George de Godzinsky: Half a year and the whole life with Chaliapin

 

	Title	George de Godzinsky: Half a year and the whole life with Chaliapin
	ISBN	978-5-900815-85-4
	Publisher	Kruk
	City	Moscow
	Year	2016
	Pages	240
	Copies	300

Afterword

In November 1935 in Helsinki happened something unprecedented in music culture. The world famous Russian singer who performed triumphantly on the most prominent scenes Feodor Chaliapin (age 62) met a student named George de Godzinsky who was an anonymous musician at that moment. The three-four days were enough to invite an obviously talented piano player as an accompanist to a six-month tour in 1936 to a number of Asian countries. It came out that concerts were held only in Japan and China. The 23 concerts throughout a six-month period were a phenomenal success. The whole life of George de Godzinsky was marked by this sudden meeting and creative co-work with the great Russian singer.

In Chaliapin’s Motherland for half a century no one knew about this pleasant cooperation of the Saint-Petersburg born accompanist and the great singer that enchanted the public.

Half a century later, and again in Helsinki, a unique event happened again. George de Godzinsky, the Finnish piano player, composer and conductor, well known in the country and abroad, was approached for the first time by a Russian journalist (no one in the music circles knew Nikolay Gorbunov). He asked maestro to tell about his work with Chaliapin. Godzinsky was astonished to say the least but didn’t refuse the conversation.

It is worth mentioning that the first meeting of Gorbunov and Godzinsky took place on February, 26 1987, exactly 51 year after the beginning of Chaliapin’s tour in Japan. Godzinsky was generous to share with the journalist his memories and rare materials from his personal archive about his youth. On the ground of those meetings and conversations and after a namber of years of research Gorbunov in 2002 published a book “Feodor Chaliapin in Japan and China”. That was tha first in Russia and abroad fundamental study of Chaliapin’s 16-year long life and creative work abroad (1922-1938).

But the topic is not exhausted yet. In 2015 Gorbunov turned to the materials of Godzinsky again. He was a brilliant story teller with a sharp eye and a lively word with a good feeling for the situation he witnessed. And there was a whole lot of news during that six-month tour. First of all, there was an everyday talk with the great singer during the long railway trips across France and China and steamboat voyages from France to Japan with a number of stops in towns that attracted their attention. The rehearsals with the singer on the steamboat were of great responsibility, not to mention the concerts themselves. Godzinsky seized every ooprtunity for sightseeing in Japan and China as well.

All of it was put into a script that Godzinsky wrote in 1953, 17 years after the journey to the Far East. It was never finished. In 1988 he decided to present its copy to Gorbunov as a gift. It was a marvelous story of a young and talented musician and traveler. His impressions of the long trip to the Far East and unforgettable concerts with Chaliapin became the basis for this book.

The meeting with Godzinsky became a turning point for Gorbunov’s fate. He started to collect information on Chaliapin’s tours abroad, his work on promotion of Russian culture, art and music. The work was done in national libraries, archives, theatre and music museums, there were a number of important meeting with people who performed on the scene together with Chaliapin, met him. It drove to the publishing of books on Chaliapin’s tours to Japan, China, Finland, Sweden. Denmark, Norway, Serbia, Croatia, Australia, New Zealand. The collection of materials on his tours in Argentina, Chili, Uruguay and Brazil is ongoing. Gorbunov in fact seized working as a journalist and became a researcher.

 

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