About the fate of music and musicians. Russian pianist, musicologist and music teacher

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USSR

Vitaly Iosifovich Margulis(April 16 - May 29) - Russian pianist, musicologist and music teacher.

Biography

This amazingly inspiring book opens a window into the life of music and leads us by the hand into our beloved piano country. Margulis's Bagatelles are full of wisdom and humor. His outstanding intuition, deep knowledge of human nature and spiritual depths will captivate musicians and non-musicians alike. This book is irresistible.

Collection of autobiographical essays “Chronicles. Short stories from the life of a musician" was published in Moscow by the Moscow publishing house "Classics-XXI".

Teacher

Students of Vitaly Margulis have become laureates more than a hundred times international competitions, including twenty-eight receiving top honors. Among Margulis's students, in particular, Philipp Bianconi, Bernd Glemser [Andreas Fröhlich] and others.

Sources

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An excerpt characterizing Margulis, Vitaly Iosifovich

- Vile woman! - the princess screamed, suddenly rushing at Anna Mikhailovna and snatching the briefcase.
Prince Vasily lowered his head and spread his arms.
At that moment the door, that terrible door that Pierre had been looking at for so long and which had opened so quietly, quickly and noisily fell back, slamming against the wall, and the middle princess ran out of there and clasped her hands.
- What are you doing! – she said desperately. – II s"en va et vous me laissez seule. [He dies, and you leave me alone.]
The eldest princess dropped her briefcase. Anna Mikhailovna quickly bent down and, picking up the controversial item, ran into the bedroom. The eldest princess and Prince Vasily, having come to their senses, followed her. A few minutes later, the eldest princess was the first to emerge from there, with a pale and dry face and a bitten lower lip. At the sight of Pierre, her face expressed uncontrollable anger.
“Yes, rejoice now,” she said, “you have been waiting for this.”
And, bursting into tears, she covered her face with a handkerchief and ran out of the room.
Prince Vasily came out for the princess. He staggered to the sofa where Pierre was sitting and fell on it, covering his eyes with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his lower jaw was jumping and shaking, as if in a feverish trembling.
- Oh, my friend! - he said, taking Pierre by the elbow; and in his voice there was a sincerity and weakness that Pierre had never noticed in him before. – How much do we sin, how much do we deceive, and all for what? I’m in my sixties, my friend... After all, for me... Everything will end in death, that’s it. Death is terrible. - He cried.
Anna Mikhailovna was the last to leave. She approached Pierre with quiet, slow steps.
“Pierre!...” she said.
Pierre looked at her questioningly. She kissed the young man's forehead, moistening it with her tears. She paused.
– II n "est plus... [He was gone...]
Pierre looked at her through his glasses.
- Allons, je vous reconduirai. Tachez de pleurer. Rien ne soulage, comme les larmes. [Come on, I'll take you with you. Try to cry: nothing makes you feel better than tears.]
She led him into the dark living room and Pierre was glad that no one there saw his face. Anna Mikhailovna left him, and when she returned, he, with his hand under his head, was fast asleep.
The next morning Anna Mikhailovna said to Pierre:
- Oui, mon cher, c"est une grande perte pour nous tous. Je ne parle pas de vous. Mais Dieu vous soutndra, vous etes jeune et vous voila a la tete d"une immense fortune, je l"espere. Le testament n"a pas ete encore ouvert. Je vous connais assez pour savoir que cela ne vous tourienera pas la tete, mais cela vous impose des devoirs, et il faut etre homme. [Yes, my friend, this is a great loss for all of us, not to mention you. But God will support you, you are young, and now you are, I hope, the owner of enormous wealth. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well enough and I am sure that this will not turn your head; but this imposes responsibilities on you; and you have to be a man.]
Pierre was silent.
– Peut etre plus tard je vous dirai, mon cher, que si je n"avais pas ete la, Dieu sait ce qui serait arrive. Vous savez, mon oncle avant hier encore me promettait de ne pas oublier Boris. Mais il n"a pas eu le temps. J "espere, mon cher ami, que vous remplirez le desir de votre pere. [Afterwards, perhaps I will tell you that if I had not been there, God knows what would have happened. You know that the uncle of the third day He promised me not to forget Boris, but he didn’t have time. I hope, my friend, you will fulfill your father’s wish.]
Pierre, not understanding anything and silently, blushing shyly, looked at Princess Anna Mikhailovna. After talking with Pierre, Anna Mikhailovna went to the Rostovs and went to bed. Waking up in the morning, she told the Rostovs and all her friends the details of the death of Count Bezukhy. She said that the count died the way she wanted to die, that his end was not only touching, but also edifying; The last meeting between father and son was so touching that she could not remember him without tears, and that she does not know who behaved better in these terrible moments: the father, who remembered everything and everyone in such a way. last minutes and such touching words were spoken to his son, or Pierre, whom it was a pity to see how he was killed and how, despite this, he tried to hide his sadness so as not to upset his dying father. “C"est penible, mais cela fait du bien; ca eleve l"ame de voir des hommes, comme le vieux comte et son digne fils,” [It’s hard, but it’s saving; the soul rises when you see people like the old count and his worthy son,” she said. She also spoke about the actions of the princess and Prince Vasily, not approving of them, but in great secrecy and in a whisper.

