The book includes 60 literary portraits of the composers with whom the author has had personal or virtual contacts, through continents or centuries. Praise to the Employers! (Laurus Publishing House) is the eighth book published by the writer and conductor Roman Kofman. The author launched the new book at Kyiv’s club of bibliophiles “Subota u Behemota” (“Saturday at Behemot’s Place”). It was a full house. The guests had an opportunity to hear a rare “part” of the maestro, reading aloud. The audience was extremely susceptible to the word: one of Kyiv’s oldest clubs established at the Mikhail Bulgakov Literary Memorial Museum. Today it is supported by the Parliamentary Library of Ukraine and will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2016. The guest was introduced by Anatolii Konchakovsky, one of the founders of the club, its chairman, and the first director of the Bulgakov Museum.
“I started to write much earlier than I took up music,” Roman KOFMAN says, “Besides, conductor is a secondary profession, a transition from composer, who is indeed a creator, and for the audience the conductor plays the role of mediator. Literature is a fully creative activity though.
“I wrote my first literary work at the age of seven, in the city of Kokand, the Republic of Uzbekistan, it is dated November 7, 1943, the day that followed Kyiv’s liberation. This very patriotic verse became my first published work, because I published at home a sociopolitical magazine, where you could find anything, up to the map of war actions in North Africa, where the English army of General Montgomery was defeating Hitler’s army. Further there was a huge break in my work as a writer, I returned to writing later, but didn’t show my works to anyone. Only during the past 20 years I started to publish some things (bestsellers Book of Not-Being, Pastoral Symphony, or How I Lived in German Occupation, and It Will Be Always Like This. – Author).
“The ‘employers’ I mention in the title are the composers thanks to whom my family and I have money for living. And the dedication which opens the book, ‘To Iosyf Hutman, a person thanks to whom I learned what inspiration is,’ is about my violin teacher.”
When Kofman was reading the chapters from the book, it resembled a concert: the soloist performs the work and after the finale the audience remains silent for several moments – and then bursts out in applause. The analogy with a concert is not accidental: this season the maestro has already realized a number of brilliant projects with the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra of the National Philharmonic Society.
Kofman performed his prose like music. The word printed on paper was like a song creating melody that powerfully made you plunge into the world seemingly unreal, but alive. This is the unique style of the author, his manner of writing. Short essays include several features to the portrait, a biography fact, a commentary, – and suddenly, like lit by a magic lantern, the stars become closer: Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Grieg, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, Kancheli and Part. And our wonderful compatriots, such as Liatoshynsky, Hubarenko, Bibik, Sylvestrov, Skoryk, Stankovych, and Schhetynsky.
In one publication Kofman managed to decode his answer to the question “Who is your favorite composer?” – “Johann Sebastian Bach and the rest.” To explain why he so much wants to play the cycle “All Haydn’s Symphonies.” To thank Oleksandr Hlazunov for the violin concert and Adagio from the ballet Raymonda, but above all – to take part in the destiny of Jascha Heifetz, “the idol of all violinists of my generation.” To begin one of the chapters with the phrase “Valentyn Sylvestrov was a wonderful football player.” To tell that Mykola Dremliuha won his forest plot for the Composer’s House near Kyiv from the village chairman in a billiard game. With skillfully concealed, but always tangible tenderness to write about those who are worth of it, for example, Yudif Rozhavska who dedicated her greatest works to the 50th anniversary of the USSR: the opera Fairytale about the Lost Time and ballet Kingdom of Distorting Mirrors.
Choose which of the following the reading will give to you: incredible feeling of process that gives joy and new knowledge, the rescuing oases of the rare Kofman humor, desire to hear the music by the world’s best “employers.” I also want, like Major-General Komarovsky Bionkur from Bulgakov’s Theater Novel leave everything and start studying at a conservatoire. They say there are countries in the world where you can do so at any age.
