June 20 would have been Nury Khalmamedov's 87th birthday. The Moscow International Arts Festival "Sounds of Dutar" named after Nury Khalmamedov, established in 2015, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Due to the pandemic, two planned festivals were postponed, as a result of which the current year will be marked by the IX festival. For its creators, this is a significant date, which is interesting for the first results of the development of the forum's focus - from the popularization of the outstanding Turkmen composer Nury Khalmamedov, whose work was a synthesis of the richest folklore school with the classical traditions of European and Russian music, to the Moscow International Arts Festival named after him.

It is pleasant to realize that the authority of the forum is growing, having opened its platforms to musicians, vocalists, dancers, artists, musicologists, inspired by the humanistic ideas of a single ethnocultural space for academic art of different countries and peoples.

Nury Khalmamedov. A man. A composer. A phenomenally gifted person, who does not fit into any Procrustean bed, loving, rebellious, suffering, conscientious.

Fortunately, the extraordinary boy, a complete orphan, was noticed in the Orphanage and everything was done to send him to study.

In 1958, after studying at the Ashgabat College of Music, Nury Khalmamedov entered the Moscow State Conservatory named after P.I. Tchaikovsky, the composition class of A.N. Alexandrov.

During his student years (1959-1963), the first vocal cycle in the composer's work appears - and it is written to the verses of the great Magtymguly, who was amazing in his gift of clothed the language of the people, with its traditions, faith, joys and sufferings, in the original artistic form of classical poetry.

Among a significant number of works of Turkmen music written to the verses of Magtymguly, the cycle of Nury Khalmamedov immediately occupies a special place: according to general assessment, this is the maximum convergence of the artistic language of the poet and the composer.

We say “literature and art” without always thinking about why the concept of “literature” is independently placed outside the conditional brackets in which the sum of all other forms of creative understanding of life by an artist is presented in one word.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” It is in the Word, which in each national language, with the same Meaning, sounds differently, it is in the native language that the basis of the identity of a nation, its originality, such a concept as national character… And welcoming the inexhaustible wealth of national characteristics, I would like to remember that the different sounds of the same Words in different languages does not cancel the unity of content.

Magtymguly. "The Exile".

This is Nury's favorite poem from his youth. The first romance was written to these verses (1959, 2nd year of the Conservatory). And this romance crowns the vocal cycle of eight poems by Magtymguly.

We can talk about the dramatic construction of the cycle, where the composer uses the contrast of the sound of two figurative spheres of Magtymguly's poetry - civic-patriotic ("Exile". "Beautiful Shirgazi"...) and lyrical ("Confusion of Mengli", "My life faded in tears"...), about the through-line in the cycle "theme of the poet", which is transformed in different romances depending on new genre meanings, about the use of the cello next to the piano, timbre of which conveys the dramatic intonations of the male voice in the best possible way...

But everything is drowned out by the thought that Nury Khalmamedov began working on the cycle at the age of 19! This is a spiritual kinship - Word and Music were born in the soul and grew into meanings, melodies and rhythms, merging and complementing each other.

It is natural that Alty Karliev, People's Artist of Turkmenistan, People's Artist of the USSR, multiple laureate of the State Prizes of the TSSR and the USSR, having conceived the production of the feature film "Magtymguly", doubting himself, the script, the actors, the production capabilities of "Turkmenfilm", had no doubts about only one thing - the music would be written by Nury Khalmamedov. And the decisive moment in choosing a composer was not so much the brilliant joint work in the film epic "The Decisive Step", which brought glory to the country, the studio and the creators, as the cycle of Nury's romances to the words of Magtymguly.

The director needed co-authors. Composer Nury Khalmamedov and Turkmen cinema are a special page in the history of national culture. The list of feature films, documentaries, and animated films in which Khalmamedov's music sounds is impressive. And everywhere it is a great artistic force, making the film emotionally richer and more expressive.

“I hate music in cinema,” famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel once said in an interview, referring to the dominant force of music even over His image.

Classic writer Chingiz Aitmatov has a completely different opinion about the importance of music in cinema. After the prestigious festival awards were presented to Bulat Mansurov's film "Competition", he wrote a famous article entitled - "Music that beat swords into ploughshares". In particular, it says: "The film would not have turned out like this if it had not included the music of Nury Khalmamedov. This "non-invented" music brought recognition and glory to the musical culture of the Turkmen people."

Of course, in turn, both poetry and cinema influenced the style of Nury Khalmamedov. All his music is visible - the composer created melodic panoramas, sound close-ups, psychological portraits of his heroes, he valued drama in music, he could introduce a non-standard instrument into the orchestra to achieve a characteristic sound detail...

The influence of poetry and cinema is equally clearly visible in the pictorial style of the production designer of the film "Magtymguly" Vladimir Artykov, now a well-known figure in Turkmen and Russian art, whose paintings were presented in the program of the V Festival "Sounds of Dutar" in 2019 (the last lifetime exhibition of Vladimir Artykov).

A full member (academician) of the International Academy of Creativity, Honored Artist of Turkmenistan, participant and laureate of numerous exhibitions in the country and abroad, whose paintings are in the Tretyakov Gallery and museums of the CIS countries, Vladimir Artykov, being a graduate of the art department of VGIK, began his creative career at the Turkmenfilm studio. Here, on the film "Magtymguly", the team of directors was formed: director Alty Karliev, composer Nury Khalmamedov, artist Vladimir Artykov.

Alta Karliev's fears were not in vain, the ordinariness of the script basis affected the main thing - the image of Magtymguly remained within the framework of a traditional biographical film. And yet the film captivated the audience with vivid scenes of folk life, its "folk" music, impressive details of historical time, life, traditions, the coloristic artistic solutions, the ability to transform color into light, achieving the epicness of the image...

Synthesis - what a capacious concept. And in art, and in the Festival programs, and in our lives.

Lora Stepanskaya, screenwriter-director, Honored Artist of Turkmenistan, member of the Organizing Committee of the festival "Sounds of Dutar"