Alexey Alekseevich got into the “Book of Records of Russia” in the categories “Oldest writing professional composer” and “Oldest active professional pianist performing his own music”
Photo: Sergei Tretyakov
Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Soviet composer Alexei Muravlev died April 22 at the age of 99 in his Moscow apartment in Gazetny Lane. The famous composer was a long-liver. Only the last few years he was ill, next to him was until the last minutes of his spouse’s life. Even at a venerable age (after 90 years), the composer continued to write music. Muravlev’s experience is 75 years.
In 2014, Aleksey Alekseevich was included in the Russian Book of Records in the categories of Oldest Writing Professional Composer and Oldest Active Professional Pianist Performing His Music. Muravlev differed from his colleagues in that he was a composer who wrote in almost all known genres: from works for pianoforte, chamber ensembles, vocal and choral compositions to works for a symphony orchestra. Alexey Muravlev has written music for more than a hundred films.
The first feature film for which Muravlev wrote music was The White Poodle (1955) based on a story by Kuprin. The composer recalled: “Seryozha’s song was written for this film, which became very popular. There is also such a refrain: “play, play, hurdy-gurdy, play, help wander around the world.” I wrote music for the films “Mumu”, “First Date”. And in 1960, at the Yalta film studio, “A House with a Mezzanine” was filmed, with the director of which, Yakov Lvovich Bazelyan, I was then associated with a long friendship. The maestro’s music can be heard in Soviet films: “Aladdin’s Magic Lamp”, “Black Birch”, “Vasily and Vasilisa”, “Semyon Dezhnev”. The song “Am I to blame” to the music of Muravlev for the film “Clouds over Borsk” has gone to the people.
The fate of Alexei Muravlev is amazing. From school years he studied in a special group of gifted children at the Leningrad Conservatory. I didn’t have time to finish a ten-year school, I passed one final exam: “I was in the ninth grade then, and one of my classmates and I decided to pass all the subjects for the tenth grade in order to finish school, but we only partially succeeded. The war began and we were sent to evacuation, just a few days before the start of the blockade. Thus, I don’t have a matriculation certificate, and I never graduated from high school.” Alexei and his parents were evacuated from Leningrad to Sverdlovsk. And there, a talented boy was admitted to the first year of the Sverdlovsk Conservatory, to two faculties at once: piano and composition. In the autumn of 1944, Alexei was invited to the Moscow Conservatory – he had to do it all over again, and he was taken only to the second year. Muravlev’s graduation work was the symphonic poem “Azov Mountain”, for which the composer received the Stalin Prize in 1950.
Alexey Alekseevich until 2013 taught at the Russian Academy of Music. Gnesins. Muravlev had many students. In one of his last interviews, Muravlev gave the following advice to young composers and musicians: “Don’t lose touch with traditions. And I would also like to wish more of some disinterestedness in creative work. So that, mastering the creative heritage, mastering modern music, they still tried to find themselves, so that their creative personality would take place. Now there are so many opportunities, so many things that you can get acquainted with – therefore, of course, I want to wish them not to get lost, not to succumb to various influences, and that, having found their own path, they still remain true to it.