In June 1941, as a seven-year-old girl, I passed the piano exam and entered the first grade of the ten-year music school at the Leningrad State Conservatory. The war began, the school and conservatory were evacuated to Tashkent, and my life was forever connected with these two musical organisms. After graduating from the conservatory, I began teaching piano at a ten-year school, then at the conservatory, where I worked for 30 years. In addition to piano pedagogy, I have always been interested in the history of musical performance. I wrote about St. Petersburg (Leningrad) pianists, conductors (Seagull No. 2.5, 2003), violinists, singers. This essay is dedicated to the remarkable Leningrad pianist, now a professor of piano at the largest Californian university, UCLA, Vitaly Margulis.

Old man Morgulis on the boulevard
Beethoven sang to us...
O. Mandelstam

One night the phone rang in my New York apartment. The voice sounded excited and happy:

I just played my best concert in my life.

What did you play?

Beethoven's opus one hundred and eleven. When I finished, there was such silence! I was told that many in the hall were crying...

How did you feel?

It took me a while to come to my senses. I thought I was dying. After all, I have an agreement with God that I will die during a very successful concert.

How did you manage to conclude such an agreement?!

Well... The agreement is actually one-sided. Only one signature...

This dialogue contains all of Margulis. His passionate love for the stage and profession, his calm perception of death as natural continuation of life, his rare ability to decorate the mundane with an unexpected joke. And the one hundred and eleventh opus is Beethoven’s last (No. 32) sonata, which concentrates the composer’s thoughts on life, death and immortality human soul. A great creation, the study of which Vitaly Margulis devoted almost a quarter of a century...

There was a lot in his destiny: struggle, love, creative ups and downs, hopes and disappointments. But never never I didn’t see him in despondency and inactivity. And we have known each other for more than fifty years!

His musical pedigree is enviable. Father, Joseph Margulis, a talented pianist and improviser, was a student of the uncle of the legendary Vladimir Horowitz, Alexander Horowitz, who, in turn, studied with Scriabin!

In the thirties, the Margulis family lived in Kharkov. It was a difficult time. There was not enough bread, but there were always two pianos in the apartment. In his yet unpublished book under the intriguing title “Chronicles” 1 (one of the chapters of the Bible, translated in the Russian edition as “Chronicle”), Vitaly talks with humor about his childhood. He slept on the lid of one of the pianos. It happened that in the middle of the night my father would get inspired and start playing. The child heard music in his sleep, and in the morning he picked out by ear what sounded in his head: the melodies of Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Schumann. At the age of five, systematic training began. The father was very strict, forced the baby to study a lot, and sometimes even beat him. The method, frankly speaking, is not new, but fruitful at all times. According to the recollections of contemporaries, it was used by the father of Wolfgang Mozart and the father of Niccolo Paganini, and during the first lessons of Emil Gilels there was a belt on the chair next to the piano...

When Vitaly grew up, his mother took him to the Kharkov Palace of Pioneers, and the boy began to experience a sort of “double consciousness.” The music teacher at the Palace of Pioneers assigned Maikapar’s “Spillkins”, and his father learned with him Scriabin’s Etudes and “ Moonlight Sonata"Beethoven. “Oddly enough, I learned Tchaikovsky’s concerto without much difficulty,” the pianist recalls, “and played it with the orchestra when I was ten years old. “The Biryulkas” remained unlearned, since music cannot be taught without love.” I wonder what about the same, recalling her childhood and learning music, Marina Tsvetaeva writes: “I loved music. I just didn’t love mine. There is no future for a child, there is only Now(which for him is Always). And now there were scales, and ganons, and insignificant ones, offending me with their tiny “play.” 2

