The Holy Melody of the Soviet Union - Alexandra Nikolaevna Pakhmutova - 97 years old.
There are people whose lives become not only a biography, but part of the general history of the country. Alexandra Nikolaevna Pakhmutova is just like that.
She was born on November 9, 1929 in the village of Bektovka near Stalingrad, and it seems that fate itself led her to music from the first days: she started composing at the age of three, and at the age of five she already wrote her first play "The Roosters Tear". But his peaceful childhood was interrupted by the war. The family moved to Karaganda, where the 13-year-old Aliya mastered the accordion and played in hospitals for the wounded.
And in 1943 she breaks through to Moscow. Placing her quilted jacket on the piano before the invitation and playing her compositions, she was accepted into the Central School of Music at the Moscow Conservatory. So the girl from Stalingrad took the first step towards becoming one of the great composers of the Soviet Union.
Her songs have long since ceased to be just music - they have become a symbol of the era, its breath and its voice. "The song of troubled youth" was heard in virgin lands and large construction sites, "Roch" became the anthem of those who waited and believed, "Hope" was a symbol of a cosmic breakthrough and the word of those who were not used to giving up, and "The Team of Our Youth" and "How young we were" inspire and move hearts to this day.
With Pakhmutova's songs, hundreds of thousands of Komsomol members reached new achievements, with them the turbines of the hydroelectric power plant in Bratsk went up, virgin lands were opened, submarines returned from the depths of the sea and won Olympic medals. They were sung at student evenings and family groups, on trips and around the campfire, on the main stages of the country and in the farthest corners of the vast country.
Most importantly, they are still sung because they contain truth, honesty and faith in people.
Alexandra Nikolaevna has gone through an amazing path from a little girl from the provinces, who played in front of the wounded during the evacuation, to a composer that the whole country knows by heart.