34th Street.
A group of friends are out celebrating the last night of the year. One, Zhenya, a Moscow doctor drunk out of his mind, is mistakenly put on a plane to Leningrad by his confused friends and on arrival, still drunk, gives his address to a taxi driver. He is driven to an apartment he believes is his own and falls asleep there until woken by the actual owner, Nadya a beautiful teacher. A series of intersecting consequences and an improbable love story ensue, all set against a Soviet winter background.
The film is a classic in Ryazanov's trademark style: on the surface it is a poignant comedy of errors and intimate lives but is underpinned by a satirical sub-plot slyly poking fun at an aspect of the Soviet system: the drab uniformity of the Brezhnev-era 'planned economy' identikit apartments in identical blocks on streets with identical names. And, as with all his films but one (1961's A Man from Nowhere), it was skilful and witty enough to manoeuvre around the attentions of the censor and became a huge hit.
But He Irony of Fate owes part of its immense popularity not just to its genius director, its clever comedy, its satirical subplot or its starring actors. It is a film with songs. And those songs and the underscore that accompa-nied them have become as memorable as the film itself, they have become part of the Russian musical DNA, recognised even when the name of their composer, Mikael Tariverdiev, is not.
In the mid 1970s, Tariverdiev was at the top of his game having written the score for the cult TV series Seventeen Moments Of Spring and a sequence of critically rated and popular films. Born in 1931 in Tbilisi to Armenian parents, he was to go on to score over 130 movies, write more than a hundred romances, ballets, operas and vocal cycles and, like Ryazanov, receive many awards. But the story of how he came to write the music for The Irony of Fate is a curious one. Ryazanov had always intended the film to have musical interludes and had originally intended to commission six or seven composers to write the songs. He had found a reference track he believed to be a traditional folk tune but which turned out to be an original piece by Tariverdiev.
On discovering this, at a chance meeting in the cinematography union, the composer (ambitious as ever) persuaded the director to let him pitch for all the score. Over the next two weeks he wrote the music for what were to become some of the most enduring songs of modern Russian cinema (and, in the case of Asked the Ash Tree', practically attain the status of a national folk tune.)
Vera Tariverdieva, Mikael's widow, tells that such was the impact of the music, the day after the film's first showing, Tariverdiev was catapulted to the status of a reluctant star with fans queueing in the street outside his apartment to meet him. The songs also provided major career turning points for the musicians Alla Pugatcheva (who provided Nadya's singing voice) and Sergey Nikitin (the singing voice of Zhenya). Due to popular demand, Melodiya, the Soviet state record company released the songs on an album which became a best seller. For this, according a system which put the often brutal commercial relationship between Western artists and record labels into perspective, Tariveridiev was paid an additional fee of 150 rubles. No, that is not 150 rubles per album, 150 rubles in total.
Listening to the songs and score now, I am struck by two things. Firstly, that however wonderful were the films Tariverdiev worked on, the genius of his music is such that it seems to live without them. You don't need to see the films to love the music. In fact there seems to be a quality that encourages a personal cinematic response in the listener's imagination. Secondly, how is it that until the release of the Film Music collection in 2015, his music has remained virtually unknown in the West? After all, as the response to that release recognised, this was a film composer of the calibre of Nina Rota, Ennio Morricone or Michel Legrand. The answer is probably the same as to why Ryazanov, a figure as significant as Billy Wilder, remained unknown outside the ex-Soviet Union: the Iron Curtain closed in both directions and they, like many other Soviet artists who were independent souls but not actual persecuted dissidents, were victims of our cultural propaganda.
Ryazanov and Tariverdiev were household names in Russia and though many of the films they worked on ridiculed Soviet bureaucracy, their popularity and the fact they managed to negotiate the strictures of the system they worked in, seems to have negated their artistic merit to Western perception. Our lazy cold war view of life behind the Iron Curtain is that it was uniformly cold, humourless and grey and that nothing that passed the censor could possibly be of much value or interest. But an irony of fate is this: for millions of Soviet people, there was laughter, there was glamour, great art, great films - and there was great music.
And some of it now, is here for us too.
STEPHEN COATES 20I6
Produced by Stephen Coates and Vera Tariverdieva with tracks mastered from original tapes in the Tariverdiev apartment by Paul Heartfield, Stephen Coates and Konstantin Chernazotonsky. Images courtesy of Paul Heartfield, Vera Tariverdieva and Mosfilm. Sleeve design by Alex Hornsby. Published by Antique Beat.
Photos left to right: Theyna oh Nadya (And, Myagkov & Barbara Brylska); Ippolit (Yuri Yakovlev); Eldar Ryazanov with bylska & Myagkov on set; Ryazanov composes a shot; Mikael Tariverdiev (second 10) with Ryazanov and cast members at an awards ceremony, circa 1976
|
|
|
|
