Karen Khachaturian was a Soviet and Russian composer and teacher. He was born on September 19, 1920, in Moscow and died there on July 19, 2011. He was named People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1981 and received the USSR State Prize in 1976 and the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 2002.
He was born into an artistic family. His father, Suren Khachaturian, was a theatrical figure and director of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre, a student of Konstantin Stanislavsky, and the founder of the Armenian Drama Studio in Moscow. His mother, Sara Mikhaylovna Dunaeva-Khachaturian, was a theatre artist. His uncle was the famous Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian. The Khachaturian household, in Karen Khachaturian's childhood, was a gathering place for prominent actors, painters, writers, and musicians, and this environment shaped his artistic outlook from an early age.
As a child he attended productions of the Moscow Art Theatre, its studios, and the Children's Theatre with his parents. At the age of eight he entered the Gnessin Music School, where he studied piano with Olga Gnessina. He also attended a children's composition group organized by Yevgeny Messner. In 1938 he entered the Music College attached to the Moscow Conservatory, studying both piano with Boris Medvedev and V. V. Chertova and composition with Professor Genrikh Litinsky. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1949. Among his teachers were Vissarion Shebalin, Nikolai Myaskovsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich, while Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky were among his important artistic mentors.
Khachaturian quickly gained recognition from the musical community, and Shostakovich praised the depth of his thought, the virtuoso handling of material, the perfection of its realization, the beauty of his flowing melodies, and his remarkable sonorities. His music was notable for its wide range of genres, its engagement with different national modal traditions, and its broad use of polyphonic forms. His Violin Sonata, Op. 1, won first prize at a competition for young composers in Prague in 1947 and was later performed and recorded by leading violinists including David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, and Jascha Heifetz.
His catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, chamber, stage, and screen music. Among his principal concert works are five symphonies, a Sinfonietta, an Overture, suites for small orchestra, concert marches, a Cello Sonata dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, a Cello Concerto, a Violin Concerto, the cantata At the Lonely Willow, the oratorio A Moment of History, the vocal cycle Poem of Mothers on words by Gabriela Mistral, and Dithyramb in Honor of Sergei Prokofiev for symphony orchestra. His chamber works include a String Quartet in Memory of His Father, a Second String Quartet, two trios, an Introduction and Fugue for organ, pieces for electric organ, children's piano music, Adagio for cello and piano, and Meridians for woodwind quintet. For the stage he wrote the operetta Simple Girl and the ballet Cipollino, for which he received the USSR State Prize.
From 1950 onward he was also active in cinema, composing music for 50 feature and animated films and for 20 theatrical productions. His film scores include Brothers, Wait for Letters, Multicolored Pebbles, Leap Year, The Great Road, Seven Nannies, Children of the Pamirs, Inextinguishable Flame, Sleeping Lion, The Shot, Viy, Strange People, About Friends and Comrades, The Only Road, and Kin. He also wrote music for many animated films, among them When the Christmas Trees Light Up, The Magic Treasure, The Heart of the Brave, Forest Travelers, The Naughty Kitten, An Extraordinary Match, Old Acquaintances, The Jackal Cub and the Camel, At the Crossroads, It Will Rain Soon, The Royal Hares, Murzilka and the Giant, This Is Not About Me, Timoshka's New Year Tree, Sweet Fairy Tale, Visiting Summer, and Football Stars.
His music was performed not only in his own country but also abroad, including in Italy, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and England. He maintained close artistic and personal contacts with major composers, performers, artists, and theatre figures of several generations, among them Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Carl Orff, Krzysztof Penderecki, Georgy Sviridov, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Mstislav Rostropovich, Emil Gilels, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Leonid Kogan, and Yuri Grigorovich.
Pedagogy was an important part of his life alongside composition. From 1952 until 2011 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory, becoming a professor in 1981. He was regarded as a master of orchestral writing and passed his exceptional hearing and knowledge of the orchestra to many generations of musicians. Among his students were Alexander Tchaikovsky, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, A. Baltin, A. Vieru of Romania, N. Terahara of Japan, Kang Sang Woo of China, V. Babushkin, V. Polyansky, A. Ariyan, and A. Latif-Zade. He also chaired juries at numerous competitions and festivals, including the Eleventh International Tchaikovsky Competition for cellists in 1998 and the Nikolai Peyko International Composers' Competition from 2000 to 2011, and served on editorial boards of the journal Soviet Music and the publishing houses Soviet Composer and Music.
His distinctions also included the Order for Merit to the Fatherland, 4th class, the Order of Honor, the Order of Friendship, the title Honored Artist of the RSFSR, an Honorary Certificate of the President of the Russian Federation, the Moscow City Prize in Literature and the Arts, the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize of the Union of Composers of Russia, the ballet prize Magician of Dance, and the Silver Cross of the Union of Armenians of Russia. He died in Moscow at the age of 90, and his ashes were buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.