Portrait for two - Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov
The names of the composer Alexandra Pakhmutova and the poet Nikolai Dobronravov have been so long and firmly connected with each other that it is difficult to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise. The Pakhmutov-Dobronravov family duet is over 50 years old. But honestly! - you look at them, and it seems as if you just met: eyes in love.
She is graceful, lively, with her eyes flashing every now and then, talking about music, all the time flies up to the piano, and he obediently answers her with either a fashionable hit or a fragment of a Shostakovich symphony, depending on what the conversation is about. And it becomes absolutely clear: they are one with the instrument, tear it away from the keys, and it will die, as they die from lack of air.
He is gallant, infinitely intelligent, in the course of a conversation in impeccable literary language, without the slightest use of slang or simply inexpressive words, in support of his thoughts, constantly quoting poets of the Golden, Silver and Soviet centuries by heart. He is drunk with the word like water, of which, as you know, a person consists of 80 percent.
With all her charm, she is strict, internally absolutely logically built, without the slightest negligence, like her own Trumpet Concerto with a symphony orchestra. It is somewhat softer and more romantic.
Both of them cannot hide how much they love each other: respectfully, reverently, but at the same time sensually. You look and believe: yes, she really is his “melody”, and he is her “tenderness”. Yes, it cannot be otherwise if she is Alexandra Pakhmutova, and he is Nikolai Dobronravov.
They met in the spring of 1956 and got married in August. We met on the All-Union Radio, in the 9th children's broadcasting studio. At that time, Nikolai Nikolayevich worked at the Moscow Theater for Young Spectators and read his poems in the programs "Pioneer Dawn", "Attention, to the start!", And Alexandra Nikolaevna wrote music for them. Their joint work began with the children's song "Motor Boat".
“On August 6, on the day of our wedding, there was a terrible heat,” recalls Pakhmutova. - But as soon as we arrived at the registry office in a taxi, it began to rain. They say it's lucky. We were very happy. I remember, while I was waiting in line, I read all the services that the registry office provides: birth, marriage, divorce, death ... It became terrifying. (Laughs.)
We were painted by a lovely woman in a small room. I didn’t have a white dress, and my mother and sister sewed a suit for me - a beautiful, pink one. In the evening we left for Abkhazia.
“We left because we had nowhere to live in Moscow back then,” Nikolai Dobronravov explains. “And they spent their honeymoon there with my aunt Dasha in the Armenian Gorge. It was a happy time! And the most beautiful thing is that Alechka and I spent our first night in the lunar paths of this warm, beautiful Black Sea.
“We don’t have any special recipe for family happiness,” says Pakhmutova. - We just try not to be principled and not to find fault with trifles.
And Nikolai Dobronravov, speaking about his feelings for Alechka, always recalls the words of Saint-Exupery: “To love is not to look at each other, but to look in one direction.”
- Summing up, continue the phrase in one word: our family ... (Alexandra Nikolaevna laughs.)
Unconventional! But in a good sense of the word. And then I somehow joked, a long time ago, I said: “We have an unconventional family, because we live a normal family life.” And the other day I'm going in a taxi, and suddenly the driver hands me one "yellow" edition, which he had lying among the newspapers. I look, there is my photo on the cover and it is signed - Alexandra Pakhmutova: "I am gay." True, later in the article they quoted my phrase in full and even wrote a lot of good things, but why was it necessary to put such a heading on the cover?
Therefore, Nikolai Nikolayevich and I can only say one thing: our family is unconventional - everything in our life is exactly as it should be and should be, therefore we have lived together for more than fifty years and still have not divorced ...
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