Oleg Karavaichuk: biography, works

Oleg Nikolayevich Karavaichuk 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 a thought of a successful person in the modern sense of the word. Imagination rather gives birth to the image of a man-eccentric, unsociable, incomprehensible, living in his ephemeral world, where there is not a single gram of material. Who he is, what breathes and what happens in his personal space - read all about this in our article.

Karavaychuk - who is he?

Oleg Karavaichuk is a composer from Russia, who wrote music for a huge number of films and performances, not only domestic, but also foreign ones. The author's works are known to many, but the personality of the composer himself remains a mystery, which is impossible to solve. Some consider him a genius, others - an oddball, a man with oddities. There are legends and rumors about him that turn reality into fiction. One thing can be said for sure: Oleg Karavaichuk is an extraordinary person, unlike anybody. He lives in his world, known to him alone. In this world there is no place for material things. Everything that happens around does not bother the maestro at all, it does not interest him what they think and what they say about him. He cares only about music.

Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk was born in December 1927 in Kiev. He began to hear music from a young age, and when he was five he wrote his first piece of music. He always spoke and did what he saw fit without looking at the opinions of others. Sunglasses, beret, stretched awkward sweater - his manner of dressing in the Soviet era was perceived as something abnormal. A man was often mistaken for a spy and tried to surrender to the police. However, with perestroika came another perception of Karavaiciuk people. He became a legend, a hero, a certain character.

Biography

The biography of the composer is fraught with a lot of dark stories and white spots. Sometimes it's hard to judge what is true, but what is fiction. There is information that, as a child, Oleg played before Stalin himself, and the leader of all nations gave the boy a white grand piano.

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

In 1945 Oleg Nikolaevich graduated from the music school in piano in Leningrad. Immediately I entered the State Conservatory, where I studied for four years. I must say that already in his student years, Karavaychuk behaved, to put it mildly, unconventionally. For example, he often did not agree with the professor, who taught "as expected", and the musician wanted to do as he "felt." Ros composer Oleg Karavaichuk in accordance with himself and only with himself. He did only what his inner freedom told him. At some point, studies in general became a flour, and Oleg Nikolayevich stopped attending classes. At the final exam at the conservatory, he made a scandal and for many years took leave of the big stage.

Activities

Almost two decades, Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaichuk worked in the cinema. Manifestations of freedom made him a favorite of Russian filmmakers. On the composer's account there are more than one hundred and fifty gaming and documentary tapes to which he composed music. One of the most successful works are works for the films "Monologue", "City of Masters", "Mom married". Some of Karavaiciuk's works recorded at the studio were included in two music collections - Concerto Grosso and "Waltzes and interludes". Many of the maestro's musical creations are unknown to the Russian listener, but they are widely worshiped outside our homeland. Karavaychuk wrote music for several ballets.

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

Until 1990, concerts of Karavaiciuk were forbidden, his writings were withdrawn, and the family was harassed. Probably, for this reason, the composer began to avoid unnecessary communication. The closed way of life he leads to this day.

Oleg Karavaichuk: personal life

A certain mystery always surrounded the composer, but with certainty it can be said that in the 50s and early 60s he led a "normal" way of life, lived at a dacha in Lahti, looked after the girls-Leningrad.

About the personal life of Karavaychuk almost nothing is known. He was never married, although there are rumors about a large number of fans of the composer's creativity, who vainly sought the attention of the maestro. By the way, about the women in whom he was in love, Karavaychuk tells with interest. Some of them, for example, Catherine II, he devoted several of his waltzes. Modern female representatives of the musician do not inspire. A man laments that the world has changed a lot, and women have changed with him.

For a long time, Oleg Nikolayevich lived with his mother on Vasilievsky Island. It is her maestro who considers him to be the best and most real teacher. According to Karavaiciuk, my mother was a true woman, she had French blood in her veins, and French was her native language. The woman graduated from the conservatory, was friends with the pianist Horowitz - the genius of music. My mother always understood Oleg, she never forced him to anything, just was close. According to the composer, he never met such teachers again.

Where and how he lives

After the mother's departure, Karavaychuk became a recluse. He has a small house in the village of Komarovo. On a site among dense thickets at once and not to see the tiny sagging hut. The musician does not recognize modern fashion for huge and, according to him, "dead" faceless houses with bare areas where there are no trees. He pities every blade of grass, birds, animals, saying that there is more life and truth in them than in a modern man.

A musician likes solitude. He argues that it is here, among nature, that you can freeze and dissolve, and it is better than this state for him. In moments of total emptiness, when there are no dreams or thoughts, music comes.

