How much does personal life influence creativity, and creativity influence personal life? It is difficult to answer unequivocally, but no one dares to deny this relationship. A striking example statements are writers who use elements of autobiography in their novels, and musicians who find life partners during rehearsals or performances. Among the latter is Mikhail Borisovich Turetsky.
Childhood and youth
The future musician and conductor was born on April 12, 1962. This happened in Moscow. Boris Borisovich Epstein, the boy’s father, tried in every possible way to dissuade his wife from having a second child, arguing that this was due to difficult times, advanced age and sickly first-born Alexander. But his wife Bella Semyonovna insisted on her decision. So little Misha Turetsky (this is his real name by mother, not a pseudonym) and was born.
Misha's parents spent their days at work, and his brother, who was fifteen years older, was raising the boy. However, Sasha was not happy with such an activity, so he often left Misha with the radio or TV on. Later, the parents found out about this, but did not punish Sasha, because they noticed how easily their youngest son sang along to the songs played on the air. The hit was "Lilac Fog".
Mikhail Turetsky as a child with his parents Boris Borisovich worked as a workshop foreman, and Bella Semyonovna worked as a kindergarten teacher. They received little, but over time they managed to save up money to buy another room in the communal apartment near the Belorusskaya metro station where they lived, and also buy an old piano. This was done so that Misha could study with a guest music teacher. Six months later, the tutor refused to continue teaching, saying that the baby was deaf.
Such a statement upset his parents, but Misha managed to convince them to give him another chance. So he enrolled in a music school to study the piccolo flute, because studying this instrument was the cheapest option.
In 1973, an important event took place for the boy. A cousin came to visit his father, whom Boris Borisovich saw extremely rarely. This cousin's name was Rudolf Barshai, and he was a world-famous violist and conductor. Having learned that Misha was studying at a music school and was also a good singer, Barshai asked him to perform something. Admired by the boy’s vocals, Rudolf Borisovich, through his acquaintances, managed to place Misha in the choir school named after Alexander Vasilyevich Sveshnikov.
After graduating from college, Mikhail entered the Russian Academy Music named after the Gnessins, which he graduated in 1985 with honors. By this time, the guy had already managed to get married, have a daughter, and also take part in several major performances under the leadership of Mravinsky and Sherling.
Music
After completing his studies, Mikhail remained at the Academy of Music for postgraduate studies. While doing internships at the rehearsals of the academic symphony orchestra of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and at the Theater of Musical Art, the guy is forced to work as a bomb driver in an old Zhiguli car and as a loader in a supermarket in order to somehow feed his family. But even hard everyday life does not distract Turetsky from thinking about his own music project.
In 1987, Mikhail collaborated with a church choir and a political song ensemble. This work helps to formulate the basic principles of the future project. In 1989, Mikhail announced a selection of soloists for the male choir of the capital's choir synagogue (Turetsky's nationality is Jewish). The idea is original: to revive Jewish sacred music in the open spaces Soviet Union.
Having compiled and rehearsed a program that included Jewish liturgical songs, the choir performs at home and abroad - in Israel, Germany, France and the UK. During a performance with Vladimir Semenyuk in Lithuania, Mikhail Turetsky receives terrible news from home - on the 71st kilometer of the Minsk-Moscow highway, his wife Elena crashed with her father and brother. They were returning from celebrating a relative's birthday.
This news ends the tour. Mikhail becomes depressed. Zoya Ivanovna, the mother of the deceased Elena, is trying to help Turetsky, and also offers to take custody of Mikhail and Elena’s daughter in her own name. Turetsky refuses this option. Instead, he takes his daughter Natasha and goes to America for two years on a contract.
Having become acquainted with the world of American show business, Mikhail and his choir decide to change the repertoire and format of performances, adding more spectacle, more colors and more dynamics. This was largely due to the numerous Broadway musicals that Mikhail and his daughter loved to attend. In 1994 and 1995, Turetsky was awarded the “Golden Crown of Cantors of the World.”
With an updated program and a fully formed team, the art group “Turetsky Choir” returned to the domestic stage in 1997, during a joint tour with Joseph Kobzon. The public perceives the new format with a bang. From 1999 to 2002, the choir performed with the play “Mikhail Turetsky’s Vocal Show” at the Moscow State Variety Theater. In 2002, Mikhail was awarded the title of Honored Artist Russian Federation.
In 2003, the group was finally formed: 10 soloists with voices from bass profundo to tenor altino. The repertoire goes beyond the national Jewish culture. Critics give a new name to the style that characterizes the manner of performing songs by “Turetsky Choir” - a classic crossover.
The following year, the choir thunders at major concert venues around the world: the Olympic Stadium and the Ice Palace at home, as well as the Albert Hall, George Hall and Carnegie Hall abroad. In 2005, Mikhail published an autobiography in which he shares the story of his personal life and the secrets of the Turetsky Choir. In 2008, a sensation occurred - 4 sold-out houses at the State Kremlin Palace. But this is not enough for Mikhail.
In 2010, as a producer, he created a new project - “SOPRANO”, which became the female version of the “Turetsky Choir”. The girls from SOPRANO quickly gained popularity, performing at festivals such as Slavic Bazaar, New Wave and Song of the Year. In the same year, Mikhail received the title people's artist Russian Federation and the Order of Honor.
Personal life
In 1984, Mikhail got married for the first time. His chosen one was his classmate Elena. That same year, the couple had a daughter, who it was decided to name Natasha. In 1989, Elena, her brother and father had an accident and died. Mikhail and his daughter left for the USA.
The girl liked it in America - she even performed on stage, but her father managed to convince her to abandon the idea of connecting her career with the stage, arguing that this would completely deprive the girl of her personal life. Today Natasha works as a lawyer in the office of the Turetsky Choir. In 2014, she gave birth to a son, Ivan, and in 2016, a daughter, Elena.
However, there were other women in Mikhail’s life. In 2001, he had an illegitimate daughter, Isabelle, from a short affair with Tatyana Borodovskaya.
A year later, Turetsky’s second wedding took place. His wife was the Armenian Liana, whom Mikhail met during a tour in the USA, organized by the girl’s father. Like Mikhail, Liana already had one child - daughter Sarina. However, the couple decided to have children together - daughters Emmanuelle in 2005 and Beata in 2009.
Mikhail Turetsky now
The guys from the “Turetsky Choir” (and Mikhail Borisovich himself in particular) are workaholics. In a year they manage to hold more than 200 performances - not everyone can boast of this. It’s amazing how artists still manage to publish photos on their accounts. "Instagram".
In 2017, Mikhail managed to find time for significant events. The first was the wedding of Sarina’s daughter and Tornik Tsertsvadze. The second is the awarding of the Order of Friendship for the development of culture.
Discography
- 1999 – “High Holidays”
- 2001 – “Bravissimo”
- 2003 – “Turetsky Choir Presents”
- 2004 – “When Men Sing”
- 2006 – “Born to Sing”
- 2007 – “Moscow-Jerusalem”
- 2009 – “Music of all times”
- 2010 – “The show must go on”
A successful and rich musician gives only 300 euros a month for the maintenance of his ten-year-old daughter Bella Borodovskaya.
In April, Mikhail TURETSKY, conductor and director of the choir of the same name, will turn 50 years old. According to official biography the artist has three daughters: 28-year-old Natalya from his first marriage and 6-year-old Emmanuel with 2-year-old Beata from his second wife. But for 10 years now another TURETSKY daughter has been living in the world, Bella, whom Mikhail carefully hides and categorically refuses to acknowledge. We tried to find out why.
Today Mikhail Turetsky He is actively preparing for his anniversary, giving interviews to glossy magazines, telling them about what a caring husband and cool father he is. Just somehow this perfect image the story about the little girl doesn't fit Bella Borodovskaya– to his natural daughter living in Germany.
Classmate Lena, whom Mikhail married at the age of 21 “out of nowhere,” died tragically
At first sight
In 2000, Mikhail and his choir were on tour in Germany. During a concert in Frankfurt, he saw an incredibly beautiful woman in the front row. Shocked by her appearance, Turetsky jumped off the stage and invited the lady to dance. The audience applauded enthusiastically, the conductor whirled the beauty around in a waltz, and finally, without being at a loss, he asked the young lady for her phone number. Tatiana Borodovskaya 6 years younger than Turetsky - sophisticated, thoroughbred, gentle, she saw a sign of fate in this meeting at the concert.
“It so happened historically that a month after that, according to the plan, I was supposed to move to Moscow.” Tatyana is 44 years old today, she looks amazing and has incredible magnetism. – I returned to my homeland, worked for Anton Nosik Deputy editor-in-chief at ntv.ru (now the news agency newsru.com). And suddenly Turetsky called.
“It turned out that Mikhail Borisovich’s office was next to us,” recalls the media mogul, owner of LiveJournal and the most famous blogger on the Runet, Nosik. – And he often began to pick Tanya up from work.
Anton and Tatiana are childhood friends.
