MOSCOW, November 20 (Itar-Tass) — A concert devoted to the 75th anniversary of Fyodor Chaliapin’s guest performances in Japan and China will take place in Moscow on Sunday.
An evening-concert will be held at Chaliapin’s memorial estate, an old mansion at Novinsky Boulevard, where the famous Russian singer used to live.
During the guest performances in Japan and China Chaliapin worked together with the young Finnish accompanist George de Godzinsky. The 63-year-old Chaliapin met the 21-year-old pianist in Helsinki in November 1935 almost three weeks before the guest tours of Japan and China started. Fifty years later George Godzinsky told Tass correspondent Nikolai Gorubnov about those outstanding historic guest performances.
Gorbunov became the first Soviet journalist to learn about those events from Godzinsky. Gorbunov wrote a book titled “Fyodor Chaliapin in Japan and China” that saw the light in 2002.
Natalya Bogelava, the professor of the Moscow Conservatory, will tell about the secrets of Godzinsky’s work. He showed such big class during hearings that the famous Chaliapin immediately invited the pianist to a six-month guest tour.
Professor of the Moscow Conservatory and PH.D in arts Nikolai Kuznetsov will also deliver a speech at the party on Sunday. The subject of his thesis was scenic mastery of an opera singer in the context of Chaliapin’s actor’s school. When Kuznetsov was one year old, he lived in Harbin in China and his father was present at Chaliapin’s concert.
Russian bass signer Andrei Arkhipov and other artists will be an ornament to the party.