This is one of my fave songs sung by one of the greatest Russian pop singers ever… Valentina Tolkunova. When she passed recently, she received a full state funeral with a goose-stepping honour guard. Valentina Vasilyevna wasn’t only a People’s Artist of the RSFSR, she was a sincere Christian with a bent towards secret charity… not only her voice was beautiful…
BMD
Georg Ots (1920-75), People’s Artist of the USSR
Я люблю тебя, жизнь! (I love you, life!)
Moscow’s Helikon Opera opened its new season with a musical revue of Soviet songs. Its brand new production Back in the USSR, titled after a popular Beatles song, is set to become the highlight of the season. The idea of creating a revue with setting and costumes based on Soviet songs occurred to the opera company’s leadership after the theatre hosted an evening of Soviet songs and the audience enjoyed every minute of it. The resulting set designs incorporate a public phone booth of the 1960s, a park fence, and a bench provided with video installations in the form of parks, starry skies, and rain. There’s also footage from old beloved Soviet films.
Valentina Tolkunova (1946-2010), People’s Artist of the RSFSR
Я не могу иначе (I can’t do anything else)
The theatre’s artistic director, Dmitri Bertman, spoke to our VOR correspondent, “Currently, old Soviet songs are more than welcome, as people are nostalgic for them. The Soviet time, even though it was a time of the absurd, was saturated with spirituality and honesty. Soviet values appealed to the heart. That’s why we opted for such a production and judging by the reaction of the public, we were right in our choice”.
Muslim Magomayev (1942-2008), People’s Artist of the USSR… THE BOSS
Мелодия (A melody)
Indeed, the performance earned long-lasting applause from the audience and the house exploded with storms of applause in the course of the play. Auditor Irina Schukina shared her opinion with VOR, “The performance was full of good humour and good songs. At first, I didn’t want to go because I thought it would be boring but I was wrong”. Student Yuliya Korotkaya commented, “Fantastic! So full of energy and positive emotions. I’ll come to see it again!”
The contemporary group Serebro sings Журавли (The white cranes)
Dmitri Khvorovstovsky (1962- ), People’s Artist of Russia, sings Как Молоды мы Были (How Young We Were)
Ilya Ilyin, the producer of Back in the USSR, told VOR that the songs picked for the performance showed both positive and negative aspects of the Soviet era, saying, “Music is different. It can sound beautiful, horrible, tragic, joyful. I was born and lived in the Soviet Union, and I highly revere the songs that we sang as children and are currently singing in the theatre. The more you immerse in these songs, the more you realise what a powerful ideological machine was built in the Soviet days to ensure loyalty to the Soviet ideology. The cream of Soviet composers, including Dunayevsky, wrote for this machine. The genius of Dunayevsky coincided with the goals that these songs pursued”.
1 October 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_10_01/The-Golden-Age-of-Soviet-songs/
Editor’s Note:
Most decent and real Russian people love Soviet songs, as they’re usually positive in tone and damned good music. The people who want to remove the Soviet period from Russian history and the Russian soul have to go and soak their heads in a bucket of ice until the good sense returns. There was much good and much bad in that period. What makes it so difficult is that so much good stood cheek-by-jowl with much evil. On the hand, yes, there was the GULag, the dictatorship, the oppressive hand of the Party apparat, but on the other hand, there was the space programme, the Great Victory, the mass literacy and health campaigns, and the highest living standards that Russia had known (shared rather more equally than at present, I might add).
There must be repentance for the evil… and a celebration of the achievements, both, in the same way, and in equal measure. Lenin must be laid to rest next to his mother in Piter, but his tomb in Moscow must be kept as a reminder of that time… both of its evil and of its grandeur. After all, Lenin wasn’t corrupt or greedy… history tells us that his needs and personal manners were modest and he didn’t enrich himself or his family (quite unlike some American politicians I could name). Today’s Russia would be the lesser without it…
Soviet song lived… Soviet song lives… Soviet song shall live!
BMD
On Thursday, 7 June, hundreds came to St Petersburg to the Arkady Raikin Variety Theatre to participate in the secular memorial service for Russian pop music legend and People’s Artist of the RSFSR Eduard Khil, who died on 4 June in the 78th year of his life.
Hundreds of people attended the memorial service at the theatre, many of them being over forty. Almost everyone brought some kind of flowers. Many of those who came to bid farewell to the singer were familiar with his work since the 1960s, as they grew up with Khil’s songs.
Khil’s admirers carried flowers to the famous Tolstoy House on Rubinshteyn Street, where the singer lived.
Earlier, an Orthodox service was held at the Church of the Mother of God of Smolensk. After the secular memorial service for Khil took place at the Raikin Theatre, his burial took place at the Smolensky Cemetery.
Family and friends sent many messages of condolence. For example, President Vladimir Putin wrote Khil’s family, saying that his name would always live in the popular memory, as he was a “richly gifted, amazingly bright, and positive person in an epoch in the history of our people’s music”. In the photo above, we see Zoe Pravdina, the widow of Eduard Khil, at the secular memorial service at the Raikin Theatre.
Singer and songwriter Aleksandr Rozenbaum spoke at the secular memorial service for Eduard Khil at the Raikin Theatre.