After the death of his first wife, the musician raised his daughter Natasha alone
“We are neighbors at the River Station,” says Nosik. – We lived next to each other for many years – window to window. I also courted her, but Tanya was attracted to other gentlemen... And the affair with Turetsky took place before my eyes.
“How did Misha captivate me,” Tanya asks herself, “he is a very interesting person.”
Got started passionate romance, which the couple did not hide, there are a lot of witnesses to it. At that time, Mikhail lived with his daughter, a high school student from his first marriage, Natasha - Turetsky’s wife died tragically when the girl was 5 years old. Natasha accepted Tatyana, and the three of them began to live together in the artist’s two-room apartment on Belorusskaya. After some time, Borodovskaya became pregnant. In the summer of 2001, the couple arranged a romantic vacation at sea, Mikhail showed with all his appearance how much he wanted this child. When they found out that a girl would be born, they decided to name her Bella in honor of Turetsky’s mother.
At 28 years old, Natalya TURETSKAYA knows how to present herself
Difficult birth
“And in September 2001, Turetsky was forced to go on tour to America for three months,” says Tanya’s friend Evgenia Bokiy. – I had to return exactly to Tanya’s birth. She decided not to turn sour in Moscow and went to Germany to visit her parents, where she was going to give birth and wait for her betrothed... But Turetsky did not fly to Germany. He just disappeared! Didn't answer the phone, didn't call himself.
— It was a shock for us! – Anton Nosik is indignant. — He left his wife a week before giving birth. The horror of Turetsky running away from a pregnant woman is much more powerful than all the romanticism of their love story.
Tatyana survived a real blow! She was taken to the hospital in a state of shock; it turned out that due to stress, her labor stopped.
“She couldn’t give birth for a long time—her contractions stopped,” recalls friend Zhenya. “Then, of course, the German doctors did their job. And in December 2001, a small copy of Turetsky was born - his daughter Bella.
Tatiana BORODOVSKAYA gave birth to a lovely daughter to TURETSKY, and he betrayed her
“Wonderful girl, I saw her the other day,” says Nosik. “I am her sandak (in Judaism this is what they call a “godfather”). In 2003, in the synagogue of the city of Wiesbaden, I read a prayer over her and blessed her name - it is a great honor to baptize a baby.
Tatyana’s pride did not allow her to look for Turetsky, call him, or humiliate herself. But her friends and family could not calmly watch the suffering of a loved one. They found Mikhail, and he said: “I met someone else! If you want, I can give you $5,000 and let Tanya get away from me.” While touring in America, in October 2001, he met his current wife Liana.
“She quickly took it into circulation,” says Bokiy. – Tanya plucked up the courage to call Turetsky only two years later. He hid from her for a long time. As a result, they tried to put pressure on him even through Joseph Kobzon- he told him: “Recognize your daughter! This is indecent!” But he still categorically refuses to acknowledge her - he fights like a beast. Although after the story with Kobzon he began to give money for the child - however, for this you need to run after him and beg. One day Tanya's friend Once again I tried to call Turetsky, but ended up with Liana. “Do you know he has a wife and a small child?” - “Well, she is not his wife, and the child is not his child! And we don’t want to know about these people!”
Little Bella inherited not only her famous father's appearance, but also his musicality
Blame the wife
Turetsky himself does not comment on this story and only once in an interview with the magazine “Caravan of Stories” he mentioned that time:
“Some girls made attempts to make a husband out of me. Then I went to the Chief Rabbi of Russia Adolf Solomonovich Shaevich and said:
- What to do? I was pushed against the wall.
“If you can’t get married, don’t get married,” he answered.
I could, because my career, the formation of the choir and obligations to myself and the team seemed much more important than novels.”
“The reason, of course, is not a career,” says Nosik. “He came under pressure from Liana; for some reason she furiously doesn’t want him to recognize his daughter. For some reason, it is important for her that this story remains a secret. It is clear that they now have their own lives, many children, but it would be nice if he recognized Bella. The problem here is to persuade Liana...
Turetsky has a obsession with the topic of Jewry.
Emigrant Liana seduced TURKISH with high heels and sexy slits in her clothes
“Fifty generations of my ancestors married only their own,” says Mikhail.
Perhaps they did not agree with Tanya on this?
- What are you talking about! Tanya is a real Jew,” says Nosik, himself a famous Jew.
Borodovskaya herself still has not found an explanation for Mikhail’s action.
“I don’t have a tragedy,” she says. - What happened, happened. People break up. There is nothing you can do about it: they meet other men and women and go their separate ways. This is how life works. I didn’t look for the reason for Misha’s actions. I accepted the situation as it is. You could go into anger, or you could accept everything, move on and be happy. I chose the second path. I have no complaints about him. What he doesn't talk about Bella is his own business. What can I do? I don't force him to do this. And I don’t want to take revenge.
Bella is a citizen of Germany, where she has a birth certificate, where Mikhail Borisovich Turetsky is written in the “father” column.
“Misha was written down in the certificate with his voluntary consent,” Tanya confirms. - They asked me who the father was, I named him, they sent him a letter, he agreed with it.
Plus there are heaps of letters, testimonies, and photographs together.
Little Emmanuelle and Beata don't know that they have a 10-year-old sister, Bella.
Still
“He doesn’t quietly deny that this is his child,” says Bokiy. — He visits her in Germany, gives her gifts, but categorically refuses to utter the word “daughter.”
- Why haven’t I told you about this story yet? What will this change? - says Tanya. — Turetsky and I have a daughter, and he takes care of her as best he can. We can call him at any time. Don’t forget that we live in another country; people here don’t know who Mikhail Turetsky is. But Bella knows that she has a dad, that he is an artist, she was at Misha’s concerts. When we come to Moscow, he communicates with her, when he comes to Germany, too. Once he even took her to his family. I don't think Misha bad person. He good man. Without his care, I would not be able to raise a child. We are relatives to each other.
Mikhail Turetsky with his wife and her daughter Sarina
Tatyana is probably afraid of losing her source of finance, so she does not tell unpleasant details. Turetsky often transfers money to Germany through Anton Nosik.
- Sorry, sorry, he doesn’t really help! - Anton is indignant. — The amount that Mikhail sends to Bella (if you ask me, I would give my child more) is 300 euros per month! Can this really be called help?
Mikhail surrounded by his beloved women: on the left is his wife Liana, on the right is her daughter Sarina, whom Mikhail adopted
Recently Tanya turned to Mikhail: “You are now celebrating your 50th anniversary, well, invite Bella to Moscow.” The choirmaster refused.
“For some reason, many people think that Turkish is blue,” Bokiy argues. – But this is not true, Misha is a very smart guy. She loves herself, that's why she takes care of herself. And in general, he has delusions of grandeur: he believes that there are only three artists on stage: Pugacheva, Kobzon and him.
Tatyana Borodovskaya is still alone. She spends all her energy on her children - an adult son from her first marriage and a 10-year-old daughter.
“After Mikhail, I didn’t arrange my personal life,” Tanya admitted. — She never got married. Well, maybe I didn’t want to.
— Do you still love Turetsky?
- Well, this is a personal question. Was beautiful story, it ended, as everything ends in this life. People break up - it happens.
Alien-friend
Turetsky first married at the age of 21 to his Gnesinka classmate Elena.
“Lena had an upturned nose, an open smile and bottomless eyes,” Mikhail recalls in one interview. “I became her first man.” We loved each other, but I had no intention of getting married. However, Lena became pregnant.
For the sake of his family, Mikhail worked as a private driver, worked as a watchman and loader in a supermarket, and as a janitor.
In 1989 Elena Turetskaya died in a car accident.
“My first wife’s father was traveling in a car with her and her brother from Lithuania on the day of my sister’s birth,” Mikhail recalls. — According to eyewitnesses, at the 71st kilometer of the Minsk-Moscow highway, the car drove into oncoming traffic, hit a bus, and then collided with a truck. Forehead to forehead. And instant death. All three.
Mikhail's mother-in-law Zoya asked him to sign documents for the child's refusal and give his granddaughter Natasha to her.
“I said: “I won’t sign anything.” Jews never give up on their children,” Mikhail tells how it happened.
Now my daughter Natasha is already 28 years old, she graduated from law school, and works in her father’s team - she manages the website of the Turetsky Choir...
The star's parents Boris EPSTEIN and Bella TURETSKAYA have been married for 66 years
Then Mikhail met Borodovskaya, and later, when she was expecting Turkish child, while on tour in America, he met Liana - her father was a concert organizer in Texas.
— For me, as an artist who spent a month on tour, appearance Lianas - her high heel and an open belly made an indelible impression,” recalls Mikhail. — I suggested going to a restaurant.
After drinking cocktails, Turkish and Liana spent the night together. Thus began a romance. Turetsky persuaded Liana to leave America for Moscow. However, a problem arose: Liana has a daughter from her first marriage, Sarina (now 15 years old), who could not be taken out of the USA. Then Turetsky adopted her and gave her his last name. He raises the girl as his own (that is, he does not recognize his own, but adopted someone else’s child).