I first saw Vitaly when I was nine years old. There was a war going on. The Leningrad Conservatory and a ten-year school for musically gifted children were located in Tashkent. The government of Uzbekistan provided Leningrad residents with a former sewing workers' club. The musicians had only fourteen classes at their disposal. I had to study around the clock. At night the conservatory belonged to the students, during the day classes were held as scheduled, and early in the morning children came to the club. However, all interests, all conversations during the day were focused not on music, but on food: they remembered who ate what for breakfast before the war. Now breakfast (as well as lunch and dinner) was monotonous - thin porridge made from dark, almost black flour - a mash, which was beautifully called “pork chop”, in the sense of being taken from a pig...

The school dormitory - a wooden barracks - consisted of two large rooms for boys and girls. Forty people lived in each one. There was only one piano for everyone, everyone could play only 15-20 minutes a day.

And then Vitaly appeared. Cheerful, cheerful, handsome and very sociable, he immediately attracted the attention of children and adults. He amazed everyone with his incredible determination and love of music for a fourteen-year-old. Every day I got up at five in the morning and went to the conservatory in order to have time to play before classes started. His hard work was legendary. Either he refused to leave the conservatory room at night, or in the morning he was found on a chair by the piano, fast asleep and hugging the keyboard. One day, the children advised him to dry his wet boots on the coals of a cooling barbecue. 3 In the morning, only a few nails remained from the boots, but still, wrapping footcloths around his feet, he left to study while it was still dark. Apparently, this is a calling, when playing a favorite instrument is perceived as a natural way of existence, as main meaning life.

“Talent is love,” said Leo Tolstoy. Talent and obsession with music allowed Margulis to become one of the best students of the famous Leningrad musician and teacher Samariy Savshinsky and a worthy “musical grandson” of Leonid Nikolaev - teacher of Dmitry Shostakovich, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Maria Yudina.

In the spring of 1944, the conservatory staff returned to Leningrad. Wonderful old building Theater Square survived, but required extensive repairs. Windows boarded up did not let in daylight, the stucco walls of the concert halls were pierced by shells, and the roof was leaking. Repairs could only be carried out on their own, and young musicians - pianists, violinists, singers - temporarily turned into painters and plasterers. And although there were not enough musical instruments and classrooms for classes (at first, the ten-year school was located in the building of the conservatory), it was still a home and hometown. Kharkov resident Margulis had no doubt that Leningrad would become home to him too.

My generation remembers the incredible rise of the winter and spring of 1945. May 9, 1945 became the happiest day in life for everyone who survived this war. On this day, the youth musical ensemble of the conservatory, which had been performing concerts in hospitals and military units throughout the war, gave its thousandth (!) concert on St. Isaac's Square. The square was crowded, strangers were hugging and crying. Some laughed, some prayed. Everyone was sure that now another, new and happy era would begin.

Alas, this turned out to be an illusion. Much later we learn that Stalin, even at the end of the war, noticed that the people of his country had changed. Daily proximity to death dulled fear. New repressions were needed. A series of arrests began, first of the so-called “repeaters,” i.e. those who had already served time in their thirties, then it was the turn of new victims. Resolutions of the Party Central Committee on issues of ideology and art began to pour in. They were discussed not only in art universities, but also in the middle level - in music. schools and special schools. Children knew no less about the fates of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, Prokofiev and Shostakovich than adults. I had artist friends, and somehow I ended up at such a meeting at the Academy of Arts. A first-year student asked a question: who exactly is Shostakovich - the brilliant creator of the Seventh Leningrad Symphony, the author of the popular folk song “Lanterns,” or a cosmopolitan, formalist and enemy of our people? Half an hour after the meeting, she was arrested. An eighteen-year-old girl received two years in prison for political unreliability.

I don’t know how conservatory student Margulis felt about the events of those years. After all, even the closest friends did not dare to talk about these topics among themselves. I think that more intuitively than consciously, he escaped reality into work, into music. He played the piano for six to eight hours every day, read, went to classes at the conservatory, attended lectures at the university, constantly attended concerts at the Philharmonic, and adored the famous Leningrad museums.

