A Good Word: “Boys”.

Small, touching, spontaneous, slightly excited by the general attention, they sat down at the piano and played Schubert, Kabalevsky, Maykapar…

Vitalik Serebryakov studies in the preparatory department of the choir school. He is not yet seven, but as a pianist he performs on an equal footing with older boys in the school hall at the final concert of the young pianists’ competition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the boys’ chapel. He will remember this day for a long time: the solemn atmosphere, the applause, the flowers…

“The boys must feel at once the seriousness of what they are doing. Ahead of them lies a great deal of concert work, full of responsibility, excitement and impressions,” says Dmitry Viktorovich Karnaukhov, head of the piano section and accompanist of the school. “The choir school has boys who are gifted for music. Among them are those who show special promise. If we speak only about boys in the primary department, then as young pianists I would like to mention the second-graders Sergei Vinogradov and Sergei Teterin (teachers O. Shalashova and L. Makarova). If they have enough perseverance, patience and hard work, it is quite possible that we shall still hear their names. Playing the piano is part of the compulsory programme of the choir school. But playing musical instruments does not stop there. The boys have at their disposal the violin, flute, guitar, accordion, synthesizer, wind and percussion instruments. If you try, you can get into an ensemble of violinists or flautists.”

But the main thing is the CHOIR. It is where everything begins.

One of the anniversary concerts gathered parents, grandmothers, grandfathers and friends of the young singers of the preparatory and primary departments. Short trousers and bow ties, hair already smoothly combed and boyish cowlicks still unruly. The boys came out onto the stage without a trace of embarrassment and, as if from the deck of a ship setting off on a long voyage, waved to their mothers from the stage. Did they realise that it was their debut? Their first performance in the hall of the choir school!

One of the little ones’ mentors, Vasily Stepanovich Nikitin, is a graduate of the Chapel. A fifth-year student of the conducting and choral faculty of the Nizhny Novgorod Conservatory, he successfully combines study with work as leader of the choir of the preparatory department and of the school’s “candidate” choir. Asked whether it is difficult, he answers: “Responsibility helps me study.” He began his musical career at the age of four with the violin. He believes that what he does is predestined for him by fate.

- Vasily Stepanovich, how are boys admitted to the choir school?

We make a preliminary selection in May. We advertise and wait to see who comes. Last year I went round the kindergartens myself and selected children who were not yet quite lost in terms of development. I listened to about 250 children, determined their sense of rhythm, asked them to recite a poem and hum a note. The requirements were not all that strict. But out of 250 little ones I selected about 80. Of the parents, only 22 responded to the invitation to get acquainted with the choir school. In September the final enrolment takes place, into the preparatory group from the age of five and, on a competitive basis, into the first grade from the age of seven.

— Not all small children are equally aware of what they are doing and why; and you are still quite young, is it hard to work with them?

— It is easier with children than with parents… Children are pure and open. They come to play, to learn something new, and some study consciously. Singing is their favourite occupation. But they do not yet think about their future. Parents, however, often look ten years ahead and ask me: “Will he make it?” How can one answer this question if the boy is only five to seven years old? I invite parents to concerts so that they can see how their children behave on stage and how their performing skill grows from year to year. Behind this is a great deal of work by the school’s tutors and teachers. Parents help us in this by their participation, although it is sometimes not easy to convince them how necessary spiritual and musical development is for small children, especially gifted ones. By attending children’s concerts, parents become acquainted with culture, make up for what they may not have received in their time, find their own language with the great and hitherto unknown world of music, and become our allies.

- Vasily Stepanovich, what role do you give to the children’s participation in concerts?

One concert of ours replaces several rehearsals, especially as boys of different ages, and accordingly of different levels of performing skill, take part in the concerts. A link between generations arises. The boys learn from one another and sometimes envy one another. They run up to me and say: “We want to learn that song too and sing it.” Children are very receptive. As the saying goes, “what is learned in childhood is carved in stone”.

I watched the little boys as they came out on the stage and sang, with their clumsy gait, wanting to grimace and laugh, and then how, sitting in their seats in the auditorium, they listened to the singing of their “colleagues”. Their faces were transformed. They were attentive and concentrated. The boys see themselves as if from the outside, reliving their performance, and perhaps reflecting, not yet fully consciously, on what they could achieve with a certain effort.

The value of the upbringing and education that the boys receive at the choir school from the age of five is beyond doubt. In the future they may become some of the best representatives of our musical culture, the pride of our nation. Even if this does not happen, something will be laid in them (and the earlier the better) that is alien to the vices that pervade our society now. What we give them, they will bring with them into life: love for the Motherland, respect for women and the elderly, pride in Russian culture.

It is said that foreigners who listened to the singing of the boys from the choir chapel had tears in their eyes, although they do not understand Russian. The impressions received from our music and singing reached their hearts.

At the school the young singers face a great deal of concert work. “Concert” in Italian means “agreement”. The boys will learn to live in agreement with themselves, with one another and with the whole world.

E. GOLOMA