HE WHO ACHIEVED IMMORTALITY

Highly talented conductor and composer Niyazi Hacibeyili was one of Azerbaijan's gifts to the world of culture and arts.  His performance skills played a huge role in the history of Azerbaijani music.  Niyazi was the nephew of great Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hacibayov and cherished the tradition which his uncle had started by winning the hearts of true connoisseurs of music around the world.  As a sign of respect for his exceptional skills, he was called "Maestro."  Before him, only the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi had earned this honorary address.

The phenomenon which was Niyazi

By his talent, Niyazi won the hearts of audiences on different continents.  He had the talent to discern the ideological content of works of different genres, to skilfully absorb complex concepts and stylistic characteristics of the piece, mesmerizing his audiences.  That is why he was ranked among the world's most prominent conductors.  Throughout his professional career, Niyazi was the most important interpreter of works by the great Azerbaijani composers.  It was this highly talented conductor who was able to reveal, down to the minute nuances, the complete brightness, depth and artistic expressivity of works by Qara Qarayev, Covdat Haciyev, Arif Malikov, Fikrat Amirov and Soltan Hacibayov.

Man's life fits in between the dates of his birth and death.  However, historic personalities earn their own form of immortality.  Fikrat Amirov's seven-part symphonic poem, "Portraits", recreates the images of prominent Azerbaijani men of arts - playwright Cafar Cabbarli, singer Bulbul, poet Samad Vurgun, composer Uzeyir Hacibayov and conductor Niyazi.  This is what the composer said about Niyazi when discussing the idea behind his piece:  "Niyazi was the one who made most of the works by Azerbaijani composers popular.  I have tried to describe the nature of that talented virtuoso in the form of an orchestral scherzo.  When I was composing the scherzo, I could see Niyazi on the conductor's rostrum.  The music in this part is rich with intonations of the composer Niyazi's work."

Niyazi had fantastic musical intuition.  He could distinguish all the hues of sound in his score with great precision.  Sometimes, a composer would miss errors by the orchestra during rehearsals.  Niyazi used to ask them half-jokingly:  "Did you compose this music?  Or did you just write the score?"

He had a phenomenal memory for music.  He could skim through a score and lodge it in his photographic mind, page after page.  He had an excellent feeling for music; it enabled him to read sheet music like a book.  Niyazi was one of those conductors who had a magical influence on the audience and musicians.  He had tremendous respect for the composer's work, especially for scores by classical composers, and he demanded that the musicians kept to the spirit of the original.  At the same time, he sometimes made corrections to works by his colleagues to improve their sound.

The Maestro was a very well-educated man.  As a member of the Main Editorial Board of the Azerbaijani Soviet Encyclopaedia, he did his best to ensure that all entries were highly accurate and scientifically sound.  With his good nature and wit, great sense of humour and affability, he won the sympathy of the editorial board.  A prominent man with a stroke of genius, he was very humble and amicable, and his attitude made those talking with him almost forget about his international fame.  Niyazi had a knack of telling personal anecdotes in a very interesting way.  Once he told me a story from his life:  "One fine day, my grandmother Sirin Xanim (Uzeyir Bay's mother) heard me playing the piano and asked me to play Xeyrati, adding that she wanted to dance to that tune.  She started to dance as soon as I began to play.  I could not watch her and still regret that, for Xeyrati is not a dance tune but a rhythmic mugham, and it still bothers me about what dancing style my grandma used.  I regret that I did not see it and understand.  Perhaps I will never know now.  So I can only regret that...."

Maestro was a very pious man too.  He once told me "When I am on the conductor's rostrum in concert halls abroad, I raise my eyes and say to myself:  'Allah, help me maintain the dignity of my motherland, my people.  Make my performance successful, so that I can go back home with pride."

"Hands of gold"

Possessing deep insight into the subtleties of Azerbaijani music, Niyazi demonstrated great skills in unravelling the main idea of the work he was performing.  He performed Fikrat Amirov's mugham works and his own mugham, "Rast", as well as Qara Qarayev's "Path of Thunder", with particular inspiration.  Once, after a rehearsal in Berlin, the very experienced accompanist Anisim Aleksandrovich took Niyazi by the hand and said:  "Look at the golden hands of the Maestro, they work wonders."