“I didn’t want more children,” Mikhail says in an interview. - A child will interfere with our rest, creative pursuits, pathos, status, and in general.
But Liana gave Mikhail two more daughters: Emmanuelle (yes, Mikhail named her after that same porn heroine) and Beata.
Photos from Turetsky’s personal archive and from Borodovskaya’s blog
The richest musician gives only €300 a month to support his daughter
Nadezhda BushuevaIn April, Mikhail Turetsky, conductor and director of the choir of the same name, will turn 50 years old. According to the official biography, the artist has three daughters: 28-year-old Natalya from his first marriage and 6-year-old Emmanuel with 2-year-old Beata from his second wife. But for 10 years now another daughter of Turetsky, Bella, has been living in the world, whom Mikhail carefully hides and categorically refuses to acknowledge. We tried to find out why.
Today Mikhail Turetsky is actively preparing for his anniversary, giving interviews to glossy magazines, telling them about what a caring husband and cool father he is. Only somehow the story about the little girl Bella Borodovskaya, his natural daughter living in Germany, does not fit into this ideal image.
At first sight
In 2000, Mikhail and his choir were on tour in Germany. During a concert in Frankfurt, he saw an incredibly beautiful woman in the front row. Shocked by her appearance, Turetsky jumped off the stage and invited the lady to dance. The audience applauded enthusiastically, the conductor whirled the beauty around in a waltz, and finally, without being at a loss, he asked the young lady for her phone number. Tatyana Borodovskaya is 6 years younger than Turetsky - sophisticated, thoroughbred, gentle, she saw a sign of fate in this meeting at the concert.It so happened historically that a month after that, according to plan, I was supposed to move to Moscow - Tatyana is 44 years old today, she looks amazing and has incredible magnetism. - I returned to my homeland, worked for Anton Nosik as deputy editor-in-chief at ntv.ru (now it is the news agency newsru.com). And suddenly Turetsky called.
It turned out that Mikhail Borisovich’s office was next to us,” recalls the media mogul, owner of LiveJournal and the most famous blogger on the Runet, Nosik. - And he often began to pick Tanya up from work.
Anton and Tatiana are childhood friends.
“We are neighbors at the River Station,” says Nosik. - We lived nearby for many years - window to window. I also courted her, but Tanya was attracted to other gentlemen... And the affair with Turetsky took place before my eyes.
Why did Misha captivate me, - Tanya asks herself, - he is a very interesting person.
A passionate romance began, which the couple did not hide; there were a lot of witnesses to it. At that time, Mikhail lived with his daughter, a high school student from his first marriage, Natasha - Turetsky’s wife died tragically when the girl was 5 years old. Natasha accepted Tatyana, and the three of them began to live together in the artist’s two-room apartment on Belorusskaya. After some time, Borodovskaya became pregnant. In the summer of 2001, the couple arranged a romantic vacation at sea, Mikhail showed with all his appearance how much he wanted this child. When they found out that a girl would be born, they decided to name her Bella in honor of Turetsky’s mother.
Difficult birth
“And in September 2001, Turetsky was forced to go on tour to America for three months,” says Tanya’s friend Evgenia Bokiy. - I should have returned exactly to Tanya’s birth. She decided not to turn sour in Moscow and went to Germany to visit her parents, where she was going to give birth and wait for her betrothed... But Turetsky did not fly to Germany. He just disappeared! Didn't answer the phone, didn't call himself.It was a shock for us! - Anton Nosik is indignant. - He left his wife a week before giving birth. The horror of Turetsky running away from a pregnant woman is much more powerful than all the romanticism of their love story.
Tatyana survived a real blow! She was taken to the hospital in a state of shock; it turned out that due to stress, her labor stopped.
She couldn’t give birth for a long time - her contractions stopped,” recalls friend Zhenya. - Then, of course, the German doctors did their job. And in December 2001, a small copy of Turetsky was born - his daughter Bella.
“Wonderful girl, I saw her the other day,” says Nosik. - I am her sandak (in Judaism this is what they call a “godfather”). In 2003, in the synagogue of the city of Wiesbaden, I read a prayer over her and consecrated her name - it is a great honor to baptize a baby.
Tatyana’s pride did not allow her to look for Turetsky, call him, or humiliate herself. But her friends and family could not calmly watch the suffering of a loved one. They found Mikhail, and he said: “I met someone else! If you want, I can give you $5,000 and let Tanya get away from me.” While touring in America, in October 2001, he met his current wife Liana.
She quickly took it into circulation,” says Bokiy. - Tanya plucked up the courage to call Turetsky only two years later. He hid from her for a long time. As a result, they tried to put pressure on him even through Joseph Kobzon- he told him: “Recognize your daughter! This is indecent!” But he still categorically refuses to acknowledge her - he fights like a beast. Although after the story with Kobzon he began to give money for the child - however, for this you need to run after him and beg. One day, Tanya’s friend once again tried to call Turetsky, but ended up with Liana. “Do you know he has a wife and a small child?” - “Well, she is not his wife, and the child is not his child! And we don’t want to know about these people!”
Blame the wife
Turetsky himself does not comment on this story and only once in an interview with the magazine “Caravan of Stories” he mentioned that time:“Some girls made attempts to make a husband out of me. Then I went to the Chief Rabbi of Russia Adolf Solomonovich Shaevich and said:
What to do? I was pushed against the wall.
If you can’t get married, don’t get married,” he answered.
I could, because my career, the formation of the choir and obligations to myself and the team seemed much more important than novels.”
The reason, of course, is not career, says Nosik. - He came under pressure from Liana, for some reason she furiously does not want him to recognize his daughter. For some reason, it is important for her that this story remains a secret. It is clear that they now have their own lives, many children, but it would be nice if he recognized Bella. The problem here is to persuade Liana...
Turetsky has a obsession with the topic of Jewry.
Fifty generations of my ancestors married only their own,” says Mikhail.
Perhaps they did not agree with Tanya on this?
What are you talking about? Tanya is a real Jew,” says Nosik, himself a famous Jew.
Borodovskaya herself still has not found an explanation for Mikhail’s action.
“I don’t have a tragedy,” she says. - What happened, happened. People break up. There is nothing you can do about it: they meet other men and women and go their separate ways. This is how life works. I didn’t look for the reason for Misha’s actions. I accepted the situation as it is. You could go into anger, or you could accept everything, move on and be happy. I chose the second path. I have no complaints about him. What he doesn't say about Bella is his own business. What can I do? I don't force him to do this. And I don’t want to take revenge.
Bella is a citizen of Germany, where she has a birth certificate, where Mikhail Borisovich Turetsky is written in the “father” column.
Misha was included in the certificate with his voluntary consent, confirms Tanya. - They asked me who the father was, I named him, they sent him a letter, he agreed with it.
Plus there are heaps of letters, testimonies, and photographs together.
Still
“He doesn’t quietly deny that this is his child,” says Bokiy. - He visits her in Germany, gives her gifts, but categorically refuses to utter the word “daughter.”Why haven't I told this story yet? What will this change? - says Tanya. - Turetsky and I have a daughter, and he takes care of her as best he can. We can call him at any time. Don’t forget that we live in another country; people here don’t know who Mikhail Turetsky is. But Bella knows that she has a dad, that he is an artist, she was at Misha’s concerts. When we come to Moscow, he communicates with her, when he comes to Germany, too. Once he even took her to his family. I don't think Misha is a bad person. He is a good man. Without his care, I would not be able to raise a child. We are relatives to each other.
Tatyana is probably afraid of losing her source of finance, so she does not tell unpleasant details. Turetsky often transfers money to Germany through Anton Nosik.
Sorry, sorry, it doesn't really help! - Anton is indignant. - The amount that Mikhail sends to Bella (if you ask me, I would give my child more) is 300 euros per month! Can this really be called help?
Recently Tanya turned to Mikhail: “You will now celebrate your 50th anniversary, well, invite Bella to Moscow.” The choirmaster refused.
For some reason, many people think that Turkish is blue,” says Bokiy. - But this is not true, Misha is a very smart guy. She loves herself, that's why she takes care of herself. And in general, he has delusions of grandeur: he believes that there are only three artists on stage: Pugacheva, Kobzon and him.
Tatyana Borodovskaya is still alone. She spends all her energy on her children - an adult son from her first marriage and a 10-year-old daughter.
After Mikhail, I didn’t arrange my personal life,” Tanya admitted. - She never got married. Well, maybe I didn’t want to.
Do you still love Turkish?
Well, this is a personal question. There was a beautiful story, it ended like everything ends in this life. People break up - it happens.
Alien-friend
Turetsky first married at the age of 21 to his Gnesinka classmate Elena.Lena had an upturned nose, an open smile and bottomless eyes, Mikhail recalls in one interview. - I became her first man. We loved each other, but I had no intention of getting married. However, Lena became pregnant.
For the sake of his family, Mikhail worked as a private driver, worked as a watchman and loader in a supermarket, and as a janitor.
In 1989, Elena Turetskaya died in a car accident.
