Aram Khachaturian

By Olga Fyodorova

The year 1924. The basement of the Moscow Wine Bottling Factory. There is a young man with jet-black hair sitting in the corner with blood dripping from his hand… He is approached by a store woman.

“What’s up?”

“Cut my hand on broken glass… Lost a lot of blood. Thank God I managed to stop the blood but it hurts like hell! Moreover, this may cost me my profession!”

“Don’t you worry, everything will be all right! You’ll be back to work before you know it!”

“You think moving boxes is all I’m doing? No way, it’s just hackwork. I’m a musician, got it? Studying cello at the Gnessins Music College!”

“Oh, really? How long?”

“Hard to say, really… Started figuring out tunes on the piano when I was  a kid. We had an old upright piano in Tbilisi, which is my hometown even though I’m an Armenian. In Moscow I came to the music college only to hear them tell me I was too old to be a good pianist and why don’t I enter the cello class they had just opened there… That’s exactly what I did. It was two years ago… My teachers say I’m doing fine, but I don’t think so, really… Well, maybe someday I move into conducting… or composing, who knows?…”

“Composing? Are you telling me you are writing music too?” 

“Yeah, there is always music playing inside my head, but the problem is I can’t properly put it down on paper… I will learn, of course, as soon as my hand gets better. Even now, as I’m sitting here talking to you, it seems like someone is singing a marching song right inside my head. It’s like a hurricane and I can hear its sounds reverberating from the surrounding mountains…”

Aram Khachaturian, for that was the name of the young loader, successfully finished the music college, then the Moscow Conservatory and eventually became a composer. Still in Conservatory, he wrote several pieces, which were quickly picked up by many leading musicians here.

Feeling lonely and homesick in Moscow, Aram chased away the blues by going to theater, concerts and mingling with interesting people.  The talented young man quickly made himself comfortable in the city’s elitist music community much with the help of his brother who was a prominent stage figure back in those days. Before long he was rubbing shoulders with leading writers, painters, actors and musicians, among them the young but already famous violinist David Oistrakh.  It was precisely with Oistrakh’s inimitable playing in mind that Khachaturian wrote his Violin Concerto, so brimful with the rich and fragrant melodies of his native Armenia…

The Concerto premiered with resounding success in 1940 and the following year Khachaturian followed up his success writing music for Mikhail Lermontov’s drama “Masquerade.” Staged at one of Moscow premier theaters, the music  fitted the production just perfectly underscoring Lermontov’s timeless verse... 

The waltz from “Masquerade” became one of the best-loved and signature pieces ever written by Aram Khachaturian.

“Masquerade” premiered right before the June 22, 1941 Nazi invasion…

As the war wore on, Khachaturian was active first holding concerts for the conscripts and then setting up mobile frontline orchestras he sometimes joined in. He also played his music on the radio and kept writing on…

His new ballet “Gayane” premiered in the Urals in 1942 at the very height of the war, performed by members of Leningrad’s Kirov Opera and Ballet, now Mariinsky Theater.

Khachaturian’s new ballet created a profound impression, its stirringly optimistic music offering much-needed inspiration for the Soviet soldiers preparing to engage the enemy and those recuperating from their wounds in the quiet of the Ural Mountains. The “Dance With Swords” made Khachaturian famous all around the world  and wherever he went people invariably asked him to play this fiery tune…

In the Soviet Union popularity did not necessarily mean a peaceful life though, and in 1948 dark clouds started gathering over Khachaturian and several other leading composers. A government decree initiated by Josef Stalin lashed out angrily against their work dismissing it as formalist and alien to the working class. 

The whole country joined in the witch-hunt. The great composers had their music banned and all their foreign tours canceled…

The crackdown left an indelible and very painful imprint on Khachaturian’s mind and even after the disgraced composers were reinstated a couple of years later, he was never the same again...  He no longer enjoyed writing music and his “Spartacus” ballet about the life, struggle and love of the gladiator who dared to question the indestructible might of the Roman Empire was the only thing that equaled the emotionally supercharged music he wrote before the crackdown came…

“Spartacus” was staged by the country’s leading theaters and awarded the much-coveted Lenin Prize.

During his ebbing years Aram Khachaturian was getting increasingly interested in conducting, touring the world and meeting with leading musicians. Charming and friendly, he immediately endeared himself to all making new friends and expanding his fan base. 

But never, even once, did he betray his old friends, and his marriage to fellow composer Nina Makarova was an excellent example for so many families to follow…

Boasting many students and followers, Aram Khachaturian spent 27 years teaching at the Moscow Conservatory bringing up a whole constellation of top-notch composers.

Many would-be composers, especially those willing to create classical  European music while preserving each one’s national traditions, dreamed of studying with Khachaturian. Small wonder too since it was exactly what the great Armenian composer did all his life…

A living legend, Aram Khachaturian did not live to mark his 75th birthday and was buried with great honors in the Armenian capital Yerevan.