Niyazi was not only a conductor and composer, he was a great patriot and educator.  He always stressed the level of his people's aesthetic perception, pointing out specifically that the people of Azerbaijan were the first in the East to create their own school of opera and surpassed many European countries with their symphonies and ballet works - their intellectual music - which made them an example for all Muslim countries.  That was why he did his best to ensure that, together with other audiences, ordinary people living in the provinces of Azerbaijan could also hear the symphonies of Azerbajani composers.  He gave concerts in all corners of Azerbaijan.  Upon his return from a tour of France, Niyazi contacted Karim Karimov, a talented music theoretician and writer, and told him that he wanted to go to the southern region of Azerbaijan with a symphony orchestra.  He asked Karimov to give lectures before the concerts, and requested that he prepare thoroughly for his task.  Karimov recollected that he was about to say:  "You are an unusual man, Maestro.  Instead of going on holiday to a resort in Monte Carlo after a demanding tour of France, you are going to the hottest parts of the republic," but he decided to refrain.  The tour was to last a month, starting in Salyan and ending in Astara.  Sixty musicians from the symphony orchestra and the singers Lutfiyar Imanov and Sonna Aslanova were to take part.  Out of respect for the Maestro, the musicians' bus was accompanied by a Traffic Police car to Alat station.  On the way back to Baku, following the successful tour of the province, Maestro asked the driver to stop the bus near a field camp.  Everyone got out to drink water from an artesian well.  Niyazi noticed a sunshade nearby, where a woman was cooking.  He asked the cook for whom she was making a meal.  She said that it was a field camp of the Samed Vurgun kolkhoz and that she was cooking lunch for the girls in the field.  Looking at the girls who were harvesting cotton under the scorching sun, Niyazi asked pensively:  "I wonder what the air temperature is now," and Lutfiyar Imanov replied that it was at least 40 degrees centigrade.  The Maestro sighed deeply and said:  "These girls are real heroes!"  Then he told the musicians to take up their instruments.  When the girls came for lunch, Maestro said that he would organize a concert for the workers in the fields, right there and then.  The percussionists, harpist and double-bass player sat on the roof of the bus, others were seated around it.  When the orchestra struck up the overture to the opera "Koroglu," the girls moved closer to where they could hear the music.  The country women were surprised to see a full orchestra with instruments.

Karim Karimov recollects that the musicians had never seen Niyazi conducting with such inspiration before!  It was as if he was performing in one of the world's largest concert halls before the most demanding and authoritative audience...  Then the orchestra performed, without sheet music, the overture to the opera "Leyli and Macnun", "Arazbari" and "Gaytagi."  In conclusion, when Lutfiyar Imanov sang Said Rustamov's song "Suarya" about a woman cotton harvester, the girls had tears in their eyes.  After the concert, Niyazi asked how much cotton they harvested in one day.  The foreman said that they could pick 30 to 90 kilograms a day.  Then Niyazi told the girls:  "Now you have your lunch, and we will harvest cotton."  The musicians went into the cotton field.  Niyazi and his wife Hacar Xanim were among them.  Half an hour later, when the sweating musicians, who could hardly straighten their backs, gathered by the scales, it turned out that all the musicians, including Niyazi, had managed to harvest only 3 kilograms of cotton...  This is how the tour by Niyazi's symphony orchestra to the southern districts of Azerbaijan ended.

The best orchestra

When in July 1969 Heydar Aliyev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, he began to organize concerts of symphony music for party functionaries at the State Philharmonic Hall.  Niyazi was personally put in charge of organizing these concerts.  Tchaikovsky's Concerto No 1 for Piano and Orchestra, Rachmaninov's Concerto No 2 for Piano and other pieces, which were relatively easy listening, were performed for this audience.  The first secretary regularly attended these concerts himself to make certain that party functionaries would not "shirk their duty."  Music critic Zhanna Dozortseva was specially invited from Moscow to read introductory lectures before Niyazi's concerts.  Before the performance, Dozortseva would briefly describe the piece to be played and, after her lecture, Niyazi and his orchestra would play.  The purpose of these events was to ensure that the party bosses in charge of culture and arts would be able to do their job professionally and to make ignorant functionaries, who had no idea of how beautiful music can be, a little more enlightened and a little more knowledgeable about the arts.

