When “Choir” Means “Excellent”

Recently, at the Conservatory and the Kremlin Concert Hall, one could see boys in Russian embroidered shirts and light-brown waistcoats.

And not only see but hear them. They came for the 5th international festival of boys’ and youth choirs. Such festivals are not held often, once every five years, and therefore arouse special interest.

The choirs’ performances took place at the time when the Nizhny Novgorod Boys’ Chapel was celebrating its 50th anniversary. The leadership of the choir school, the choirmasters and teachers were glad to see in their alma mater the former pupils of the Chapel, now artistic directors and conductors, who had arrived for this festival.

Honoured Worker of Culture of Russia Alexander Bezukhov, organiser and conductor of the choir of the Children’s Music School in Yaroslavl, for example, not only learned to sing in the Nizhny Novgorod Boys’ Chapel but also worked in it for several years as a choirmaster.

If A. Bezukhov’s boys’ and youth choir is ten years old, the boys’ choir of the “Chaika” choir school in Narva is only in its fourth year. The choir’s founder and mentor Mikhail Goryushin, a Nizhny Novgorod chapel boy and conservatory graduate, is full of energy and plans for the future. The choir of the creative association “Sokolyata” from Rybinsk is already “getting on in years”: it was created in 1971. Its artistic director and conductor Sergei Shesterikov came to Nizhny five years ago with a girls’ choir, declared his love for the boys’ chapel and promised to show his own boys at the next festival. He kept his word. And, it must be said, successfully. It turned out that in working with the choir he uses Kiryushin’s method of emotional and imaginative education. Sergei tells what this method gives the children.

It helps to have a vocal range of three octaves. This is achieved through exercises that make it possible not to force the voice but to stretch it. New qualities appear in the voice: diction improves and the timbre becomes richer. The method also takes into account the child’s voice from the standpoint of hygiene and ecology and rejects shouting. The voice is a precious stone. It needs a good setting. Asked whether the boys liked Nizhny, they answered in chorus: “Yes. We really liked the singing of the boys’ chapel. The excursions. And also football and chess.”

The adults reacted to the organisation of the festival as follows: “We were pleased with the calm and friendly atmosphere that prevailed all the days of our stay in Nizhny. Everything went very smoothly, at an international level.”

“Nizhegorodsky Rabochy”, No. 71

E. GOLOMA