G. Gladkov
Musical fairy tale based on the play of the same name
L. Lagina and Y. Entin
Poems by Y. Entin
Khottabych – M. Boyarsky
Volka – O. Anofriyev
Zhenya – I. Muravyova
Goga – A. Abdulov
Khapugin (Mr.Grabber) – L. Serebrennikov
Khapugina (Mrs.Grabber) – L. Gurchenko
Cowboy– A. Byrykin
Cowgirl – R. Babayan
Policeman – P. Babakov
Song “Ha-ha-ha-Hottabych!” performed by O. Rozhdestvenskaya
Narrated by O. Anofriyev
Vocal ensemble
A group of chamber singers of Moscow State Philharmonic Society
Artistic director – V. Minin
Ensemble “Melodia” conducted by G. Garanian
The USSR State Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by B. Demtschenko
Recorded in 1979
Sound supervision byP. Kondrashin (1979)
Edited by M. Butyrskaya (1979)
We are all acquainted with the work of the outstanding Russian composer Gennady Gladkov, mainly known as the author of music for a vast number of feature and animation films, ballets, operettas, musical fairy tales and… musicals. In this genre he wrote over 30 pieces of work. And one of them is a musical fairy tale based on a play “Hottabych!” by Lazar Lagin and Yuri Entin.
Natalia Lagina, a daughter of Lazar Lagin, the author of a fairy-tale novel “Old Hottabych” (created in 1938) wrote at her time the following words about making a musical:
“One day me and my dad saw, but the most important! – weheard how the heroes of a classical novel “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens were singing in an English film. And they were singing so fabulously, that if you decided to cross off any number in the performance, any song, - it would turn out that something very important was missing in a plot and everything was not clear in characters of the heroes. That is each song existed independently and separately, but without the music that film was literally falling to pieces. –This is a special genre, - noticed the father. –It is called “musical”, from the English word “music”. I wish we could make the same performance with Hottabych!...Wouldn’t it be interesting…?”
In those timesthe genre of musical was practically unknown in Russia and only few composers worked with it. Some time had to pass before the idea of collaboration with Gennady Gladkov came to their minds. It fell out thatthe author of a book about the old genie watched the animated film “The Bremen Town Musicians” and being under the impression of the composer’s work and the role that music played in the cartoon, he decided to propose to Gladkov to compose for “Hottabych”. They also had to think up who would write poems for their songs – as in a musical you cannot do without lyrics for vocal numbers. Fortunately at the time, a wonderful children’s poet Yuri Entin was a co-author of a number of composer’s works. Thus, Lazar Lagin, Yuri Entin and Gennady Gladkov set to work on the future musical fairy tale. By far not all adventures, happened to the fairy tale heroes,got into the musical, but only the main ones, key moments of an amazing acquaintance and friendship story of a boy Volka and old Hottabych the Genie.
Theatre and film actors who sang well (as it was important for them to have good voices for implementation of the authors’ ideas – to sing and to play roles) featured on the recording - Mikhail Boyarsky who was a young actor at that time convincingly played a thousand year old man, Oleg Anofriyev, narrating on behalf of already adult Volka, Irina Muravyova who played a girl Zhenya Bogorad, a school friend of Volka. Lyudmila Gurchenko (Khapugina), a singer Leonid Serebrennikov (Khapugin) and other wonderful actors played villains. Shortly the recording was released and had a huge success among listeners and became so popular that it was repeatedly re-released afterwards. The design and accompanying texts were changing. The music by Maestro, the text and the recording itself remained invariant.