7 June 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
On Thursday, People’s Artist of the RSFSR Eduard Khil, commonly known in the West as “Mr Trololo”, was buried in St Petersburg’s Smolensky Cemetery. The Soviet-era crooner, who won international acclaim when a 1976 clip of him performing on Soviet television became a YouTube sensation two years ago, died at the age of 77 in St Petersburg on Monday night. “Mr Trololo” died following a stroke that left him with severe brain damage. The burial service for the late star was at a St Petersburg cathedral, where thousands came to pay their final tribute to the artist. Footage of Khil’s 1976 performance of a wordless song, I’m Very Happy ‘cause I’m Finally Goin’ Home, went viral on the internet in 2010, and earned him the nickname “Mr Trololo”.
7 June 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/culture/20120607/173901932.html
Editor’s Note:
So… Eduard Anatolyevich was Orthodox… ask your priest to mention his name during the Proskomedy, and request prayers and Pannikhida for him.
BMD
People’s Artist of the RSFSR Eduard Khil died of a stroke at the age of 77. It’s hard to believe that he’s gone. Everyone knew of Khil’s humour and of the optimism that permeated his songs; he remained lively and energetic to the end. Khil possessed a composed but powerful lyric baritone voice, fantastic diction, and great artistry. His life wasn’t easy. At age seven, he was evacuated from Smolensk an hour before the Germans arrived. The spectre of death hung over his head… sinister planes with black crosses bombed a train carrying wounded people, to which the car with the children was attached at the last moment. Eduard remembered for the rest of his life the metallic glint of the low-flying aircraft and the blood of the newly-killed soldiers and children who were buried almost every day. Then, he went to an orphanage in distant Buryatia because his mother had lost him in the chaos of the VOV (by that time she was divorced from her husband). Eduard made two failed attempts to get to the front lines. He suffered from malnutrition. Later, he recalled that he often dreamed about bread at night. Eduard survived. He took part in concerts for the wounded. Towards the end of the war, his mother found him and took back home to devastated Smolensk. It’s no accident that Khil had so many military songs in his repertoire. He used to say, “Those who survived the war are not afraid of anything”.
Having witnessed so many horrors as a child, Khil looked at the bright side for his whole life. He not only survived, he became a professional singer after graduating from the Leningrad Conservatory in 1960. His first performance was in 1949, when he was a student at a vocational printing school. As he recalled later on, he was paid in crackers. Where did this son of a mechanic and an accountant get his talent? He probably inherited it from his grandfather Vasili. He was a church choir director before the Revolution, but he was purged by the Soviets. Why didn’t Khil become an opera singer? After all, he played the role of Figaro in Mozart‘s The Marriage of Figaro; he performed in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville; he sang Janusz from Moniuszko’s Galka and the leading parts in Yevgeni Onegin and The Queen of Spades. Khil probably wanted to transcend the classical genre. He launched his career as a pop singer in 1962 and he soon became one of the country’s best performers. However, he didn’t forget about other musical genres, either. As the host of By the Fireplace on Leningrad television, he described the history of classic Russian lyrical songs and sang them himself.
Audiences in many countries loved Khil, and not just those in the Eastern bloc. Apart from his vocal talents, Khil had the important skill of always being “in synch” with his era. In the 1990s, when many Soviet performers lost their jobs, Khil and the youth band Prepinaki presented a project, “Khil and Sons”, offering updated version of popular Soviet songs. In 2010, Khil became popular all over the world as young American internet users fell in love with a video of him singing Arkady Ostrovsky’s 1966 song, I’m Very Happy ‘cause I’m Finally Goin’ Home. Khil became known as “Mr Trololo” after the sound he repeats throughout the wordless vocalise. He recalled his moment of international fame by saying, “I was sitting at home, peeling potatoes. My grandson rushed in and said, ‘What are you doing, Gran’pa? They’re showing you on the Internet!’ I don’t even know how many people saw me, but I was immediately showered with invitations from all over the world”.
Several generations were raised on Khil’s songs. As one of his fans wrote, “He was a great singer with a unique voice. He sang as if he were reading novels out loud, and it was impossible to be unmoved by his singing”. Khil once remarked, “Only fools believe that pop singing’s a simple genre. Many still consider show business easy, but I’ll tell you that all these things are very difficult”.
4 June 2012
RIA-Novosti
Besik Pipia of RIA-Novosti kept a personal archive of photographs the late Soviet and Russian pop star and People’s Artist of the RSFSR Eduard Khil , shot on the banks of the Neva over many years. We publish these images here for the first time. Eduard Khil was a frequent guest entertainer at the Остров (Ostrov: The Island) night club, he was friends with one of the founders, Sergei Osintsyov.
Khil at the gala for Yelena Obraztsova, which took place at the Russian Museum in 1999.
Khil and Alisa Freindlikh at the opening of the Russian-Georgian musical salon in St Petersburg.
Khil told Besik Pepia, “We should have more such forums for intellectual communication. The ambience here reminds me of my annual trips to Georgia in the Soviet period; it was a sunny country, full of song, with nice tart wines”.
Khil loved nature, especially out at his dacha in Novgorod Oblast.
“When I’m in the city, I miss the country… I miss my fruit trees and my berry bushes, as well as my black and red currant beds. I plant herbs… dill, celery, and parsley… I really love tilling the soil. I have a greenhouse, but everything’s natural… I refuse to use chemicals”.
“My wife and I grow cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, beets, turnips, and cabbage, even flowers. It’s beautiful countryside out in nature; we have storks and rabbits, many birds, and all other kinds of living creatures”.
Out at the dacha, Khil loved to barbecue shashlyk. As he said, “I don’t really care for beer, I prefer Burgundy and Georgian wine”.
4 June 2012
RIA-Novosti
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