My first wife’s father was traveling in a car with her and her brother from Lithuania, since my sister’s birthday,” recalls Mikhail. - According to eyewitnesses, at the 71st kilometer of the Minsk-Moscow highway, the car drove into oncoming traffic, hit a bus, and then collided with a truck. Forehead to forehead. And instant death. All three.
Mikhail's mother-in-law Zoya asked him to sign documents for the child's refusal and give his granddaughter Natasha to her.
I said: “I won’t sign anything. Jews never give up on their children,” Mikhail tells how it happened.
Now my daughter Natasha is already 28 years old, she graduated from law school, and works in her father’s team - she manages the website of the Turetsky Choir...
Then Mikhail met Borodovskaya, and later, when she was expecting a Turkish child, on tour in America he met Liana - her father was a concert organizer in Texas.
“As an artist who spent a month on tour, Liana’s appearance - her high heels and open belly - made an indelible impression on me,” Mikhail recalls. - I suggested going to a restaurant.
After drinking cocktails, Turkish and Liana spent the night together. Thus began a romance. Turetsky persuaded Liana to leave America for Moscow. True, a problem arose: Liana has a daughter from her first marriage, Sarina (now 15 years old), who could not be removed from the USA. Then Turetsky adopted her and gave her his last name. He raises the girl as his own (that is, he does not recognize his own, but adopted someone else’s child).
“I didn’t want more children,” says Mikhail in an interview. - A child will interfere with our rest, creative pursuits, pathos, status, and in general.
But Liana gave Mikhail two more daughters: Emmanuelle (yes, Mikhail named her after that same porn heroine) and Beata.
The choir at the synagogue in Moscow was sponsored by Berezovsky, and in Chechnya it was guarded by Basayev
Aizenshpis: “I need one and a half million dollars from Logovaz, and then the country will fall asleep and wake up to the “Turetsky Choir”
Original of this material© "Narodnaya Gazeta", 11/12/2009, "Turetsky Choir" was financed by oligarchs and protected by terrorists
The Turetsky Choir was created as a synodal choir at the Moscow Choral Synagogue. Joseph Kobzon brought them to the stage, and “ godfathers"became Berezovsky and Gusinsky. [...] Last weekend the musicians visited Ulyanovsk. And the head of the team, Mikhail Turetsky, is rightfully awarded by ART-HOUSE with the title of one of the most grateful and interesting interlocutors in Russian show business. Judge for yourself… [...]
-Are you an Orthodox Jew? Do you attend synagogue, read the Torah, observe Shabbat?
- [...] I, of course, feel a genetic belonging to a certain national group of people. [...] Religious traditions I respect Jews, although I still won’t be able to observe all 613 mitzvot of the Torah. I have my own mitzvot, my own internal code. It's like a personal Torah inside me. Due to non-observance of Shabbat, we were once expelled from the synagogue. We have already started working with Joseph Kobzon, and one of our joint concerts took place on Saturday. We dared to work on a day when, according to all the canons of Judaism, any work is prohibited. For this reason, we had a conflict with the chief rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue. And we were strictly forbidden to perform within its walls in the future.
- After that, did the oligarchs Berezovsky and Gusinsky pay attention to you?
Boris Abramovich supported us even before we met Kobzon, in 1995. We were not going through the best of times financially at that time. And Logovaz helped us occasionally. Berezovsky appeared at the synagogue, listened to us for about twenty minutes and began financing. He called Ernst and asked us to be on TV. But it didn’t work out. The next presidential elections. Berezovsky plunged headlong into this topic. He had no time for us. And Ernst, apparently, was not very interested in supporting us without Berezovsky. We turned to Yuri Aizenshpis. He said: “I need one and a half million dollars from Logovaz, and then the country will fall asleep and wake up to the Turetsky Choir.” Naturally, this didn’t work out either. Only Kobzon really helped us with promotion, he promoted us. By the way, few people know that during our first trip to Chechnya, Shamil Basayev was personally responsible for our safety. One of the most famous terrorists in the world was an ordinary bodyguard of our team. As for Gusinsky, when he was chairman of the Russian Jewish Congress, at the stage when the interests of the congress coincided with our interests, he provided us with all possible assistance, that’s all. [...]
["Echo of Moscow", 09/06/2011, "No fools":
M. Turetsky- Yes, we once sang sacred music... [...] Classics mainly, it was very important for us interesting job. It's early in the 1990s. 1992-93. And Berezovsky came to our rehearsal space and said, I have 15 minutes, sing something. We sang, he said how much you need so that you can somehow rehearse. Well, I calculated some kind of salary, it was, in my opinion, 5 thousand dollars for everyone. So that people can go to the store normally. Petrol. In general, rehearsing and giving concerts. And he probably transferred this money to us over the course of a year.
[...] I remember for some time I came to see Badri Patarkatsishvili, these are all such heroes with a minus sign in our reality, but they really tried to help us with something, but it was already somehow difficult for them. They have already become persona non grata... - Insert K.ru]
["Izvestia", 02/07/2011, "Mikhail Turetsky: I don’t help my daughters": Leader and conductor Mikhail Turetsky spoke about [...] how Joseph Kobzon helped them [...]
AND: Is it true that Kobzon sponsored you?
Turkish: I came to Joseph Davydovich and said: “Let’s make a program together.” When he had an anniversary tour, we traveled all over the country together, singing only Jewish songs. This was his great help. To say that he supported us is wrong. Kobzon is a block. You can learn everything from Joseph Davydovich: singing and acting, and communication with viewers, and business. But there was also not much positive point. After that joint project everyone thought that we only sang the Jewish repertoire. And this is a fairly narrow framework. We even thought about changing the name of the group. But Joseph Davydovich was dissatisfied with this matter. The ex-mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov helped, who softened Kobzon’s disposition towards us, saying that there was only a Turkish Jew in the team, and there was no need for all performers to put hats on their heads. - Insert K.ru]
The famous Russian conductor and his wife talked about what motivates a person to creative development.
Mikhail and Liana Turetsky. Photo: personal archive.
The story of Mikhail and Liana began in 2001 during the Turetsky Choir’s tour of America. Liana's father received an offer to organize a concert for the group. It was probably love at first sight. Four months of mostly telephone communication was enough for Liana to exchange her comfortable American life for a much more modest existence in Russia, but with her beloved. And Mikhail, already quite an adult who had experienced a personal tragedy (his first wife Elena died in a car accident), believed that it was with this woman that he would live a happy life.
Mikhail, once in an interview you joked that your wife appreciates your age and national characteristics. Is it important that people come from the same environment?
Mikhail Turetsky:"Certainly. It is desirable that from the same sandbox, from the same traditional dimension, cultural cross-section, and same skin color. Of course, there are exceptions - and suddenly a completely incompatible set of parts coincides, as in a Lego constructor. But this rarely happens. It’s still good when your grandparents professed the same values as the ancestors of your chosen one. A Russian woman will not understand what kind of painful love a Jewish mother has for her son. She will find it strange. What about the Jewish wife? Our religion says that the wife is always against it. But this is the source of your inner growth. If you sit on the couch and don’t do a damn thing, your belly is growing, and there is a woman next to you who accepts you as you are, there is no incentive to develop at all. It’s everyone’s choice – who wants to go which way. I know quite a few Jews who chose a grateful woman “from another tribe.”
Liana Turkish:“A Russian wife would have killed you long ago! (Laughs.) I think it’s not even a matter of nationality, but of family upbringing - what values they tried to instill in a person. I have three unmarried daughters. Of course, I would dream that they would choose Jews as their husbands, and we would celebrate holidays together, observe rituals, and go to the synagogue. But eldest daughter Natalya married a Russian guy, and we treat him well, we love him very much. She gave birth to our amazing grandson Vanya, and therefore everything else doesn’t matter anymore. You can choose a Jew who turns out to be a complete idiot, and the poor girl will suffer all her life. Or you can live in perfect harmony with a Russian. The main thing is that the children are happy!”
Psychologists also say that a man is looking for a wife who is like his mother...
Michael:“And this is absolutely true. If you good mom, you begin to look for these traits in your chosen one. At the time we met, Liana was a woman with a five-year-old child. And I saw in her, first of all, a caring mother. Later, when we had more daughters, this opinion only became stronger. For my wife, children always come first, and I accepted that. After all, for my mother, my brother and I were in first place, and my father was in second or even third. I have never seen her show any active affection towards her father. She never called him: “Borechka, dear.” Always Boris, and some question immediately followed. And he, already hearing his name, was expecting a catch. (Laughs.) At the same time, the parents somehow managed to live a unique life together- sixty-six years old. And it was very easy to imagine this family model with Liana. I agreed with myself: “Mikhail Borisovich, if you lack attention, you will find it in the show business services market, where an audience of millions listens to you.” Liana believes that I am a self-sufficient, independent person, and children are more vulnerable, they need more care.”
Liana, when something doesn’t go well for Mikhail, does he turn to you for participation?
Liana:“Of course, if not to my wife, who else should I go to? This is fine. But this does not mean that I will feel sorry for Mikhail Borisovich and pat him on the head. Rather, on the contrary, I try to somehow shake him up so that he pulls himself together.”