I remember when, as a schoolgirl, I went with him to the Hermitage, where I had been before, because... grew up in an intelligent Leningrad family. I was considered a cultured girl, capable of “showing off her erudition,” but this trip shocked me. Margulis navigated the halls of the Hermitage as if he were in his own apartment and could give a lecture about any artist and any era. We spent a long time hovering around one painting, on which there was nothing but solid black space. “We are looking for an angle,” Vitaly explained. And when we found the angle, I suddenly saw the deck of the ship illuminated by the moon and on it two human figures pressed against each other. Margulis said:

When on the surface of the canvas
The artist depicts the night,
At least it leaves one ray,
So that this night can be seen... 4

Infatuated fine arts Margulis family traditions played a role. My father loved painting, my older brother Konstantin is an interesting, original artist who now lives in New York and is still working. But I think the main thing is the professional interest of a musician who is looking for analogies to the colorful capabilities of the piano in other forms of art, primarily in the work of artists.

One day in June 1951, a lot of people gathered at the conservatory, in the Small Hall named after Alexander Glazunov. We, schoolchildren, also came to listen to the best student of the graduating class. Vitaly's program included the most difficult essays, pearls of the classical piano repertoire: Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, Bach’s five-voice fugue, Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto for piano and orchestra. Natural emotionality and excellent pianism allowed the performer to captivate the audience from the very first note. And even to us, children, it was clear that he was playing a musician of powerful artistic individuality, for whom the content of the music is in the foreground. dramatic beginning. The interpretation of the famous “Appassionata” was a striking fusion of passion, brilliance, deep reflection and the will to order. And we, schoolchildren in the ninth and tenth grades, thought: I wish we could learn from someone!

Empty dreams! Then, in the early 50s, during the heyday of state anti-Semitism, Margulis could not even think about working in Leningrad, about graduate school. The day after the performance of the solo program, Vitaly was supposed to play Rachmaninoff’s “Elegiac Trio” for piano, violin and cello. We came to the conservatory again. However, the performers did not appear on the stage at the appointed hour. It turned out that when there were only a few minutes left before going on stage, strangers They entered the artist's room and, presenting an arrest warrant, took cellist Oscar Burshtein away. The fact of the arrest could not have surprised anyone then, but in broad daylight, before a performance at the conservatory 5... Commenting on this fact, Margulis wisely remarked: “Any of us could have been in Oscar’s place. Why be upset that I cannot stay in Leningrad? After all, what awaits me is not prison, not exile, but just some kind of philharmonic society in the Urals.”

And he left. Active concert work began at the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic, attempts to enter graduate school (eight times!) and to get into international competitions. After another failure, a sleepless night usually followed, and the next day, at six in the morning, the pianist, as in his distant childhood, sat down at the piano and began to learn a new program for a new competition. “But you yourself should not distinguish defeat from victory,” said the poet. These classes, perhaps, were the most valuable victory in the most difficult struggle - with despair, loneliness, with oneself. But was he lonely? In his book “Bagatelles” (thoughts and aphorisms of a pianist), first published in Germany, Margulis wrote: “The piano is better than the close friend able to understand and respond to our deepest feelings. He who knows how to play well will never be alone.”

At the end of the 50s, he returned to Leningrad, finally entered graduate school and began teaching at his “alma mater.” Nature, having generously gifted Margulis as a performer, did not skimp on pedagogical abilities. A sharp mind, a penchant for analysis, and a constant search for new things in the field of “ musical word”, erudition in various types of art, combined with a large repertoire and concert experience, made him a most interesting figure among young teachers at the university. Add to this personal charm, a sense of humor, hard work and dedication to the profession, and it becomes clear why not only students from his class, but also students from other teachers gathered in Margulis’s lessons. There was always a festive atmosphere around him. The impact on students was not limited to classroom activities. Vitaly constantly talks with his students, goes to museums with them, shows them the city that he loves very much and knows better than many native Leningraders. Famous architectural ensembles and monuments, bridges, gardens, trellises - everything came to life when Margulis talked about them - fun, exciting, lovingly...

Looking ahead, I will say that Vitaly retained this love for the city on the Neva throughout his life. In the spring of 1988, for the first time after leaving Russia, he came to Leningrad. We met at central staircase Russian Museum, and almost his first words were: “I have seen all the beauty of the world, I have been to trip around the world and, believe me, there is no second city on earth like Leningrad!”

