THE ENCHANTMENT OF HIS MUSIC

Anyone with the slightest interest in our classical music will tell you that it reached its peak in Azerbaijan in the 1930s and 1940s. Those were difficult times of hunger, war and repression which were endured under the hypocritical slogan imposed from the authorities that "life has improved, life has become more joyous". And yet those years saw an upsurge in Azerbaijani academic music. But it was also a time of the strongest musical education. It was also a time when most of the classical textbooks of ethnic music were written and this music was finally presented in a structured fashion. A whole galaxy of new composers and musicians was emerging and new voices were being heard in Azerbaijani music. One of these was our great composer, Arif Malikov. 

The Baku experiment

"We also lead the whole planet in the sphere of ballet" was another quote from the Soviet past, only this time it was quite correct. Soviet ballet was the best and most professional in the world. It set the example to all others. The 1950s and subsequent decades were also the heyday of Azerbaijani ballet. Qara Qarayev, a pupil of Dmitriy Shostakovich himself, having finished his studies in Moscow and Leningrad, wrote his famous masterpiece "Seven Beauties". Generally speaking, academic music and ballet were at the time the only opportunity for a Soviet intellectual, restricted by censorship from all sides, to express his creativity to the full. And that is precisely why a completely apolitical ballet suddenly became the centre of an experiment, the tone of which was set by Shostakovich back in the 1930s. And one of the main venues for this experiment of such creative freedom in the union republics was Baku. It was not only ballets that were being written here, interpretations were exercised and modified to the modern style of classical music as happened, for example, with the music of Sergey Prokofyev, which was the inspiration for the one-act ballet "Classical Symphony". 

The effect of this creative experiment was particularly strengthened by the very tradition of Azerbaijani music and its own style on which was superimposed both the innovativeness of the musical neoclassicism of the middle of the century and the very structure of European academic music and its standards. Tofiq Bakixanov's "Caspian Ballads" and Farac Qarayev's "Shadows of Qobustan" - these and other ballets by young Azerbaijani composers drew great interest to Baku. But perhaps the main event in the national ballet of that time was "The Legend of Love" by the then young Arif Malikov. Qara Qarayev's pupil wrote this remarkable "cult" - as the saying goes nowadays - ballet at the age of 27 way back in 1960. And the very next year it was put on at the Mariinskiy Theatre by Yuriy Grigorovich himself, the greatest choreographer of his time. Arif Malikov remembers: "Having written the ballet, I got on the plane, flew to Leningrad and showed the music at the Mariinskiy Theatre. They accepted me straightaway and we signed a contract. And in 1961 there took place the premiere of 'The Legend of Love'. It was a complete success." In fact, the ballet was so good that the great Grigorovich ignored the composer's age and the fact that it was only three years since he graduated from the conservatoire, and he took Malikov and included his work in the theatre programme, personally handled the choreography and summoned the best Soviet ballet masters to the production.

…being a student

It should be said that Grigorovich and others in the arts world had taken notice of this young gifted man several years before at the first composers' congress in Baku in 1956 which was attended by top people in the arts world and the greatest composers. During the congress the then young conservatoire student Arif Malikov played a suite for violin and piano which he had composed specially. Those attending the congress were struck by the young musician's talent. And Dmitriy Shostakovich himself said many flattering things about the young Malikov in the press. This was the first benediction, the first "critical review" of the future great composer. 

And so, just four years later, people whose mere names evoked a wave of emotions in the heart of any connoisseur of the arts, played in Malikov's first ballet, the libretto of which was based on Nazim Hikmet's tale "Ferhad and Sirin". In Moscow's Bolshoy Theatre they were Maya Plisetskaya (Mehmete Banu), Natalya Bessmertnova (Sirin), Maris Liepa (Ferhad) and many others. It could be said that the foremost actors of Soviet and post-Soviet ballet have appeared in "The Legend of Love" at least once. The "Legend" has been performed all over the place since then - in Kiev, Novosibirsk, Almaty, Tashkent, Chishinau, Frunze [Bishkek], Kharkiv, Donetsk, Tartu, Chelyabinsk, Ulan-Ude, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Germany, USA, Japan, Britain, France, Egypt - I could go on and on. There are few ballets that can boast such an endless list.

Malikov's work is varied and not confined to ballet alone. His love for composing lyrical songs is, perhaps, surprising for one with such a broad range of theatrical talent. Almost all of them are based on the lyrics of Nazim Hikmet. Incidentally, it was Malikov who really introduced this Turkish poet to the Soviet reader, and it was after this that Azerbaijani composers began to turn to his work. Each of Malikov's lyrical pieces is a real masterpiece of chamber-vocal music. Today, at the age of 81, Malikov continues to work and compose, and we wish him with all our heart good health and productive creative work.