Azon Fattakh

Azon Fattakh, born Azantin Nurtynovich Fatakhutdinov, was a Soviet Tatar pianist and composer. He was born on April 1, 1922, in the village of Shamyak in the Tatar ASSR, although official documents incorrectly listed September 6, 1923, as his birth date because that was the day of his residence registration. His parents, Nurtyn and Gayana Fatakhutdinov, were peasants from Kazan Governorate who fled famine and came to Moscow in 1922. He spent his childhood and youth in Moscow, in the Sokolniki district.

In 1940 he graduated from School No. 370 named after Alexander Pushkin and from the music school of Moscow's Railway District, where he studied piano with Nina Vladimirova. He entered the Gnessin Musical College in 1940, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. He went to the front on October 16, 1941, and fought on the Volkhov Front until the spring of 1944. In April 1944 he was severely wounded between Pskov and Ostrov by mortar shell fragments in both legs; because of gas gangrene, the kneecap of his right leg had to be amputated. After long treatment in hospitals in Pskov, Leningrad, Gorky, and Moscow, he became a disabled veteran of the second group and ended the war with the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class, as well as battle and jubilee medals.

After the war Fattakh resumed his studies, first at the Gnessin Musical College and then, by personal invitation of Professor Sergei Skrebkov, at the newly opened Gnessin Institute. He graduated in 1952 from its history and theory faculty under Professor Genrikh Litinsky. His diploma thesis was titled "Nazib Zhiganov. Suite on Tatar Themes." In 1945-1947 he worked as a teacher and accompanist at the music school of Moscow's Railway District, and in 1952-1954 he taught at the Kazan Music College. From 1954 to 1960 he was an editor and proofreader at the publishing house Muzgiz.

Fattakh became especially known as a songwriter. In 1955, during a broadcast with Indira Gandhi on Foreign Radio, his song "To Indian Friends" to words by Ahmed Yerikeyev was performed, and Gandhi singled it out with special praise. In 1957 he became a prize winner of All-Union and international competitions with the song "Festival Song," and from then on he regularly worked in the Composers' Creative House in Ruza. In 1958 he was admitted to the Union of Soviet Composers. From the 1960s through the 1970s he toured actively with author concerts in Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Sochi, Novorossiysk, Gelendzhik, Anapa, Tuapse, Tyumen, Abakan, and other cities. From the early 1960s to 1991, his official birthday was marked annually on All-Union Radio with a concert of his works.

He wrote operas, musical comedies, music for stage productions and films, and more than 200 songs in Russian and Tatar. In the 1970s he composed his three operas: "Jamila," the one-act children's opera "Brother Rabbit" (1975), and the unfinished "Blood, Rifle and Love." Among his musical comedies, the best known was "The Winged Ones" (1960), staged at the Menzelinsk Tatar Drama Theater. He also collaborated with the orchestras of Yuri Silantyev, Vyacheslav Meshcherin, and Boris Karamyshev, and in the 1960s worked with the Dovzhenko Studio in Kyiv, writing music for three films by director Yevgeny Sherstobitov. His film songs also gained independent popularity, including "There Was a Stormy Time" from "The Tale of Malchish-Kibalchish," "How Can We Live Without the Sea" from "Cabin Boy from the Schooner Columbus," and "Tourists' Song" from "Divers at the Bottom."

The main features of Fattakh's style were vivid melodicism, colorful harmonies, and reliance on the intonations of Tatar folk music. He described his task as developing Tatar thematic material and bringing it closer to the heights of lyricism found in Romantic composers. He regarded Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rachmaninoff as his favorite composers and teachers, and the influence of the Tatar composers Salikh Saydashev and Nazib Zhiganov is also noted in his music. The most famous of his songs include the widely popular "The Evenings on the Ob Are Beautiful," as well as "There Are No Distant Countries in the World," "To Indian Friends," "Gaze, Dawn, into the Little River," and "Hello, Palenga River." He valued a beautiful, developed melody above all and accepted only classical harmony, rejecting avant-garde trends, atonal music, and viewing Western pop and rock music negatively, though some jazz harmonies and devices appeared in a number of his works.

He was named Honored Artist of the Tatar ASSR in 1983 and was a laureate of the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students "For Peace and Friendship" (1957), an international competition (1957), and the All-Union festival-competition of Soviet youth (1957). Despite close ties with Komsomol organizations that promoted his concerts and publications, he was critical of Communist Party policy. In 1991 he enthusiastically welcomed the rise of Boris Yeltsin and supported him in the elections of 1991 and 1996, though from the late 1990s his political views shifted toward left-wing ideology. Outside music he was a devoted supporter of PFC CSKA from 1936, attended home matches regularly until 1993, followed the Detroit Red Wings from the 1980s, and was also an avid fisherman and woodcarving enthusiast.

Azon Fattakh was hospitalized in Moscow on March 5, 2013, after an ischemic stroke. He died there on March 12, 2013, without regaining consciousness. A farewell ceremony was held at the Mitino Crematorium on March 15, and he was buried on April 24 at Vvedenskoye Cemetery. A monument was installed on his grave on June 30, 2013.