Michael:“My wife already has a lot: in addition to her daughters, there are also parents who came from America. They need help too. Then, Liana is the leader of a big bachelorette party, and there are always some women’s issues that need to be urgently resolved. So her concept of what a real problem was was devalued. If I whine that I am in creative disagreement with myself, she, of course, will pretend that she is immersed in it. But it won't submerge. Liana understands that my projects are successful, and if I can’t agree with myself, that’s my problem. There are more pressing matters than men’s whining.”
Liana, why are you calling your husband Mikhail Borisovich?
Liana:“The husband is at home. And at work he is Mikhail Borisovich. He also calls me Liana Semyonovna, it’s funny.”
But, as I understand it, everything in the house depends on you?
Liana:“Family is a kind of partnership. Everyone does their own thing, and no one bothers each other. Of course, if we need advice on something, we consult, but in the end we act as we see fit.”
Mikhail, the Turetsky Choir was well received in America, and you had the opportunity to stay there. Why did you decide to return to Russia?
Michael:“Firstly, I had before my eyes the example of parents who could have emigrated many times to both America and Germany, but remained to live here. Dad went through the war, he took part in breaking the Leningrad blockade, and for him the word “patriotism” is not an empty phrase. He felt absolutely harmonious in this environment. I was twenty years old, he was seventy. And I remember him at that age as an energetic, cheerful person who felt great, worked, went to the skating rink, to the dance hall. And I understood: why look for happiness somewhere beyond the seas if it is in the person himself? Back in 1997, before meeting Liana, our team was offered a life-time contract in Florida. We were there on tour and really liked it. People realized what they could do with the “Turetsky Choir” good business. An offer has been received. I didn’t want to live in America; the team had mixed feelings. On the one hand, in Russia there are relatives, friends, and the graves of ancestors, and on the other hand, here it is, the real American dream, which is about to become a reality. At that moment, I turned to the Moscow government with a request that we be given state status and premises. And this was a kind of Rubicon: the homeland recognizes it - we will return. And Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov assigned us this status, which in the future meant state support. We are still waiting for the premises. (Laughs.) It seems that it was allocated, but it is in disrepair, and there is no money for reconstruction. But nevertheless, then it seemed that we were all recognized at the state level. So in 2001, when we met Liana, the question of emigration was no longer an issue. I go on tour in the USA (the computer shows that in twenty-five years I have crossed the border ninety-four times), but I have no desire to live in this country. I feel that I am needed here because every day I go on stage to large audience and I make her happier than before communicating with me.”
How did you manage to turn Liana’s life around in a matter of months so that she left everything and went with you to Russia?
Michael:“When Liana invited me to visit, I was impressed by her taste and quality of life. A twenty-five year old woman had luxury house, a beautiful car. To do this, she had to work two jobs (she is a programmer). But nevertheless, everything was settled. Why did you leave? Probably love. I can’t pull the blanket over myself now: they say, I’m so cool, I’ve fooled her into thinking...”
Charmed?
Michael:"Well maybe. Although also common sense was present. I flatter myself with the hope that I impressed Liana good impression. And she saw me as a reliable person. I was older than her. And older now. The wife says: “You will never see me old.” (Laughs.) I am a responsible person, I created a unique team of its kind, I was not involved in any criminal activity, I did not use obscene language. In a word, nothing scared her. I talked about Verdi, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, talked about the Leningrad State Philharmonic, where I attended rehearsals of Evgeniy Mravinsky. Liana was pleasantly surprised, and she was interested in trying something different, getting to know a person from the “other shore” better. True, at first, while they were getting used to each other, more than once I wanted to go back. But I never made it to the airport.”
Liana, was it difficult for you to decide to move?
Liana:“When we are young, we make decisions much faster and are not always guided by logic and reason. It seems to a person in love that he can move mountains, and not just turn his life around. But still, I am quite practical, I don’t rush headlong into the pool. A woman's heart will always tell you what future awaits you with this person. Will there be a man or a wimp next to you? First of all, I chose a husband, a breadwinner and a good father for my children. And I was right.”
But were you bored at first?
Liana:“There was no time to be bored. U eldest daughter Mikhail Borisovich Natasha is a transitional age. A rambunctious teenager with whom I had to establish contact and find a common language. My Sarina had to be identified in kindergarten, teach Russian. I also tried to find a job, went to interviews. Nothing worked out with the job, although my specialty seems to be in demand everywhere. And I began to go on tour with the Turetsky Choir. So I didn’t sit at home, didn’t get bored or cry, but actively built our new life.”
Have you settled into Moscow now?
Liana:"Certainly! Here I have my favorite places, restaurants, shopping centers, theaters. I love people, parties, communication. For our bachelorette party, we sometimes go to Paris or Germany. Of course, when you have time, you need to go on tour with the band and go on vacation with the children.”
Have you always wanted a big family?
Liana:“I absolutely love little children, and it is such a joy for me that we have four daughters! If each one gives me two or three granddaughters, I will become the happiest grandmother. There should be small children in the house. Mikhail and I sometimes say that if we only had older daughters - Natasha and Sarina, our life would become boring. They are already adults, independent, mom and dad are not so needed.”
Michael:“By the way, we offered our eldest daughter to go to Chicago to get an education there. She stayed here, entered MGIMO, the Faculty of International Journalism, and did so herself. Our youngest children are also very purposeful, they do a little bit of everything for general development. Both music and figure skating, drawing, dancing... The youngest, Beata, goes to ballet school.”
Liana, Mikhail is a very busy person. Does he pay enough attention to children?
Liana:“Being a good father does not mean that he should lie at home twenty-four hours a day. This is a terrible father. A good one is one who can provide his children with a comfortable, comfortable life and education. Mikhail Borisovich succeeds in all this. And he loves and spoils our daughters. He will never go to bed without hugging them and kissing them goodnight. If he leaves early in the morning on tour, he will get up early to take them to school. He takes advantage of any moment to be with them longer. Whenever possible, they go to the skating rink together on skis. As for music, I have with it difficult relationships. More than one bear has stepped on my ear, although Mikhail Borisovich believes that I have hearing. And our girls all sing; Emma has been playing the violin since she was five.”
Do they express any ideas about dad’s work?
Michael:“The repertoire of the Turetsky Choir has stood the test of time. And maybe our girls don’t really understand it due to their age, but they feel the energy and are drawn to this music, even to military songs. Emma writes absolutely amazingly: “In the field, along the steep bank, past the huts.” He lets this song pass through himself, and the little girl sings along to it. They really love the repertoire of “Turetsky Soprano”.
Was it created as a counterweight to the male choir?
Michael:“This is a kind of brand revolution. I realized that I was a little cramped within the same team. There are songs that are simply inappropriate in a male performance: “The daisies hid,” “Once a year the gardens bloom”... And then, I missed the female vocals that penetrate to the very heart. I started this group and it's incredibly successful. “Soprano” has a huge repertoire - one hundred and twenty compositions, a variety of genres. The group has two female composers who write their own lyrics and music. We did joint numbers with Igor Butman, Dmitry Malikov, Sergei Mazaev.”
Liana, aren’t you jealous of the beauties who hang around your husband?
Liana:“If a husband is surrounded by young girls, this continues his youth and masculinity. And secondly, in order to “go outside”, it is not necessary to create a choir. I trust my husband and the Soprano girls. In addition to the fact that they are beautiful, they are also smart - intelligent, well-mannered, well-read. This is a completely different level, not “singing cowards” who are looking for a rich husband.”
In the interview, you said that now that your grandson has appeared, there will be someone to continue your work. Are you going to cook the guy?
Michael:“Since Russia is a women’s country, you are much stronger than men, then, I think, my daughters will most likely be the successors. There is such a character - Emmanuelle Turkish. She is now nine years old and she is tenacious, strong, talented and with a big voice. I see potential in her - both as a good musician and as a manager. She even tries to influence repertoire policy and push through her favorites. And when he’s at a concert, he can jump on stage, snatch the microphone from dad and sing something.”
Mikhail Turetsky.Leader
M. Turetsky with his wife Liana
- Dad, why are you crying? - asked the eight-year-old daughter.
I was sitting in the city of Long Beach near New York in a state of complete hopelessness on the Broadwalk, a boardwalk along which Americans walk and run for health, and tears flowed from my eyes. I do not know what to do. My partners let me down, I showed my character and was left without money. Behind me is a team of twenty people who have nothing to feed and no money to buy return tickets with. It hasn't been this bad for a long time.
“I don’t have a shoe factory, a store, or even a kiosk.” “I only have sounds that are difficult to sell,” I answered Natasha.
- Dad, you bring joy to people! And this is much better than a stall. Stop crying, let’s go,” my daughter pulled me by the sleeve.
And I got up and went. There is no point in shedding tears in front of a little girl. You can't give up and become limp.