Karavaychuk Oleg Nikolaevich says: "Everyone wanted to make me" sensible, "correct." And he himself did not need it. When the maestro sits at the instrument, his fingers begin to live a life completely separate from the whole world. The people around recognize the genius of Karavaychuk, and he says: "I do not feel that it's brilliant. I just play, and the music pours from the heart. I do not feel a drop of genius, but if I feel myself so, I will not play it. "

About music

Oleg Nikolaevich writes music at night, amidst silence. Nothing hinders him, and to create, no special atmosphere is required. On questions about whether there are crises or torments in his creative life, the maestro replies that everything turns out unexpectedly, the music simply comes at a time when the man is in a state of boredom.

He tries not to think about music, because it conveys inner psychology. According to Karavaiciuk, a note enriched by philosophy is much worse than just a note. You can not think much about music, you can not feel or invest meaning, you just need to play. When inspiration comes, the main thing is that at hand something turns out - it does not matter what it will be - a note notebook or the rest of the old wallpaper.

He has an absolute form, over which others are fighting for years - that's what Oleg Karavaichuk often talks about to his interlocutor. "Waltz of a Madman" is one of the works of the composer, which gives the listener a very good idea of the hurricane of passion that rages in the author's soul. Great at first make a sketch, later sharpen the form, and Karavaychuk can instantly play, as in a stroke - "though from the bed, even from the coffin." Before touching the instrument, his hands are drawn in the air.

Concerts of the maestro

Each month in the Museum-apartment of the artist Brodsky there are concerts of Oleg Karavaichuk. However, it is difficult to call a concert by a musician a concert in the usual sense of the word. Every time this improvisation, without a certain program, without rehearsals. At musical evenings, the composer mixes his own compositions with the immortal works of the classics, serving it under individual sauce, in a manner peculiar to him alone.

By the way, before the concert, Karavaychuk often asks to remove the first rows from the hall - his instrument produces too powerful sounds, and the maestro is afraid of stunning his audience inadvertently. But this, perhaps, is the only reason why the composer recalls the listener. According to the musician's own admission, he does not perceive anyone at concerts. To abstract from the hustle and bustle, Karavaichuk wears a pillowcase on his head during the performance. Last years it was in this form that the spectator contemplated. Today, they say, the maestro has cooled to this habit, but often allows himself to perform something unusual at the performance - for example, playing prone.

What is inside

Karavaychuk exists in his own world filled with music. He does not have a TV, he does not read newspapers, he does not care about what is happening around him, what they write about him - he's also not interested. However, there are things that affect the musician, for example, painting. Karavaichuk admits that this is a powerful force that can drive people crazy. He was very impressed by the visit to the art galleries during his visit to Spain. Also the musician was very fond of the national Spanish dance - flamenco.

He worships Petersburg. The composer has a special perception of this city. Karavaychuk shares that an incredible impact on a person produces a city on the Neva on a gray day, with gray and menacing clouds. It is a formidable grayness, from which it is showing greatness. And here below - the usual "seryatin" and "pathetic man".

The musician has practically no friends. He often repeats: "I live according to Pushkin. God, save me from your friends, and I'll get rid of enemies myself. " "... Appearance does not matter to me" - that's why he never thinks about how he looks, Oleg Karavaichuk. Interview musician gives reluctantly. In his own words, it lacks narcissism. The maestro has no favorite photos, and he does not like to look at them.

Karavaychuk has a special attitude towards cinema. He practically does not look at it. The musician says that, like music, cinema should not turn into a rostrum with ideas, the screen simply has to show something.

Why am I playing?

Currently, Karavaychuk only participates in those projects that interest him creatively. In whatever financial situation the maestro is, he refuses the commercial offers. He considers mastery for himself in music to be not mastery at all. His idea is to guide people into the world of the beautiful and the immaterial. "... When I play, in the listener something starts to sprout, and he hears the world."

He was prejudiced for a long time, and only after his visit to the UK, where Karavaychuk spoke at the BBC radio station for the Russian audience and enraptured his radio presenter with energy, was appreciated at home in his native country.

Oleg Nikolayevich Karavaichuk worked with Vasily Shukshin, Ilya Averbakh, Kira Muratova. The maestro was friends with the avant-garde musician Sergey Kuryokhin, Shostakovich, studied at Richter. He is an unusual person, not just a composer - he is wider and deeper than this concept. However, everything that physically remains of his years of work, in addition to working in the cinema, is two compact discs. It is rumored that at home at the maestro - a whole mountain of reels with their own records.

Of course, his talent is marked by some awards. For example, in 2002, Karavaichuk received the Golden Eagle for his music for the film Dark Night, and in 2009 he won the Sergei Kuryokhin Award for Merits in the Development of Contemporary Art. In 2010, the maestro was nominated for the "Steppe Wolf" award in the category "Something". However, by and large, Karavaychuk is outside the social system. He does not distinguish between work and life, because music for him - this is the life itself. And for this it is worth to be respected immensely.