But this will be almost thirty years later, but for now, in the early sixties, he teaches young people to “play well”, tries to develop them, make them smarter, hotter, more dedicated to their work. His class becomes a noticeable phenomenon in the piano department. The students play very well complex works(for example, “Goldberg Variations” by J.S. Bach), which adorn the repertoire of a few performers. But time goes by, and it becomes clear that the students in Margulis' class have no creative prospects. The reason lay in the teacher’s “fifth point” and in his character. Vitaly was born with a more lively, free and joyful attitude than was allowed in Soviet society. It was more difficult for such people to put up with ideological guidelines, use verbal cliches, “vote unanimously” for the next government decision, adapt and pretend. Their manners, intonations, and facial expressions gave them away. They greatly irritated Soviet officials. Margulis was not liked by those on whom much depended: the communists of the piano department, members of the party bureau and “personally” the rector of the conservatory, People's Artist Soviet Union Pavel Serebryakov.

Today the name of Serebryakov is almost forgotten, but in the 50-60s of the last century he was a famous pianist who performed with the best conductors in the best concert halls in the world. One could explain the rector’s dislike for Margulis by banal anti-Semitism, but Serebryakov was not an anti-Semite and this distinguished him favorably from many of his colleagues. 6 The origins of his hostility towards Margulis were, in my opinion, in the long-term confrontation between Serebryakov and Margulis’s teacher, Professor Savshinsky. Both musicians worked hand in hand for a long time 7, while creatively and psychologically they were completely opposite natures. An analytical musician, Savshinsky belonged to the type clean teachers (definition by Heinrich Neuhaus), i.e. never performed at concert stage, and summarized his rich teaching experience in numerous books on piano art. Serebryakov, for whom performance and pedagogy were inseparable, did not understand how it was possible to educate a concert pianist without his own pop experience, only with the help of theoretical reasoning and books.

It is curious that young Margulis, one of Savshinsky’s most devoted students, both professionally and humanly had a lot in common with Serebryakov. Both belonged to romantic type performers. Both were virtuosos with great pianistic talent. Both addressed their emotionally open art to a wide mass audience. Repertoire preferences also coincided - Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninov. Finally, both were passionate people, loved life in all its manifestations, and were selflessly devoted to music and the piano. Both could be called “workaholics.” But, if Serebryakov, a major nomenklatura worker (rector, member of the party bureau of a university, member of the district party committee) and a pianist touring all over the world, was obliged to distribute his day with chronometric precision from early morning until late at night, then Margulis, having finished working, belonged to to yourself. Vitaly had at his disposal walks around the evening city, conversations with friends, books, concerts, museums and the solitude that an artist needed to think about life, art, and himself.

Unlike Margulis, who was not interested in the rector either as a person or professionally, Serebryakov knew Vitaly well from his student days and followed his life, full of painful struggle and difficult achievements. He went to Margulis’s conservatory concerts, and his random remarks, questions, and ironic words made it possible to think that the venerable professor and renowned artist felt a strange feeling of envy towards the unknown young teacher. It seemed that, looking at Margulis’s unshakable inner freedom, Serebryakov asked himself: had I missed something in my own life, having walked through it so directly and firmly - in a communist way? Each of them followed their own path, but Vitaly’s professional fate largely depended on the attitude of the university rector. Margulis never goes on tour abroad. In the Union he gives concerts mainly on the periphery. The Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) constantly denies him the title of associate professor. His articles on piano art are not published.

Let's be fair to Serebryakov. If the decision of certain authorities on whether a musician should travel abroad depended on the characteristics of the institution’s leadership, then the possibility of publication in Soviet periodicals was determined by the ideological orientation of the proposed material and the reliability of the author’s worldview. Margulis was interested in the spiritual content of the music of Bach and Beethoven. (Later, in Germany, he would publish the work “Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Visual Church Symbolism,” which had a wide resonance.) The musician’s desire to convey to the reader original thoughts about the religious and philosophical views of the German classics was reminiscent of Bulgakov’s Master’s attempts to publish a novel about Jesus Christ in the Soviet press. Serebryakov had nothing to do with it. But the rector could give permission to practice on the conservatory organ, which was necessary for a pianist who turned to the work of Bach. But this too was denied to Margulis.

At the age of 37, Vitaly had a heart attack. For any person, this is a serious test that changes the rhythm and way of life. For a concert artist this is almost a tragedy. Margulis managed to turn this event into luck. Many years later he said: “I used to fuss, rush from program to program, from competition to competition. After the heart attack I began to think more and read more. I turned to Goethe, Novalis, Schiller. I became interested in the ideas of Buddhism and Christianity. I started writing a study about Beethoven’s last sonata...”

