Strokes to a Creative Portrait
Historical interaction of the Eastern and Western cultures was bringing bright and original fruits. As such, Uzbekistan art possesses very deep-rooted traditions. It intensively absorbs modern creativity without losing national peculiarity.
The Uzbek orchestra of folk instruments as a new form of collective performance and the youngest in the musical culture of the Republic serves the bright proof of this. It is completely natural that personal activity of those who dedicated their lives to the formation and development of the Uzbek orchestra becomes particularly interesting. These people laid the basis of the modern orchestra of national instruments built upon the best and most stable cultural traditions of the East and the West. One of them is the Merited Worker of Culture of Uzbekistan, Professor Anvar Khakimovich Liviev, a conductor, a pedagogue and methodologist, organizer, researcher and publicist. A.Liviev is a musician that has been absorbing the art of the Uzbek traditional performance since his childhood. As fate has willed, he became the musician of the wind band; after graduation from the conservatory, he continued his work in the philharmonic orchestra as a percussion instruments player; and as a conductor many years later. He is an extraordinary personality that has managed in the course of his complicated life to define the role of the Uzbek national instruments in the performance art. Creative work immediately concerned with pedagogic, first at the musical school named after Khamza, then at the Tashkent State Pedagogical Institute named after Nizami and at the Conservatory, later on leadership in the scientific research experimental laboratory dealing with the improvement of the Uzbek national instruments – this is a far from complete list of the activity of A. Liviev. Wherever he turned out to be, the same problem has always haunted him – development of the academic orientation of the instrumental art for which he has laid the theoretical basis with his own hands.
A. Liviev was born on 1 January 1925 in Tashkent. He was brought up in the family of Nozir-aka Goziev, a famous singer and performer of traditional music on the dutar. Nazir-aka worked with the makom-singers ensemble headed by Yu. Radjabi. The boy liked to listen to music for hours. A. Liviev’s first musical impressions were connected with the Uzbek traditional performance art. Simultaneously, he often saw the European wind orchestras in the Tashkent streets that were accompanying marching exercised for the inmates of the Children’s Home. Complicated situation in the foster parent’s family impelled Anvar to stay with the Children’s Home No 32 in Sagban Street. This decision, on the one side, could be explained by the presence of the wind orchestra in the Home, with great eagerness the boy started learning to play trumpet. At the age of 14, he entered the musical school and simultaneously worked in a small symphonic orchestra playing the party of the second trumpet. During the war, the youth was taken the foster child of the musical platoon at the Second Turkestan Machine-gun School in the Mary town of Turkmenistan.
After the war, Anvar returned to Tashkent. Here he was acquainted with Ashot Ivanovich Petrocyants, creator of the Uzbek orchestra of national instruments. A. Petrocyants interested the youth with his research activity in the field of the musical instruments; he offered the boy to work in the laboratory to carry out research in the field of the Uzbek nagor percussion instrument and notation for nagora and doira. In 1948, A.Liviev became a student of the Tashkent State Conservatory. The same year the department of folk instruments was opened in the Conservatory. During the first year, he studied in the rubab-prima class, and from the second year, he switched to the class of doira.
Simultaneously, A.Liviev was mastering the art of conduction that had become his second specialization. Beautiful musicians like V. Ashkinazi, Ya. Elyashkevich and N. Goldman were teaching him that time. After graduation in 1953, A. Liviev continued his performance work with the philharmonic orchestra and pedagogical work with the school and Conservatory where he led the orchestra and conduction classes. In 1966-1976, he worked at the Tashkent State Pedagogical Institute named after Nizami, where he headed the department of theory of music and playing musical instruments. There A.Liviev applied all his knowledge not only to the organization of musical teacher’s training, but also to the formation of methodology of musical education through the Uzbek national instruments at schools of general education.
In 1976, the Conservatory opened the department of conduction of the folk instruments orchestra, and A. Liviev was the first to head it. The same year he started formation of the new staff of the philharmonic orchestra named after T.Djalilov; he worked on the development of the concert programs. In 1991, A.Liviev came to work with the field scientific research laboratory dealing with the improvement of the Uzbek national musical instruments. There he was engaged in the restoration of the old traditional instruments, kept searching in the field of construction of the six-string tanbur and dutar; wind instruments like surnai and string-percussion instruments like chang and kanun. The Head attached his attention to the creation of children’s musical instruments for pre-school educational institutions. Ghidjak, kanun, dutar, Kashgar and Afghan rubabs, tanbur, saz, nai, longitudinal whistling nai, doira, safail, nagora and box were made there. A. Liviev has developed the program and created the Teaching Aid (it has been republished twice) on mastering playing these instruments. Experimental practical work of this type has been started in the Republican kindergartens. Initiative of A. Liviev is of general cultural significance as he has proved that constructively adjusted for children national musical instruments can and must serve one more basis for musical and aesthetical education from the early age.
The name of A.Liviev is directly linked to the creation of the first Uzbek chamber orchestra of the folk instruments named ‘Sordiana’ (1991). He was directly involved in the production of musical instruments and selection of the repertoire for this collective. The orchestra has become one of the first collectives in the Republic that acquainted the foreign listeners with the culture of the Uzbek instrumentalism. In 1996 ‘Sogdiana’ became the Laureate of the International Festival in Spain; in the following years it participated in many international forums and was awarded in Germany, France, Egypt, South Korea, USA and other countries of the world.
Being a musical researcher and working for many years as a performer and orchestra conductor, A. Liviev has managed to comprehend the problems of parallel existence of century-old traditional and newly born forms of collective musical performance in Uzbekistan, to see their link to culture development processes of instrumentalism in the world musical practices. The connoisseur of the Uzbek musical instruments, A.Liviev has demonstrated the masterly command of timbre correlations, comparison of registers, ability to achieve dynamic contrasts. All these made up a substantial contribution to the development of the Uzbek orchestra culture.
A. Liviev is a pedagogue that has educated a pleiad of talented performers and conductors. He has worked out the teaching methodology providing the possibility of training high-class specialists. The pedagogue and psychologist by vocation, he has been generously sharing his knowledge and experience with the creative youths, creating atmosphere of benevolence and mutual trust. A. Liviev attached great attention to the role of orchestras of national instruments in mass musical education. He played the great role in the creation of school orchestras in the Republic in the 70-s years of the 20th century; they have already brought their fruits. A. Liviev’s activity in the field of development of orchestra performance on the folk instruments bears great methodological importance for different countries and primarily for the Central Asian region.
A highly qualified conductor, a great connoisseur of the Uzbek musical instruments, a broad musical arts erudite, a talented pedagogue, the author of many scientific and methodological publications, professor A. Liviev is in the prime of his creativity and selflessly works displaying the example of devotion to the high goals of arts and unselfishness in doing his duty.
Firuza Abdurakhimova