A Joy with a Bitter Note

Choir of the Music Society of the Gorky Region

At the end of August the International Choir Festival “Tallinn-88” took place in the capital of Estonia. The choir of the Music Society of the Gorky Region, under RSFSR People’s Artist Lev Sivukhin, withstood the most difficult competition with honour and won a silver medal, the title of laureate and a Diploma of the second degree.

The aim of the festival is to strengthen friendship between peoples, to acquaint participants with the national traditions of different countries, and also to spread the idea of the “Tallinn Declaration” of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (adopted on 1 June 1983).

The festival, organised by the Choral Society of the Estonian SSR in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, the Music Society and the Nature Conservation Society of the Estonian republic, was dedicated to the approaching 80th birthday of the outstanding Estonian musician, USSR People’s Artist Gustav Ernesaks.

Within the festival, solo and joint concerts of all the participants were held; 24 collectives from several European countries and republics of the Soviet Union came to Tallinn. By make-up all the choirs were a cappella: mixed, chamber, women’s and men’s. The programmes of the performances were very varied, but compulsory was the work by the English composer of the last century E. Elgar, “The Holy Land of Hope”, performed by the combined choir at the closing of the festival.

The festival programme also included a choir competition. Taking part in it was prestigious, since very strong competitors competed, and it was quite difficult. In the twenty minutes on stage one had to show oneself at one’s best and perform the compulsory works by G. Ernesaks and M. Čiurlionis.

Not without sharp disputes the jury awarded the gold medal and the Diploma of the 1st degree to the Estonian collective “Noorus” (“Youth”). The Gorky choir worthily represented the choral art of Russia (besides it, the republic was represented at the festival by the choir of the Gnessin Institute from Moscow and the choir of the electrotechnical institute from Leningrad). Our countrymen aroused warm sympathy in an audience of many thousands with their open, emotional performance of Russian music.

Incidentally, the doyen of Estonian choral art G. Ernesaks noted that the best performance of his works was precisely by the people of Gorky. L. K. Sivukhin and his collective expressed respect for the oldest musician: when the results of the competition were announced, they presented the maestro, then celebrating his jubilee, with a Nizhny Novgorod samovar and sang together the Russian “Many Years”.

Now both the festival and the very difficult competition are behind us, and the singers retain unforgettable joyful impressions. However, not only joy but also some bitterness remained in memory. Our collective had to endure overstrain that was not only professional. Because of the railway accident on 16 August, the people of Gorky, who arrived in Tallinn eleven hours late, could not fit into the schedule allotted to them: the organising committee arranged their work so that they had to sing on the same day both in the competition and in a concert. The Gorky singers were housed very far from the venues, and the bus for some reason did not display Baltic punctuality. At the closing concert, for an incomprehensible reason, our collective’s performance was cancelled, although it was due. The leadership of the All-Russian Music Society did not provide the Gorky collective with the appropriate booklet, whereas exhaustive information about all the participants could be obtained from the beautifully published colour booklets; our people performed, one might say, incognito.

Joy, as is well known, grows when it is shared with others. One hopes that the Gorky public will duly appreciate the success of their countrymen, and meanwhile we warmly congratulate L. K. Sivukhin and the collective he leads on their creative victory.

Valentina Grigorievna Blinova, Honoured Worker of Culture of the RSFSR.

Newspaper “Gorkovsky Rabochy”, 5.09.1988