Boris Petrovych Kravchenko (Boris Kravchenko) |

Boris Kravchenko

Leningrad composer of the middle generation, Kravchenko came to professional musical activity in the late 50s. His work is distinguished by a wide implementation of Russian folk rhythm intonations, an appeal to topics related to the revolution, to the heroic past of our country. The main genre in which the composer worked in recent years is opera.

Boris Petrovich Kravchenko was born on November 28, 1929 in Leningrad in the family of a geodetic engineer. Due to the specifics of the father’s profession, the family often left Leningrad for a long time. The future composer in his childhood visited the then completely deaf regions of the Arkhangelsk region, the Komi ASSR, the Northern Urals, as well as Ukraine, Belarus and other places in the Soviet Union. Since then, folk tales, legends and, of course, songs have sunk into his memory, perhaps not always yet consciously. There were other musical impressions: his mother, a good pianist, who also had a good voice, introduced the boy to serious music. From the age of four or five, he began to play the piano, tried to compose himself. As a child, Boris studied piano at the regional music school.

The war interrupted music lessons for a long time. In March 1942, along the Road of Life, mother and son were taken to the Urals (the father fought in the Baltic). Returning to Leningrad in 1944, the young man entered an aviation technical school, and after graduating from it, he began working at a factory. While still at the technical school, he again began to compose music and in the spring of 1951 came to the seminar of amateur composers at the Leningrad Union of Composers. Now it became clear to Kravchenko that music is his real vocation. He studied so hard that in the fall he was able to enter the Musical College, and in 1953, having successfully completed a four-year school course in two years (in the class of the composition of G. I. Ustvolskaya), he entered the Leningrad Conservatory. At the Faculty of Composition, he studied in the classes of compositions by Yu. A. Balkashin and Professor B. A. Arapov.

After graduating from the conservatory in 1958, Kravchenko devoted himself entirely to composing. Even in his student years, the scope of his creative interests was determined. The young composer masters various theatrical genres and forms. He works on choreographic miniatures, music for puppet theatre, opera, music for dramatic performances. His attention is attracted by the orchestra of Russian folk instruments, which becomes a real creative laboratory for the musician.

Repeatedly and not accidentally, the composer’s appeal to the operetta. He created his first work in this genre – “Once Upon a White Night” – in 1962. By 1964, the musical comedy “Offended a Girl” belongs; in 1973 Kravchenko wrote the operetta The Adventures of Ignat, a Russian Soldier;

Among the works of other genres are the operas Cruelty (1967), Lieutenant Schmidt (1971), comic children’s opera Ay Da Balda (1972), Russian Frescoes for unaccompanied choir (1965), oratorio The October Wind (1966), romances, pieces for piano.

L. Mikheeva, A. Orelovich