In 1974, Margulis decided to apply for emigration. “It was not only a matter of the lack of concert halls, titles and degrees,” he said later, “it was a loss of faith in the future, a feeling of complete hopelessness.”

At that time, there was an absurd rule - mandatory discussion and condemnation of the “moral character” of the person leaving. The following dialogue took place between Vitaly and one of the conservatory professors, who was enthusiastically performing this meaningless ritual:

Aren't you afraid of losing everything you've achieved here?

No, I'm not afraid.

Aren't you afraid that your friends will judge you?

Don't think.

They say that you love Leningrad very much. Aren't you afraid of nostalgia?

This is what I'm afraid of. But if nostalgia begins to torment me, I will remember this meeting and you...

In Rome, he immediately began to play the organs of many cathedrals, even St. Peter's. The rector of the American Catholic Church in Rome, renting a hall with his own money and renting a Steinway piano, organized a concert for Vitaly. This evening decided his fate. In the hall was the famous German harpsichordist Stanislav Heller, who immediately offered Margulis a trip to Germany.

Let’s omit the details of adventurous crossings of borders without documents. After his first performance in front of German musicians, Margulis was offered a position as a piano professor at one of the best music schools in Europe - the Higher School of Music of Freiburg. Everything fell into place. As in the good old fairy tales, he turned from an ugly duckling into a slender swan, from a poor shepherd into a handsome prince.

Concerts begin around the world. His performances are described as “events of outstanding significance”, he is called “one of the greatest performers of our time”, “a world-class pianist”, even such expressions as “secret genius” are not afraid to be used (Joachim Kaiser, “Suddeutsche Zeitung” ). Paris's La Disque Ideal considers his interpretation of Scriabin's Third Sonata "a true masterpiece, superior to the well-known recordings of Horowitz and Sofronitsky." The Italian “Musica” calls his performance of Chopin’s etudes “exciting and fantastic”, “a new word in the history of piano art.” In a review of a concert in Santander (Spain), the critic writes: “Three Beethoven sonatas - “Moonlight”, “Les Adieux” and Grandiose op. 111 - in terms of quality and maturity of performance, they are inimitable. His highly individual interpretation of Beethoven set an unattainable standard.”

Margulis's class is quickly becoming one of the strongest. Dozens of his students receive the title of laureate of international competitions. He gives lectures and open lessons not only in the cities of Germany, but also in the Paris Conservatory, in the New York Manhattan School of Music, at the music college in Osaka, at the festival in Schleswit-Goldstein... He records discs of Western European and Russian piano classics.

In 1977, Pavel Serebryakov dies in Leningrad. New times are beginning for the conservatory. Departures of musicians are becoming widespread. Pianists (including the author of these lines), violinists, and representatives of other musical professions are leaving the conservatory. The best of the remaining - violinists Mikhail Vaiman and Boris Gutnikov, pianist Alexander Ikharev, violist Yuri Kramarov, musicologist Arnold Sokhor - tragically pass away in their prime creative forces. Musicians call the Leningrad Conservatory an institution of three “y”s: he left, he was fired, he died. In the late 80s, reviewing Martha Argerich’s concert at the Glazunov Conservatory Hall, the critic wrote: “When, having performed several works by Messiaen, Argerich moved on to a composition by her husband, pianist and composer, graduate of the Moscow Conservatory Alexander Rabinovich, the concert was rudely interrupted by loud noises in the middle of the performance. applause, loud speech and laughter from part of the public, either adherents of the “Memory” society, or simply wild in their reactionism.”

And yet, the traditions of the St. Petersburg Conservatory do not die. They continue in the activities of emigrants scattered throughout different corners Europe and America. One of the important centers preserving these high traditions is the “Russian School of Piano Playing” in Freiburg, created by Vitaly Margulis.

Intensive pedagogical activity Margulis includes editing piano music, and the publication of articles and books on piano art. In these works there is a thirst for knowledge, a desire for research that accompanies the pianist throughout his entire life. creative life, the desire to involve the reader in thinking about art, nature, people, good and evil.

In 1991, the Moscow publishing house “Music” published his book “On Interpretation piano works Beethoven." Based on the analysis of “matter and spirit” of Beethoven’s last sonata No. 32 op. 111, the book amazes with the scope and boldness of the pianistic and philosophical problems(Part of them have already been discussed). Behind the calmly restrained tone of the narrative lies a huge research work, but this is not a dissertation, but own Margulis's insight into the composer's intention, into the essence of musical images. And this is precisely the main practical and aesthetic value of the work.

