Silva Bunatyan

(1917 - 2010)

From the book of Mikhail Kokzhaev «Silva Bunatyan».
Yerevan, Publishing House «Amrots Group», 2005

Silva Bunatyan was born on February 12, 1917, in Vladikavkaz. Her paternal ancestors, immigrants from the mountain village of Yeghegnadzor, settled in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Artashes Bunatyan, Silva’s father, after graduating from the Gevorkian Theological Seminary (Located in the town of Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin) within the complex of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Armenia), became a teacher of the Russian language at a secondary school in Vladikavkaz. He created a family, which at that time was considered quite wealthy, and had his own house and garden. The wife of Artashes, Shushanik, also came from the Yeghegnadzor region and was also a teacher of the Russian language.

Four children grew up in the family of this modest couple of teachers: Silva, Orbel (later a well-known surgeon in Armenia, traumatologist-orthopedist), Anahit (educated as an economist and philologist), and Margarita (who also chose the specialty of an economist). The professional orientation of parents had a beneficial effect on the overall development of children. According to the recollections of Silva Bunatyan, their house was full of books that children read. The family was interested in painting and loved choreography and music.

Young Silva received her first piano lessons from Elena Gut, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the class of the famous Anton Rubinstein. Elena Gut was a subtle and sensitive musician who knew how to recognize in a child not only the degree of talent but also the features of the intellect. Her kind attitude towards the new student soon grew into sincere love.

The upcoming move with her parents to the city of Frunze (the capital of Kyrgyzstan, now Bishkek) became a real trauma for the girl. The persuasion made by Elena Gut to leave Silva Bunatyan in Vladikavkaz for free education, as well as the proposal to take her in for education, did not produce results.

Many years later, a touching meeting between Elena Gut and Silva Bunatyan took place in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), when the young pianist had already established herself as a person, and one can only imagine the delight of the teacher, who was convinced of the fruitfulness of his creative impulse, which gave the student the first impulse on the way to the Beautiful.

Fate decreed that in Frunze, at the recently opened School of Arts, Silva Bunatyan ended up in the class of A. Furman (also a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.)

A year of study in Frunze flew by unnoticed. Silva Bunatyan’s performances in academic evenings and open concerts at the school were consistently successful. True, music at that time had a competitor — a passion for choreography, but the music still won the final victory.

The decision was accepted, and Silva Bunatyan persuaded her parents to let her go to study in Rostov-on-Don, a city widely known at that time for its musical traditions and excellent teachers. That year she turned 14.

At the Rostov Musical College (now The Rostov College of Arts (RCА)), Silva Bunatyan was assigned to the class of the gifted pianist S. Belskaya, the pupil of Egon Petri. Having the opportunity to listen to the performances of such outstanding musicians as Egon Petri, Natan Perelman, and Miron Polyakin in Rostov, Silva Bunatyan eagerly absorbed all this through herself.

But not only the magnificent soloists were the subject of admiration for the young Silva Buantyan. She was drawn to the concerts of the symphony orchestras and quartet groups that visited Rostov, to the performances of the opera studio operating at the Rostov Musical College. Undoubtedly, this is where the breadth of Silva Bunatyan’s musical outlook, and her excellent knowledge of musical literature, originates.

Completion of her studies at the Rostov Music College (now The Rostov College of Arts (RCА)) was so successful that at 18, the pianist, open and full of hope, went to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) to enter one of the best music universities in the world — the Leningrad Conservatory. Admission to the conservatory turned out to be surprisingly easy, and the circumstances were even somewhat curious.

Arriving in Leningrad, close to the exams, barely having time to pass the documents and not being able to properly understand the exam schedule, Silva Bunatyan accidentally met Professor Samariy Savshinsky in the corridor of the conservatory, who was in charge of the entrance exams that year. Recognizing her from a «questionnaire» photograph (what would happen if he did not have a «photographic memory»?!), he said that she needed to play for half an hour.

The success exceeded expectations: a unanimous «five». In congratulating Professor Olga Kalantarova, words were expressed that expressed not only her attitude but also the opinion of other members of the commission: “You are unusually musical”.

Silva Bunatyan recalls the years spent within the walls of the Leningrad Conservatory as the brightest period of her life. In the late 1930s, a constellation of major musicians gathered at the Leningrad Conservatory, such as Miron Polyakin, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Leonid Nikolayev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Ivan Sollertinsky, Samariy Savshinsky, Nadezhda Golubovskaya, I.R. Nalbandyan and many others.

Silva Buantyan dreamed of getting into the class of Leonid Nikolaev but was too shy to turn to him with this request. The application was filed in the name of Nadezhda Golubovskaya. Enrollment in her class turned out to be a true gift of fate for the young pianist.

Upon a brilliant graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory in 1940, Silva Bunatyan was sent to work in Armenia.