There were plenty of reasons for pessimism: I was already thirty and still unsuccessfully trying to make a living from classical music. He inspired the choir he led that it was possible, you just need to find the right path. All responsibility lay with me, and there was nowhere to wait for support. Who would have thought that the right words I'll hear from my daughter. Natasha said so childishly simply about “joy to people” that I found a second wind and found a way to get out. And then, and many more times before I achieved success.
Few people manage to sell creativity. I don’t know how I succeeded in this. There is a joke on the topic: “In Soviet time the professor’s daughter is asked: “How are you, who received the classical musical education, brought up in intelligent family, have become a currency prostitute?” - "It was just luck!" So I was lucky. Just not right away.
My childhood passed in a small Moscow communal apartment near the Belorusskaya metro station. We occupied a fourteen-meter room. There was no one to pamper my brother and me: there were no grandparents, dad and mom were busy surviving. My father worked as a foreman in a silk-screen printing workshop at a factory near Moscow, and my mother worked as a nanny in a kindergarten.
Dad, Boris Borisovich Epstein, is one of the blacksmith’s six children, originally from Belarus. His father, a powerful man known throughout the area, died at forty-two from pneumonia. Late autumn He came out of the forge hot and caught a cold. So at fourteen, dad, along with his older brother, took charge big family. Having matured, he realized that they could not feed themselves in the village, and at eighteen he went to study in Moscow, at the Academy foreign trade, dragging all the brothers and sisters to the capital.
A competent, intelligent person, he quickly made a career in the Exportles organization, received living space - seven square meters in the center of Moscow - and easily learned German, since it was similar to Yiddish. Looking ahead, I’ll say: once in New York at age eighty-five, my father managed to communicate there too, because English, it turns out, is also similar to Yiddish...
At twenty-seven, dad began to think about a family. Finding himself with relatives in the town of Pukhovichi near Minsk, in a poor, clean hut he saw a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl playing the guitar. “This will be my wife,” dad decided and left for Moscow.
His relatives talked to the girl’s family: “What kind of nose he has, you can see for yourself, but we guarantee that it won’t deceive.”
In October 1940, her father took Bela Turetskaya to Moscow. And in July 1941, the Germans entered the town and destroyed my mother’s entire family. They were forced to dig their own graves and buried alive. In the same 1941, my father went to the front. He became part of a breakthrough Leningrad blockade and was awarded government awards for this. As a boy, every year my father took me to Leningrad to places of military glory, showed me the transit point on Fontanka, 90, historical places, and took me to the Tovstonogovsky BDT.
Parents of M. Turetsky
Of every hundred people called up in the first days of the war, only three returned. The dead were recognized as heroes. But dad couldn’t even get his job back. Largely because after the war, Stalin’s officials did not favor Jews, even if they had passed from Moscow to Berlin.
“Do you want to work at Vneshtorg? - they told him. - Please. We have a branch. On Pechora." Dad did not want to leave Moscow and, giving up his career, got a job at a factory.
My older brother Sasha had problems with his lungs. My father’s salary was six hundred rubles, and a consultation with a pulmonologist professor was five hundred. “Your son’s life is in your hands,” said the doctor, escalating the already tense situation.
And dad committed a crime: he wrapped his body in silk scarves, put on a leather jacket left over from the front, and took the products outside the factory to sell them later. Somehow he managed to come to an agreement with the workers who made a batch for him beyond the norm. But private entrepreneurship at that time was punishable by law and threatened with imprisonment for up to five years. There were thirty-eight women in the workshop, mostly single, destitute by the war, and not a single one called Petrovka. How he managed to build such correct relationships with so many women - only God knows!
We didn't live well. We had neither a car nor a dacha; all the father needed was to save his son from illness. And he did it.
I'm an unplanned child. Mom gave birth to me at forty, dad was already almost fifty. Everyone unanimously dissuaded my mother, she had a bad heart, but she did it her way. Friends advised my parents to name me Yura, because I was born on Cosmonautics Day, the twelfth of April, a year after Gagarin’s flight.
“Yur-r-ra? - Dad said, grazing slightly. “It’s a tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-pronounceable name.” Let there be Misha."
My brother and I are Turkish because my mother explained to my father: There are Epsteins, but there are no Turetskys left—the surname must be preserved. And dad easily agreed with this. I had a real Jewish mother. There is an anecdote that accurately conveys the essence of her character: “What is the difference between an Arab terrorist and a Jewish mother? You can come to an agreement with a terrorist.” My brother and I became the meaning of her life. And dad found a worthy place for himself, living as if in his own world. He provided for the family, answered our questions, but never overloaded or demanded attention. He never told me when I grew up:
“Why didn’t you come? Why didn’t you call?”
Mom always lacked something, despite the fact that we were loving and caring sons and visited them with our father almost every day. When we said goodbye and left, dad immediately returned to his business, and she stood at the window until the car disappeared, and I understood: we didn’t give her enough again...
“A Jewish boy with dark eyes, and there is such Russian sadness in them...” - this is about me. At the age of one and a half I already began to hum, at three I sang in a row all the songs that came from the TV and radio: “An order was given for him to the west, for her - in the other direction, the Komsomol members were leaving for the civil war.” I didn’t understand what it was about, and instead of “order” I sang “refusal”. On Sundays, my father allowed himself to lie in bed a little longer, and I climbed under his side. It was then that the repertoire policy of the future “Turetsky Choir” was forged. “Dad, give us “Care,” I said, and we dragged on: “Our care is simple...” or “Twist and Charleston, you filled the globe...”
The songs of the Soviet era are amazing. I sang them with fanatical joy, and my parents understood: we need to teach the boy. At that moment we got a second room in a communal apartment and a piano. They found a piano teacher for me. The lesson cost ten rubles - a serious test for the family budget. And at the age of six, I liked to walk on the street with friends, and not figure out what a bass clef is. Having received the assignment for home, I counted the number of notes in the exercise and drummed on the first keys I came across. Mom compared the number of notes with the number of strokes on the keyboard and sighed in disappointment:
- What kind of nonsense is this?
“Such a sketch,” I shrugged.
This lasted four months. The one hundred and sixty rubles spent did not materialize into quality. “Untalented boy,” said the teacher. “Don’t waste your money.”
I was happy: I was spared from suffering. But my voice grew, I sat down at the piano and, not knowing the notes, picked out the melody by ear - “Lilac Fog”, “You are the only one for me”. Guests came, they put me on a chair, I sang - everyone was delighted. “A talented boy is growing up! Must study."
And my mother took me this time to a state music school. On the notice board there is a leaflet “Services and prices: piano - 20 rubles. per month, violin - 19 rubles, oboe, horn - 9 rubles, flute - 3 rubles, piccolo flute - 1 rubles. 50 kopecks.”
"ABOUT! - said mom. — The piccolo flute will suit us. It’s not expensive, and you’ll enjoy the musical process.”
Recently, my artists gave me a piccolo flute and engraved their nicknames on the entire fingering: Tulya, Kuzya, Boar, Beast... I took it and realized that the hands remember everything. And then, in four years, I learned to play masterfully. At the same time, my father took me to the boys’ chapel.
- You talented child“,” a teacher once said, “it would be nice if his father came to see me.”
“And this is me...” answered dad.
And then I realized that he was old and looked like my grandfather. Since my parents are old, it means I will soon lose them. The fear settled in my childhood heart that I might lose this mighty roof over my head. I decided to become independent as quickly as possible, because I would soon be alone...
I don’t know what I could have come up with, but fate intervened. In the face cousin father - the famous musician Rudolf Barshai. He gained particular fame after 1977, when he left the USSR for the West, performed with the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra and became the chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Things didn't work out for him in his homeland. Probably, the authorities could not entrust the orchestra to a morally unstable person, married three times, the last time to a Japanese woman.
When the very young Rudolf arrived in Moscow, his father placed a folding bed for him on his seven meters. In the summer they went to my father’s older brother’s dacha, where Rudik went to the wooden restroom in the morning and there, on the push, from five to eight he “sawed” on the violin, so as not to disturb anyone. This is how steel is hardened. At that time, the Soviet music school was considered the best in the world, as well as ballet and space. The world's outstanding orchestras are cemented by Soviet musicians. And today... Who will sit from five to eight on the “point” in order to achieve something?
Uncle Rudolf managed to recognize my talent before he emigrated. One day he came to visit us.
- What is Misha doing? - Uncle asked.
I played the flute.
- Sing.
I sang.
“Musical guy,” he assessed. — I’ll call the director of the Sveshnikov Choir School.
My uncle called in front of me. “Look at the boy - if it’s not his door, don’t take it,” he said wisely.
I was accepted into school at the age of eleven. I immediately fell behind, the rest of the children studied from seven, some had already played Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto. On the very first day, I sobbed and said to my father:
- Don't want! I can not!
“Do what you want,” dad said and walked away.
Catching up with peers has become the meaning of life. Eventually I got involved. I couldn’t study at home: my neighbor in the communal apartment was making a “goat face.” Hearing the sounds of music, a seventy-year-old locomotive driver, a communist with the Order of Lenin on his pajamas, chased me around the apartment shouting: “The Israeli devil!” School classes started at eight thirty. I got up at five forty, washed my face, munched a sandwich as I walked, and rushed by metro to school on Krasnaya Presnya. At six-thirty I was already sitting at the piano and working before classes started. Which child today is capable of this?
