Lis­ten to the great­est film com­pos­er you’ve nev­er heard of

Hav­ing scored over 130 films dur­ing his life­time, as well as clas­si­cal music for more than a hun­dred bal­lets and operas, Mikael Tariverdiev’s place in the pan­theon of great com­posers should be all but assured. As is so often the case, how­ev­er, fate had oth­er plans and his work has remained almost com­plete­ly unknown out­side his home­land for decades.

With a unique mix of decep­tive­ly sim­ple piano melodies, lush brass sec­tions and con­tem­pla­tive romances that con­jure images of evoca­tive smoke-filled scenes, the time­less qual­i­ty of Tariverdiev’s work eschews any easy com­par­i­son, even today. At a time when vinyl reis­sues are increas­ing­ly help­ing to raise the pro­file of icon­ic and less­er known com­posers, now is as good a time as ever for audi­ences to dis­cov­er his lega­cy cour­tesy of a new three-disc compilation.

Born in Geor­gia in 1931 to Armen­ian par­ents, Tariverdiev rose to promi­nence in Rus­sia in 1964 along­side his friend, direc­tor Mikhail Kha­lik, on the com­ing-of-age film Good­bye, Boys! Lit­tle seen out­side of Rus­sia, where it has attained cult sta­tus, the film fol­lows the sto­ry of three teenagers grad­u­at­ing from school dur­ing World War Two, whose plans for a care­free sum­mer are scup­pered when they are instruct­ed to enrol in mil­i­tary service.

Hav­ing first met as stu­dents in 1956, Kha­lik and Tariverdiev went on to devel­op a friend­ship that would see the duo pro­duc­ing sev­er­al films togeth­er until the ear­ly 1970s when Khalik’s refusal to coop­er­ate with state cen­sors led to his defec­tion to Israel. ​“Our work devel­oped in tan­dem quite nat­u­ral­ly of its own accord,” Kha­lik recalls. ​“At first it was because we were both young and shared the same notions of beau­ty, and after that first col­lab­o­ra­tion, I did not want to work with any­one else. I saw and heard in Mikael’s music, in his style, a sense of har­mo­ny that was close to my own.”

They had much in com­mon, par­tic­u­lar­ly a dis­re­gard for author­i­ty. ​“The most impor­tant thing was our sense of free­dom. Of course we under­stood what kind of place we lived in; one had to deceive the author­i­ties to get any­thing done. Nev­er­the­less, we were free on the inside and nev­er gave that much thought, or we did so only after we had fin­ished some­thing. Then we would sit there think­ing if it would get passed by the cen­sor or not, and what we had to do and what kind of lies to tell for that to hap­pen. But in the mid­dle of work­ing on some­thing, I remem­ber very well that we felt com­plete­ly free.”

While the col­li­sion between music and cin­e­ma served as the root of his pas­sions, Tariverdiev also sought to explore alter­na­tive musi­cal out­lets. Work­ing with Kha­lik again on San­du Fol­lows the Sun, he opt­ed to exper­i­ment with vocal cycles, over­lay­ing poet­ry with music. Com­bin­ing Russ­ian prose against impres­sion­is­tic scenes, it was an approach that marked the begin­ning of an aes­thet­ic he would seek to devel­op fur­ther through­out the 1960s, which he lat­er dubbed ​‘The Third Trend’.

Tariverdiev’s style went against Sovi­et musi­cal aca­d­e­m­ic tra­di­tions, with vocal cycles often sung by the com­pos­er him­self with an emo­tion­al deliv­ery not dis­sim­i­lar to the French Chan­son style com­mon to the Nou­velle Vague. The result is a diverse selec­tion of mate­r­i­al, much of which wouldn’t seem out of place along­side the ear­ly works of Godard or Truffaut.

Ever the pio­neer, Tariverdiev would lat­er divide his time between film and tele­vi­sion projects. His small screen cred­its include the 12-part series Sev­en­teen Moments of Spring and the roman­tic com­e­dy The Irony of Fate, the lat­ter of which remains one of Sovi­et television’s most pop­u­lar pro­duc­tions enjoy­ing reg­u­lar re-runs on nation­al tele­vi­sion dur­ing the fes­tive season.

In spite of his rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty out­side of Rus­sia, Tariverdiev’s work result­ed in many Sovi­et and inter­na­tion­al awards, among them an Amer­i­can Music Academy’s award in 1975 and three Nika awards (Russia’s equiv­a­lent to the Oscars) for the Best Film Score in 1991, 1994 and posthu­mous­ly in 1997. He also went on to become Head of the Com­posers’ Guild Of Sovi­et Cinematographer’s Union and, fol­low­ing his death in 1996, the Mikael Tariverdiev Char­i­ty Fund and Tariverdiev Inter­na­tion­al Organ Com­pe­ti­tion were set up in his hon­our, both of which con­tin­ue to help nur­ture young musi­cal tal­ent to this day.

‘Film Music’, the first com­pi­la­tion of Tariverdiev’s mate­r­i­al to be made wide­ly avail­able, has been made pos­si­ble large­ly thanks to the sup­port of his wid­ow, Vera Tariverdie­va, who super­vised new trans­fers of Tariverdiev’s orig­i­nal tapes and reel-to-reel machine. This long over­due release pro­vides a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er a pro­lif­ic musi­cal vision­ary whose out­put has lost none of its potency.

Mikael Tariverdiev’s ​‘Film Music’ is now avail­able to buy on three-disc vinyl, CD and dig­i­tal down­load from Earth Records. An Evening of Tariverdiev takes place at Pushkin House on Fri­day 4 Decem­ber. Tick­ets are avail­able at pushk​in​house​.org