Tatiana Anofrieva, Assistant Director of the Moscow Radio Children’s Choir
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Family is a value universally treasured by all peoples. Every individual has his or her own vision of a family, and the role it plays in his or her life. The lady featured in this programme has been busy making a family for the past 33 years.
Nearly every kid in Russia immediately recognises the catchy tunes performed by The Moscow Radio Children’s Choir, directed by its founder and unsurpassed choirmaster, Viktor Popov. The choir has won many awards and prizes and has won international respect and recognition for many years. Talent is crucial here. However, what makes it such a sweeping success is something else. The choir, also known as the Big Children’s Choir, is one big family and a lady who we can rightfully describe as a professional family-maker orchestrates this family.
Tatiana Anofrieva is married to her job. She has been a teacher and conductor with the Moscow Radio Children’s Choir since the day of its foundation 33 years ago. Several generations have passed through her skilful and motherly hands, growing to maturity under her watchful eyes. She remembers all her charges by their full names and knows their life stories in every detail. For many, she has become a second mother, helping to raise them as strong people, and helping them cultivate a lifelong feeling of friendship, duty, and patriotism. She accomplishes that through singing wonderful songs rather than moralising.
“I think that work, if it’s for real, and if you don’t have anything else, it’s family”, Tatiana said. “There has to be a good relationship between the boss and people working under him, and this relationship is akin to one between a husband and a wife. One should base such an alliance on overwhelming trust and forgiveness. Our boss, Viktor Popov, is a musical genius, he trusts us, he forgives us our mistakes, and he protects us, if needed. We’re a consummate family. This family lives by a single feeling, the experiences that make us one. This is important. We are happy together because we share certain memories, you remember this, and I remember this, too. An outsider would feel bored in our midst. Nevertheless, we live by these common memories, like one big family. We’re united by the job we all do and this job has connected our lives, too”.
Tatiana has been a leader for as long as she can remember. At school, she and her group of fellow students outnumbered groups of rival leaders, and she was always elected class monitor, the teacher’s right-hand person. At seven, she was quite independent, capable of fending for herself, and never flinched from the prospect of hard work.
Her unwavering character was forged when she was a third-grader and found herself facing a problem that she had to settle on her own. Like any kid, she was a bit lazy and skipped her music classes, so her teacher summoned her and her mother and in the presence of two adults, Tatiana had to make a decision on her future. This was right after World War II, and it was difficult for a family of four to make both ends meet, so she knew she would be given a chance to continue her music classes only if she took them seriously.
The choice she made proved to be the right one. She graduated with honours, first, from a music college, and, then, from the Gnessin Music Academy specialising in choir direction, and established herself as an undisputable authority in teaching music and vocal art to kids. Come to think of it, the number of kids this lady has groomed into good singers could drive you crazy. Yet, Tatiana just laughs at the remark. She has never had difficulty finding a common language with youngsters.
“First of all, I was trained to handle small children when I was in my teens”, Tatiana said. “My Mom remarried when I was ten, and she gave birth to three baby boys, practically one after another. I had to look after them day and night, and I felt so much like a mother that when my second brother was born I thought I was going to breastfeed him too. In the midst of washing, ironing, bathing my three little brothers in a bathtub, and cooking for them on an oil-stove, I attended secondary school and music school and my marks there were all A’s.
I knew what motherhood is all about from an early age, and I was so fed up with it that I never wanted kids of my own. Then, I had more practise with kids as I worked as a music teacher, after graduation. In the 4 or 5 years that I worked at school I understood that children could easily be handled, managed, taught, and made to obey. When a child feels he has an inclination for something and the instructor tries to bring it out of him and succeeds in doing so, he or she opens up to you from quite a different angle”.
Tatiana is confident that you should talk to youngsters as you would normally talk to grown-up people. This, she said, encourages them into opening their hearts to you. When you are with them, you are forever young too. “With kids, you stay young, even if your hair is all grey and your face is wrinkled. That’s because you know what is happening among them and you live as one family with them. They are there, right under your eyes, and all their stomach-aches and headaches are your aches too. You live by their values and their interests and they readily tell you of the books they read and the films they watch. You speak the same language as they do! There have been so many of these languages in 33 years! Whole generations have grown and gone, but you still keep abreast with youth because you’re with them, you’re together”.
So easy-going with children, Tatiana is nevertheless strict and demanding, and gets angry when someone leaves “the singing family” for unhealthy or timeserving reasons. She knows what’s right and what’s wrong, and she moulds her charges after herself. She has a right to do so since her efforts have produced a host of wonderful personalities. The choir’s alumni sing at the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre and Moscow Conservatory, work as choir masters, direct their own bands, and in due time take their kids to sing in the choir, too.
As one of the impressed listeners said, for Tatiana, the choir is a fathomless starry sky and she sorts out through it wiping off the dust so that the stars will shine the brightest. We wish Tatiana every success in her selfless devotion to the choir, which she sees as her family and the work that she chose for life.
2003
Tamara Murzina
Voice of Russia World Service
Ladies of Character