By the eighth grade, I caught up with my classmates, despite the terrible competition. Out of two thousand applicants, twenty boys were accepted. Ten completed their studies until the bitter end. Even with such selection, few people do successful career. You need connections and money. But if you can “shot” in pop music if you have only these two components, in classical music you can’t do without education. Sometimes in the conservatory, with a half-empty hall, there are concerts that could cost millions, they are so brilliant. But turning them into a product that people will buy is not always possible, because understanding classical music is accessible to few. And often talented musicians seem to be out of this world; they are simply not perceived as stars. And well-packaged banality sells well because it looks appropriate. What is glamor? This cheap product, expensively served. My musicians and I were lucky to study music at the end of the Soviet system. This was the time of unmercenary teachers who invested their souls in their students. And we studied with the same enthusiasm. "Gnesinka", where I entered after graduating from the choir school - Graduate School Music. In this Temple of the Muses, I was made a conductor - a seasoned musician, capable of elevating and leading people. I absorbed musical science like a sponge, for the time being not burdening myself with thoughts about my daily bread. But quite early - at twenty-one - the time came, I fell in love and got married.
Lena had an upturned nose, an open smile and bottomless eyes. A real Russian beauty. We met at Gnesinka, she combined her studies with work - she sang in Minin’s choir. We had a lot in common, we learned the basics of music together, went to concerts, plays and an ice skating rink. Both loved nature. I became her first man. At twenty-two, Natasha was born to us. It was probably a little early, but we were happy. Against the wishes of the parents. Both believed that we were of different breeds. They did not create any obstacles, but from individual remarks it was easy to guess: the relatives were not happy.
“I would like my daughter to marry a man of her own nationality,” her father told my mother before the wedding.
My mother dreamed of seeing me next to a Jewish girl. After all, fifty generations of my ancestors married only their own.
Well, so what? Love erases all differences. My father-in-law realized this over time. He was a real Russian officer, deeply decent and smart person. He and Lena had an amazing relationship. Like one soul for two. And they were very similar in character - absolute restraint and extreme kindness. Lena loved me devotedly and never demanded anything, but I had to prove to myself and others that I could not be a boy, but a husband and breadwinner.
How could I earn money? Private transportation. I’ve had my license since I was nineteen, I even went in for motorsports. I somehow managed to find time between music classes. I took part in the rally once and came sixteenth from the end. But the main thing is participation! I sold all my valuables, including a leather jacket and a radio, borrowed more from my brother and bought a used Zhiguli model eleven. Since then, every Saturday evening and beyond, I went to work. Everything happened: they took away my earnings for the evening, asked me to get out of the car, and didn’t pay, but thank the Creator, there were no serious consequences for my health.
By the end of my fifth year, I was working in four places at the same time. In a large supermarket in Strogino he was a “night director,” that is, a loader. I received five or six cars a night: three with bread, two with dairy products and sometimes sausage. The sausage was the worst blow, because I had to turn all one and a half to two tons with my own hands, weigh it, and also make sure that the driver and the forwarder didn’t steal a couple of loaves. But the word “deficit”, under the slogan of which the perestroika country lived, did not exist for me. When I rushed from Strogino to the center after a night shift to teach music to children, the traffic cops on the highway saluted me: once every two months I brought them a box of buckwheat and tea to the department. I made various connections and acquaintances. I was in in perfect order, but the soul still thirsted for music and creativity.
Finally I found something to please her. In parallel with the store and teaching, he began working with an Orthodox church choir and at the same time with a political song ensemble. After some time, I became convinced that I had not made a mistake with my profession. And working with the actors of the School of Musical Art theater under the direction of Yuri Sherling, I realized that I could teach anyone to sing. I will bring even a non-singing ballerina to the level of pop performance.
I don’t know how long our marriage with Lena would have lasted. Today it’s hard for me to talk about this, because so many years have passed. I only know that our feelings were sincere and real. It is believed that early unions do not stand the test of time. But it is not destined to know whether this would be true in our case...
In August 1989, together with my friend and teacher Vladimir Anufrievich Semenyuk, I went by car to Klaipeda to visit his graduate student, a Lithuanian. Talks about music, trips to Palanga, sun, sea and sand. In all respects it was a pleasant trip. One day, despite the late hour, I couldn’t fall asleep, although at twenty-seven I didn’t know what insomnia was. At half past two in the morning the doorbell rang. Telegram. “Call urgently. Sasha,” wrote the older brother. “Is there something wrong with mom or dad?” — I thought frantically. In 1989, there was no place to call Moscow from Klaipeda at night. Semenyuk and I drove to the city center and found ourselves in front of the locked doors of the telephone booth. I didn’t find a place for myself until half past seven. And when I was finally able to dial phone number, I heard my mother’s voice on the phone. “So she’s okay,” was the first thing I thought.
“Control yourself,” said mom. - They all died.
I did not get anything.
- Who is everyone, mom?
— Lena, her father and brother.
I hung up the phone, went out into the street on weak legs and, having reached the lawn, collapsed into the grass. The teacher ran up to me.
“Vladimir Anufrievich, give me a cigarette,” I asked. “Something is burning inside.”
- What happened, Misha?
I couldn’t answer, I jumped up and ran to call again. Mom, who survived the death of all her relatives, dictated in a calm, even voice: “Seventy-first kilometer from Minsk, police station number...”
Lena, her father and brother went to Vilnius for a relative’s birthday. Lena's father, a neat and pedant, never broke the rules traffic. It will not take the car out of the garage if the turn signal does not work. He did not trust the steering wheel even to his son, who had just returned from the army, where he served as a driver. Nobody knows what happened to my father-in-law, but on the way back to Moscow, his car flew into oncoming traffic. The Ikarus driving along it began to go into a ditch, but the Zhiguli caught up with the bus and, having hit, flew into its lane, where they were crushed under a heavy ZIL.
All the way to the accident site I thought: “This is a mistake. It can not be so. It's not them." Finally we arrived. Some guy on a tractor showed me the exact location of the incident. “I’ve been driving for twenty-five years, but this terrible disaster I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. - This is where it was...
And I realized that I had hoped in vain. On the side of the road lay a crumpled green souvenir horseshoe. My “foreign” gift to my father-in-law.
In the near future locality I bought a bottle of vodka, all the flowers I had,
and returned to the scene of the tragedy. The teacher and I had a drink. We smoked. We sat in some kind of coma, and then I called the police department. “Come for the corpses and take the car,” they told me.
I will never forget long haul home. A truck with three coffins was walking ahead, and I was driving behind it. It was somehow impossible to overtake...
I was scared to see my mother-in-law. A woman who lost her children and husband in an instant. During these couple of days my face became the color of asphalt. What can we say about her? But the mother-in-law sat surrounded by her friends and behaved well - she was pumped full of tranquilizers.
How intelligent person, she was silent, but I knew what my mother-in-law was thinking: “You are alive, but Lena is not.” I could go with my wife or invite her to Klaipeda. But he didn’t do anything fateful that would change the fateful route.
After some time, my mother-in-law began to persistently suggest that I give up Natasha and get guardianship for her. Her relatives came to me:
- Why do you need a child? You are still young.
“With all due respect, I can’t,” I replied. — Jews do not abandon their children.
I wanted to take the girl into my apartment, entrusting her to the care of my mother, but then I realized that separation from my granddaughter would finish off my mother-in-law, distraught with grief.
Photo: from the archive of M. Turetsky
At this moment I was in dire need of help. And this help came to me from above. I was offered to create a choir of Jewish sacred music in Moscow. It was a salvation. The music of my ancestors - an ancient powerful art - gave me the strength to live.
In eighteen months we made a program that we performed in England, France, Israel, America, and Canada. The choir was financed by the Jewish charitable foundation "Joint". When they realized that the leader of the team is an individual, is not ready for stupid submission and wants to go to large concert venues, they lost the desire to support us. And since 1992, the choir and I were left without support. It was very difficult task— promote the “Jewish Choir” brand in Russia. It seemed to everyone that we were singing only for Jews. I wanted to prove that this is not so. But it didn't work out very well. We had no money, no advertising. One naked enthusiasm.
It was difficult for us to make our way to America, because it was the only place at that moment where we could make money. Eventually, things started to work out. New friends helped, who saw us as a fantastically talented project. And although there were few performances - mostly on weekends, we were recognized by critics and professional musicians. Relationships in the team were also difficult. I remember in 1993, after ten days of aimlessly living in a Brooklyn apartment while waiting for work in California, a revolution almost happened in our team. Eight out of sixteen people signed an ultimatum: they say, we don’t understand why we need California, we don’t believe that they will pay us, we refuse to go. The situation had to be resolved in the twenty-eight hours it took to travel by bus from New York to Miami. I made a speech: “I won’t let the project fall apart!” Then he summoned the conspirators one by one: “You, Alexey, are fired. Vladimir, if you want to leave and then come back, please. You, Leonid, how much money do you want to stay?” In general, I bribed four members of the team, released two, fired two - and the opposition was crushed. Oh, I knew the psychology of Soviet people well. I'm like that myself.