In 1991, another book by Vitaly was published in Germany, subsequently translated and published in six languages - the already mentioned “Bagatels”. In the foreword to her latest edition, Martha Argerich wrote: “This fascinating book opens a window into the world of music, takes us by the hand and leads us into our beloved country - the Piano. Vitaly Margulis has wisdom and humor, outstanding intuition, knowledge of the nature and spiritual essence of man. This book will interest musicians and non-musicians alike... This book is irresistible.” There is nothing to add to such an assessment of an outstanding pianist.

Living in Europe, Margulis often comes to America. Here, all over the country, his former students from the Leningrad Conservatory work in different colleges. His daughter, grandchildren, and friends live here.

In April 1990, I excitedly went to Vitaly's concert at Alice Tully Hall at New York's Lincoln Center. The program was composed of works by Chopin. I haven’t heard a pianist for sixteen years and I was once again convinced of the blessed, liberating creative personality influence of the environment called the “free world”. The artist, so to speak, became more of himself. The first thing I immediately noticed in the interpretation of Chopin's Sonata in B-flat minor was a departure from the established tradition of performance. The slow tempo (in the first movement, especially), the increased expressiveness of every intonation, every melodic turn emphasized not so much the heroic-monumental, but rather the lyrical-philosophical line of Chopin’s work. It would seem that the world of exquisite, fragile images does not fit into the circle of artistic inclinations of Margulis - a large-scale, large-scale pianist, whose playing has always been distinguished by a large and rich sound. However, in the interpretation of nocturnes and waltzes something different emerged. The artist played “in a low voice,” as if opening up the possibility of “quiet conversation with the keys” to the listener. And most importantly, the game was absolutely organic, natural, flowing like human speech. I remembered the wise words of Chopin: “last comes simplicity, which appears in all its charm as the highest seal of art...”

In 1994, Margulis moved to America. He won the competition for the position of professor of piano at the largest university in California - UCLA, within whose walls Jascha Heifetz, Arnold Schoenberg, and Grigory Pyatigorsky worked.

We are sitting with Vitaly in the office of his new home in Bel-Air. In the center of the room are two magnificent Steinways. There are a lot of books: on history, philosophy, painting and, of course, music. From the balcony you can see a typical Californian landscape: jaguars and Mercedes race along the road surrounded by cypresses and palm trees, and in the distance the blue hills merge with the ocean. We remember a 10-meter room in a communal apartment on Dekabristov Street with a folding bed and an old dental chair as furniture, where he spent his student youth and the artist’s independent life began. He talks about recent performances.

I recorded Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” for the first time, and I am about to play Mozart’s A major concerto with the orchestra, which he has not played before. Of course, I'm a little worried. The memory is no longer the same.

With such a huge repertoire, why learn new plays? - I ask.

You know, Socrates, the night before his execution, asked his guard to teach him to play the hand harp. “Old man, why do you need this, because in the morning you will be executed,” said the guard. “When else will I find time for this?” - Socrates answered.

The creative path of Vitaly Margulis continues. His students have won more than a hundred prizes at international competitions, about thirty of them are first prize winners. CDs have been recorded and books are being published. There are also four children - all musicians, twelve grandchildren, and recently great-grandchildren. A few days ago, Margulis returned from a trip to Europe. Concerts and master classes were held with great success in Spain, Germany, Portugal and Italy. With delight, he tells me about many hours (despite recent leg surgery) walking around Venice. “And while in Europe I wrote a new chapter of Chronicles - I’ve already sent it to Moscow, maybe they’ll have time to insert it into the book.” I listen and think: how passionately, beautifully and youthfully this 77-year-old musician continues to live!

1. The manuscript of “Paralipomenon” is in the Moscow publishing house “Classics XXI”.
2. M. Tsvetaeva “Mother and Music”. Works in two volumes. Fiction, Moscow, 1984, vol. 2 p. 90.
3. Brazier - a stove that was used in Central Asia for heating the room and cooking.
4. Quatrains of the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega.
5. Oscar Burstein was sentenced to seven years in prison “for espionage activities as an agent of Japanese imperialism.” Rehabilitated after Stalin's death. Now lives with his family in Washington. Oscar's mother, an old St. Petersburg musician Berta Yakovlevna Burshtein, was my first music teacher.
6. It is significant that it was in the dark 50s that Serebryakov was removed from leadership with the wording “clogging the university’s personnel,” and in 1961, during the “thaw,” he was returned to the post of rector.
7. When thirty-year-old Serebryakov headed the conservatory in 1938, Savshinsky was the director of the ten-year school, the head of the piano department at the conservatory, and since 1941 - the dean of the piano faculty.

