Oriented on making people closer

The name of the brilliantly talented composer Nury Halmamedov has firmly entered the history of professional music of Turkmenistan as the creator of a unique individual style that combines the traditions of Turkmen folk music and composition techniques of the 19th and 20th centuries. His music was a unique embodiment of classical, romantic and impressionistic styles.

Several generations of musicians have been brought up on the music of Nury Halmamedov, and today it continues to be heard on the concert stages of Turkmenistan and far beyond its borders. Competitions and festivals, conferences and exhibitions are held in honor of the composer; his work attracts famous scientists and young students. Many radio and television programs have been prepared about the composer’s personality, documentaries have been made, and many books and scientific articles have been written. Senior teacher of the Department of History of Music at the Turkmen National Conservatory named after May Kuliyeva, Jamilya Kurbanova, defended her Candidate's dissertation and published a monograph on the work of Nury Halmamedov.

The composer's creative interests included arrangements of folk melodies, music for cartoons and films, symphonic and vocal-symphonic, chamber-instrumental and chamber-vocal works. And no matter what genre the composer turned to, he was able to create wonderful examples of musical works that excite the hearts of music lovers and professional performers.

Nury Halmamedov, having lost his parents very early, was brought up in an orphanage and in all his documents the date of birth was recorded as February 24, 1940, and the place was Bakharden district in the village of Murcha. However, in recent years, researchers of the composer’s work have clarified the date of birth of Nury Halmamedov - the composer was born on June 20, 1938 in the village of Daina, Karakala district.

While studying at a comprehensive school, Nury Halmamedov simultaneously begins to study piano with teacher Olga Alekseevna Krivchenko, thanks to whom the young musician, having mastered the piano perfectly, enters the Turkmen State Music College, in the class of teacher Elena Konstantinovna Kulesh, and already from the second year begins take a composition class from the founder of the Turkmen school of composition, People's Artist of Turkmenistan, professor and scientist Ashir Kuliyev.

During these same years, his first works for piano, such as “Dance”, “Dumka”, “Scherzo”, “Turkmen Melody”, “Song” and others appeared. In 1958, Nury entered the Moscow State Conservatory named after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the composition class of Professor Anatoly Nikolaevich Alexandrov. Chamber vocal and instrumental works written during the years of study at the conservatory, such as “Song of the Motherland”, “Don’t Leave Me”, “Beloved”, as well as sonatas, poems, fantasies, suites, preludes for various instruments, are still heard today on concert stage. Already in 1962, for the work “Sounds of Dutar”, dedicated to the dutar performer - virtuoso Mylly Tachmyradov, Khalmamedov was awarded an Honorary Diploma at the All-Union Competition.

In 1963, he successfully graduated from the conservatory, his diploma work was the symphonic suite “Turkmenistan”, first performed at the state exam by the Great Symphony Orchestra of the All-Union Radio and Television. The work reveals the author's bright individual style and mastery of orchestral thinking.

Nury Halmamedov works a lot in the film studio, he wrote the music for the films “Shukur Bakhshi”, “The Decisive Step”, “Makhtumkuli”, “Secrets of Mukam”, “Pigeons Live in Kariz”, “When Dad Will Return”, “Kechpelek”, “Japbaks", "Male Education" and others.

In vocal works and music for the choir, the composer turns to the poetry of the classics, to the poems of modern and foreign poets, this is the poetry of Magtymguly and Mollanepes, Seydi and Kemine, Bayram-shahir and Nobatniyaz- bakhshi, Ata Atajanov and Kerim Kurbannepesov, Kurbannazar Ezizov and Atajan Tagan, Sergei Yesenin and Heinrich Heine. As a result, wonderful songs and vocal cycles “Uch Desse” and “Persian Motives”, “Love” and “Human Hearts” were created.

Nury Halmamedov dedicated a string quartet “To the memory of women and children tortured in fascist dungeons”, a vocal cycle based on the words of Japanese poets “Unheard songs of the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” and a vocal-symphonic poem “To the memory of fallen heroes in the Great Patriotic War” to the tragic events of the Great Patriotic War, to the words of Kurbannazar Ezizov.

Nury Halmamedov paid great attention to the pedagogical education of young musicians; the composer wrote three notebooks of “Fleetingnesses”. As musicologist Jamilya Kurbanova notes in her monograph: “His compositions opened a new chapter of Turkmen piano music. The composer's expressive style and ingenuity were unusually evident in them. Bright melodicism, richness of musical images, feelings, emotions never cease to attract the attention of performers and listeners to them.”

Nury Halmamedov is also the author of the music for the ballet “The Decisive Step”; the composer’s plans included the ballet “Yusup and Zuleikha”, the operas “Gorogly” and “Nedjep Oglan”, but fate decreed otherwise, the composer passed away at the age of 45. The composer died on August 4, 1983.

As part of the festival in honor of the 85th anniversary of Nury Halmamedov, the Turkmen National Conservatory named after May Kulieva gives a concert on October 28, Saturday. It will be preceded by a scientific and practical conference dedicated to the composer’s work, it will take place in the Small Hall of TNC.

And at 10:30 a concert of piano and chamber-vocal works by Nury Halmamedov will begin in the Great Hall of the Conservatory. Free admission!

Agadzhan ACHILOV

Photo: TNC