In 1994, I was advised to apply for financial support at Logovaz. I called, and Berezovsky arrived at the synagogue where we were rehearsing and said: “You have twenty-five minutes.” We sang to him in beautiful voices. “I give five thousand dollars a month,” Boris Abramovich promised. We divided this money among twenty people, receiving a good increase in salary for a year. Then things turned sour. Berezovsky left, his assistants said: “In order to continue helping you, Borya must love you, and we have money in our account. Borya loves you, but there is no money.”
Gusinsky, who headed the Russian Jewish Congress in those years, also loved us at one time and even supported us. I always thanked both Gusinsky and Berezovsky very much during concerts, until my senior friend, the famous artist Gennady Khazanov, after a show at the Variety Theater said: “Mish, why do you bow to them all the time? Did they build you a house in Spain? Gusinsky succinctly helped you only so that he would be supported by the Jewish lobby in America.” In 1995, we turned to Aizenshpis. He said: “I need one and a half million dollars from Logovaz, and the country will fall asleep and wake up thinking about the Jewish choir.” But LogoVAZ had already ended at that time. There was nowhere to get one and a half million, and at the end of the year I divided the choir into two parts. One stayed in Moscow, the other went with me on a contract to Miami. I could take it with me beautiful girl, but went with an elderly mother and daughter. My mother-in-law was terribly afraid that I might not return, so I carefully prepared my granddaughter, who was then eleven years old: in case I suddenly decided to stay overseas, Natasha had to stand on her hind legs and declare: “I want to go to my grandmother in Russia!” But she didn't do it, although sometimes it was really difficult for her. The daughter studied at an institution for wealthy children. The school bus took home first those who were richer, then the middle ones, and she was the last. At that time I had neither the reputation nor respect that I have today, and Natasha was looked at as an emigrant from a poor family.
Only my mother felt quite comfortable, she even had a platonic affair with the owner of the cafe, Mr. Nevel, thanks to whom she remembered Yiddish. They rattled on all evening, hoping that I didn’t understand anything. Dad arrived later and decided that Mom, at seventy-three, could not be disturbed. He didn't like America much. “There is no Bolshoi Theater, I have nothing to do here. “I’m delighted with New York City, but I won’t pull my cap off my head. The Soviets have their own pride: they look down on the bourgeoisie,” he recited Mayakovsky and four months later returned to his homeland.
But I never wanted to go to America forever. I respect Western values, but even more - the Bolshoi Theater, the skating rink, the summer sky over Moscow at five in the morning. I wanted to live in my homeland. And I decided to try my luck one last time. If I don’t receive support, I will say goodbye to the idea of a Jewish choir in Russia forever. Overseas, things finally started to work out for us. We shocked the local public so much that the Miami authorities issued a proclamation declaring February 6th “Moscow Choir Day.”
This time I began to attack the office of Joseph Davydovich Kobzon. Made one and a half thousand calls, no less. I bought cards and called Russia from a payphone. Maybe I knocked louder than others, but as a result Kobzon heard me. And he took us on his anniversary tour of Russia and the CIS, which became a kind of breakthrough for the team.
After a couple of years, I decided to change our odious non-profit name “Jewish Choir”. In addition, we felt cramped within the colossal, powerful, but only Jewish music - after all, this is only a part of world musical culture. The choir participants are mostly Russian, the spectators are people different nationalities. Why not perform other music, such as classical, folk, jazz, rock? This is how the “Mikhail Turetsky Choir” was born.
Joseph Davydovich did not approve of such changes, he swore, believing that I was betraying my roots. I think accusing me of cheating is unfair. The choir carried its name in a more difficult time, when even the Jews themselves were in no hurry to invite us to their performances.
So, it was 2001, and I toured America with my band. After some time, my daughter Natasha, who lived with me in the States, was returned to her grandmother. My mother-in-law finally appreciated me. Since then we have lived in peace. True, I never held a grudge against her, I understand her: future son-in-law He hasn’t done anything bad to me yet, but I don’t love him anymore.
Mikhail Turetsky with his mother-in-law and daughter
For twelve years I was single. I couldn’t imagine that I would bring “someone else’s aunt” into the house and tell Natasha: “This is our new mother.” Some girls made attempts to make a husband out of me. Then I went to the Chief Rabbi of Russia Adolf Solomonovich Shaevich and said:
- What to do? I was pushed against the wall.
“If you can’t get married, don’t get married,” he answered.
I could, because my career, the formation of the choir and obligations to myself and the team seemed much more important than novels. Until I met Liana. I remember the feeling of shock when I looked into her huge green eyes. “Two waves remained in your eyes so that I could drown, plunging into them...”
We met after a concert in Dallas. Liana's father was one of the organizers of our performances. On October thirty-first, Halloween was celebrated in America, and Liana wanted to spend this festive evening with the child, but she could not offend the father, who insisted that her daughter listen to the Jewish choir from Russia. As an intelligent person, Liana came backstage to thank the musicians for the concert. Marta Klioner, our impresario in the States in those years, saw her with her daughter and asked where her husband was.
Mikhail Turetsky with his wife and her daughter Sarina
- My husband ate too many pears! — my future wife answered.
- So we have so many boys in our team, I’ll introduce you! - Martha intercepted Liana and took her to meet the artists.
We ran into each other in the corridor - a beautiful, flashy girl and next to her a little curly-haired angel, her daughter Sarina. As an artist who spent a month on tour, Liana’s appearance—her high heels and exposed belly—made an indelible impression on me. We started talking. I wanted to tell her a few non-trivial compliments. I suggested that we all go to a restaurant together and have coffee. Three cocktails increased the concentration of romance in my body. And I said to Liana: “Let’s go to you.” I already knew by that time that she was an independent girl, living separately from her parents in a two-story house. She resisted, but I showed slight persistence. We went to Liana and talked with her until the morning. I offered to go on a tour with us, to which Liana feigned inaccessibility and called a taxi to take me to the hotel. This is how our acquaintance began.
The team moved on to Houston. Already in the next city, Chicago, I felt that I wanted to call this girl. I dialed her number after the performance, and we again talked all night. It cost me a fee for two concerts. But some life values and positions have already been determined. I invited Liana to come to us for the central concert of the tour at Carnegie Hall in New York, but she culturally refused, citing the fact that she could not leave work and leave the child for a long time. After Carnegie Hall, I came to see her in Dallas myself. The next day, when Liana was picking Sarina up from kindergarten, the teacher called her aside: “Do you know what your daughter said? She said that the uncle from the concert is now sleeping at your house!”
It was time to decide on my feelings. Mom always missed the extended family she lost in Belarus. On that visit, I visited all of Liana’s relatives and realized that my mother would approve of this option. Family and relationships are the same as in a Belarusian town, only at a high American level.
At first Liana refused to leave her big friendly family, okay
paid work as a programmer and move to Moscow before I posed the question harshly. Her relatives were not happy with our plans. Grandfather, as an experienced person, said that an artist is a gypsy, which is bad for family life. And when I came to Liana’s parents to ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage, her dad warned that she had a very difficult character. But she and I are naughty people. And yet they convinced their parents. Then problems arose with the removal of Sarina. I adopted her and moved her to Russia.
My team and I went our own way in a special way, bypassing the chain “producer-TV-public-box office”. They got into show business with one foot, stayed in art with the other, and with that they came to concert venues. For some time, however, I was still trying to find a producer. In 2003, I came to Joseph Prigogine, he listened to the track for about forty seconds and began to wag his foot, look at his phone, and hint: I was wasting my time.
“Iosik, you overlooked me! - now I tell him. “I wish I could “mow it” now!”
Today he talks to me for forty minutes on the phone and doesn’t mind his time. “Perhaps it would be better if you came to visit?” - I suggest.
The choir chose its own musical policy - we did not limit ourselves exclusively to classical music. There are also pop, rock, jazz and musicals. Only classics are like formal trousers in the wardrobe, beautiful, expensive, but alone. But you can change into something more democratic. Or combine it, as they began to do in Hollywood, by wearing a tuxedo with jeans and sneakers. Today, musical fusion is winning - a mixture of styles, when you can offer people different sensations in a unit of time. I will be grateful to the one who will shorten the divine lengths in Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and fit four volumes of the novel into five hundred pages so that modern children can master it. I apply similar abbreviations to classical music. After all, it’s not easy to perceive it. You need to tune in, open your soul. Many people have the desire, but no time. I can introduce the listener to Verdi in ten minutes, seasoning the music with the enzyme of pop rock for easier perception. As a result, Verdi sounds like Queen. And this is not a parody. Not banter, not popular speech, just a different, modern interpretation. Musical critic can call me an upstart who takes the easiest and most accessible things to understand, thus earning money. But if I were him, I would say thank you to Turetsky, an agitator and promoter of good music.
Group "Soprano"
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