Russian pianist, musicologist and music teacher

Biography

He began to study music in Kharkov with his father, who studied with Alexander Horowitz, who in turn studied with Scriabin. Graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory (1951) under S. I. Savshinsky. After several years of work in Sverdlovsk, he returned to Leningrad in 1958 and taught there until 1974, however, experiencing constant friction with the leadership of the conservatory:

In 1974, Margulis emigrated from the USSR and initially ended up in Rome, where his performance was heard by the German harpsichordist Stanislav Heller, who invited Margulis to Germany. Since 1975, Margulis has been a professor at the Freiburg High school music, since 1994 - University of California in Los Angeles.

Musicologist

Margulis is engaged in an in-depth study of the philosophical and symbolic meanings of the music of Bach and Beethoven: the book “On the interpretation of Beethoven’s piano works” was published in 1991 in Moscow, the work “Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” and Visual Church Symbolism” received wide resonance in the professional environment. In 2003, he published a collection of aphorisms “Bagatellen” (German: Bagatellen op. 9), introducing which Martha Argerich writes:

Collection of autobiographical essays “Chronicles. Short stories from the life of a musician" was published in 2006 by the Moscow publishing house "Classics-XXI".

Teacher

Vitaly Margulis' students have become laureates of international competitions more than a hundred times, including twenty-eight who received the highest awards. Among Margulis's students, in particular, is Philippe Bianconi.

IN THE PICTURE: Vitaly Iosifovich Margulis (1928-2011)

Vitaly Iosifovich Margulis is a Russian pianist, musicologist and music teacher.

Margulis was not liked by those on whom much depended: the communists of the piano department, members of the party bureau and “personally” the rector of the conservatory, People’s Artist of the USSR Pavel Serebryakov.
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Margulis never goes on tour abroad. In the Union he gives concerts mainly on the periphery. The Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) constantly denies him the title of associate professor. His articles on piano art are not published.<…>The rector could give permission to practice on the conservatory organ, which was necessary for a pianist who turned to the work of Bach. But this too was denied to Margulis.

In 1974, Margulis emigrated from the USSR and initially ended up in Rome, where his performance was heard by the German harpsichordist Stanislav Heller, who invited Margulis to Germany. Since 1975, Margulis has been a professor at the Freiburg Higher School of Music, and since 1994 at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Margulis was engaged in an in-depth study of the philosophical and symbolic meanings of the music of Bach and Beethoven: the book “On the interpretation of Beethoven’s piano works” was published in 1991 in Moscow, the work “The Well-Tempered Clavier” of Bach and Visual Church Symbolism” received wide resonance in the professional environment.

“This amazingly inspiring book opens a window into the life of music and leads us by the hand into our beloved piano country. Margulis's Bagatelles are full of wisdom and humor. His outstanding intuition, deep knowledge of human nature and spiritual depths will captivate musicians and non-musicians alike. This book is irresistible."

Collection of autobiographical essays “Chronicles. Short stories from the life of a musician" was published in 2006 by the Moscow publishing house "Classics-XXI".

Surprisingly, in his book of memoirs there is not a word about Vera Avgustovna Lothar-Shevchenko, whom he, of course, knew well in those years and could not help but hear about her when in 1965 Simon Soloveichik made her famous with one article. About the absence of the name V.A. Lothar-Shevchenko in the book by Vitaly Margulis and Georgy Ugodnikov writes:

“I got this book, sure that I would find a mention there about Lothar-Shevchenko, but there was not a word.”

But it turns out he didn’t write anything to other musicians either. Just about myself:

“By the way, he does not mention there (and does not give characteristics) conductors and other people of the Philharmonic. More about travel, about myself and with the addition of humorous scenes. – writes Georgy Georgievich Ugodnikov. And he continues: “Perhaps Margulis’s children, successful musicians, will eventually publish other memoirs from his archives.” I can’t believe that pianist Vitaly Iosifovich did not mention Lotar-Shevchenko and her extraordinary fate anywhere.”

Wait and see. I only regret one thing. If I had known earlier that he worked with Vera Avgustovna and lives in Los Angeles, I would certainly have contacted him. I'll try to find his children.

To be continued.