In Yerevan, Silva Bunatyan entered the orchestra of the Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, which in those years worked extremely purposefully and actively expanded its repertoire. In the memory of the collective, the memories of the exceptional success that fell to a lot of the theater during the Decade of Armenian Art and Literature in Moscow in 1937 were still fresh.

In those years, the orchestral specialty of the harpist was in short supply in Yerevan, and Silva Bunatyan, in addition to the piano part, had to perform difficult and responsible harp parts in ballet performances on his instrument.

According to the memoirs of her compatriots, Silva Bunatyan, with her skill and diligence, earned sincere love and respect from the members of the team. Love is so touching that showering it with a handful of silver coins after each «harp» performance was almost ritual in nature. Meanwhile, the young pianist did not leave the dream of solo concert activity and possible improvement in the graduate school of the Leningrad Conservatory under the guidance of Nadezhda Golubovskaya. In turn, Nadezhda Golubovskaya intended to recommend Silva Bunatyan to participate in the All-Union Competition (at that time, the selection of applicants was carried out at the Leningrad Conservatory in the strictest way.
Nadezhda Golubovskaya did not doubt success. All plans were destroyed by the war.
During the war years, the orchestras of the Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet and the Armphilharmonic Society, which had noticeably thinned due to the mobilization of musicians, were merged into a single collective, serving both opera performances and their symphony concerts.

The surviving programs contain a complete list of the members of the unified symphony orchestra. Here, among many, we find the names of two of the most modest musicians who had created their own families by that time — flutist Martin Barseghyan and pianist Silva Bunatyan.

Despite the domestic disorder and the burden of family responsibilities (in 1945, the son, Sergei, was born), Silva Bunatyan did not leave the thought of further improvement.
Selection round Bunatyan played in Yerevan, having won the right to participate in the competition. Unfortunately, this opportunity was not realized: «Son Serezha (Sergei) was one and a half months old, and I physically could not take part in the competition.»

The year 1946 drew a line in the activities of Silva Bunatyan as an artist of the Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet. Since that time, her life and creative thoughts have been forever associated with the Yerevan State Conservatory.

Before turning to the characterization of the pedagogical work of Silva Bunatyan, let us turn to her performing activities. Pianistic maturity came with Silva Bunatyan in his student years. In the class of Nadezhda Golubovskaya, she successfully played works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, ChopinFrédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Maurice

Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and other composers at responsible conservatory concerts.

Over time, arrangements of the songs by Sayat-Nova and Komitas, made by professors of the Yerevan State Conservatory Robert Andreasian and Georgy Sarajev, appeared in her repertoire. She also played Komitas adaptations of Professor Margarita Navasardyan.

Silva Bunatyan repeatedly performed in thematic group concerts. The concert of French music was organized by the Composers’ Union of Armenia, where the name of the pianist appears next to the name of Jean Ter-Merguerian. The program was very interesting: François Couperin, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Francis Poulenc.

Silva Bunatyan’s performances were held in the Babajanyan Concert Hall of The State Philharmonia of Armenia, Komitas Chamber Music House, the concert hall of Composers’ Union of Armenia, the Yerevan State Conservatory, music colleges and schools in Armenia, as well as on radio and television.

In September 1946, Silva Bunatyan entered her class for the first time at the Yerevan Conservatory. The Yerevan Conservatory of the post-war years experienced a great creative upsurge, gradually becoming on par with the country’s leading music universities.

The above fully applies to the piano department of the conservatory, where in the postwar years the forces of a fairly large group of highly professional pianists of the new generation were concentrated — representatives of Moscow (Kathy Malkhasyan, Anna Ambakumyan, Marjan Mkhitaryan) and Leningrad (Robert Andreasian, Georgy Sarajev, Silva Bunatyan) of piano schools. In this environment, Silva Bunatyan not only passed the maturity exam with honor but soon established her position in the piano pedagogy of Armenia.

For almost 60 years, she has been an active participant in the process of creative growth of the Armenian piano culture. Silva Bunatyan’s class at the Yerevan State Conservatory has graduated more than 80 undergraduate and graduate students (many of her students now work outside the Armenian Republic).

In 1975, having 30 years of teaching experience behind her, Silva Bunatyan headed one of the special piano departments of the Yerevan State Conservatory. She held this position for 18 long years.

The composition of the department was strong and even, including musicians of different generations: Kathy Malkhasyan, Yelena Abajyan, Villy Sarkisyan, Irina Sedrakyan, Robert Shugarov, Ivan Meliksetian, Karine Azatyan, Maro Ghazaryan, Svetlana Dadyan, Sergey Barseghyan, and others. In the future, the composition of the department grew by attracting nice staff, for the most part — pupils of the Yerevan State Conservatory.

In 1993, Silva Bunatyan handed over the head of the department to Professor Villy Sarkisyan, who worthily continued the traditions of this most important link in the complex mechanism of university work.

Since 1959 he has been an associate professor and since 1978 a professor at the Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan.

In 1974, Silva Bunatyan received the title of «Honored Art Worker of Armenia».

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