In his effort to familiarize everyone who wished with European music, Niyazi, the orchestra's art director and chief conductor, organized a series of concerts at the Philharmonic Hall, performing selected symphonic works by European and Russian classic composers. He had season tickets printed for these concerts and disseminated among staff of the Academy of Sciences, students, schoolchildren and music teachers.  The season's programme included nine symphonies by Beethoven, six symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Mozart's "Requiem", a number of pieces by Verdi and many other works.  In the first part of the concert, one of these works was performed, and the second part was devoted to the first performance of a symphonic work by an Azerbaijani composer.  As well as Niyazi, many other conductors of international renown took part in these concerts, including Aleksandr Gauk, Yevgeniy Mravinskiy, Nikolay Anosov, Kirill Kondrashin, Kurt Sanderling and Leo Ginzburg.  Before the concert, the talented music critic Karim Karimov would deliver a lengthy lecture in Russian and make a statement before every piece.  The Philharmonic's hall was always full for these concerts.  Back then, the Azerbaijani State Symphony Orchestra, under Niyazi's direction, was considered the best orchestra in the Soviet Union.  Among the orchestra's musicians were strings: Bahram Mammadzada, Azad Aliyev, Nazim Rzayev and Rauf Ahmadov, cellists Sabir Aliyev, Davud Qadimov and Farhang Qulluzada, harp players Aida Abdullayev, Sima Xalilova and others.

The wind section was the best not only in the USSR, but also in Europe.  It included trumpeters Karim Babayev and Elsad Afandiyev, trombonists Agakarim Aliyev and Samil Qurbanov, horn player Rasad Cafarov, clarinettists Qulam Samadov and Zeynal Yahyayev, flautist Alakbar Iskandarov, oboists Fuad Sadiqbayov and Rasim Safarov and other Azerbaijani performers who displayed their immense talent.  An active propagandist of musical culture, Niyazi was also the organizer of a number of musical festivals held in Azerbaijan.  He organized the 1st All-Union Festival of Revolutionary Song and was one of the initiators of a festival of the South Caucasus symphony orchestras.  Niyazi participated in writing up schedules for all the plenums and congresses of the Composers' Union.  This prominent conductor's work and achievements were highly appreciated by his people.  He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR and won State Prizes of the USSR and the Azerbaijani SSR and, in 1972, on his 70th birthday, he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour.

For one year (1962-1963) he was chief conductor at the Kirov Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre and he staged Arif Malikov's ballet, "Legend of Love," there.  But Leningrad's humid climate affected his health and he returned to his home city, Baku.  Niyazi was widely known and respected as an outstanding conductor, not only in Azerbaijan, but in many other countries - Iran, Czechoslovakia, France, Britain, Hungary, India, Mongolia, China and many others.  In Czechoslovakia, he was decorated with the Bela Bartok Medal, in India he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Prize and in East Germany he was awarded the honorary medal of the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt [Chemnitz]

Niyazi maintained close ties with Turkey.  There, he conducted the operas "Yevgeniy Onegin" and "The Queen of Spades" by P.I. Tchaikovsky, "Carmen" by Georges Bizet and "Koroglu" by Turkish composer Adnan Saygun.  Upon his return from one trip to Turkey in 1978, he composed "Turkish Miniatures for the Symphony Orchestra."  In 1942, Niyazi composed a lyrical romantic opera "Xosrov va Sirin" with libretto by Mikail Rafili.  And the symphonic mugham "Rast", which was composed in 1949, earned its author worldwide fame.

In the 1950s, Niyazi shifted his work towards the art genre and pop music.  In 1953, he composed "The Kolkhoz Suite" (co-written with Rauf Haciyev), in 1954 he created "The Concert Waltz," "Suite for Children's Choir and Symphony Orchestra," and he reworked several folk songs ("Cal Oyna," "Qara Gozlar" and others).

"Chitra", a ballet based on the literary work and music of the great Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, which was commissioned by the Kuybyshev Opera and Ballet Theatre in 1962, was one of the most important events in the art world.  In 1970, he wrote a suite based on the music of that ballet.  From 1938, Niyazi was the artistic director and chief conductor of the Azerbaijani State Symphony Orchestra.  In the same year, he was also appointed director of the Azerbaijani State Opera and Ballet Theatre.  In the same period, he composed his first major piece, "The Zaqatala Suite," which was one of his best works of that time.

The emergence and development of the Azerbaijani school of conducting are linked with the name of Niyazi.  He left an indelible impression in the memories and hearts of the people.  He was - and still is - loved as one of the country's most talented conductors and composers.  Niyazi has achieved immortality.