Alexander Grechaninov. Three lives

This film was created in the memory of my ancestor, the composer Alexander Grechaninov, who was underservedly forgotten in his homeland.
In 2024, the 160th anniversary of the birth of the Russian composer A.T. Grechaninov will be celebrated.
Alexander Tikhonovich was born in Moscow in 1864, left for Paris in 1925, and since 1939 lived in New York, where he ended his life in 1956 and was buried there.
The list with the title "Russian Music in Exile" is huge – Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Grechaninov, Medtner, Lyapunov, Lopatnikov, Visegradsky, Cherepnii and other brilliant names. Many were unlucky - they could not create far from their homeland. Grechaninov was among the lucky few.
"Some Russian writers abroad complain," he wrote in one of his letters, "that, being cut off from their native soil, they cannot create. I didn't have that. Conversely. I have worked here a lot and in my compositions written here, it seems that my Russian nature is even more felt than in the previous ones written at home...
During my stay abroad, I have written a lot of both large and small works. Of the major ones, I will name two symphonies, a new trio (the second) and several sonatas; a large mass ("Universal") for four soloists, an organ choir and an orchestra lasting 50 minutes, and besides four more Catholic masses and a lot of choirs, spiritual and secular."
Let's add that at the age of 80, Grechaninov wrote the opera "Marriage" by Gogol in America. And his entire creative legacy consists of more than 1,000 works: operas, symphonies, spiritual works, plays for children, romances, etc.
However, despite the fact that he was recognized by the Grechanins in America and his anniversaries were celebrated at Carnegie Hall, his work began to be discovered in his homeland only in recent decades. Even I, his second cousin grandson, who studied at a music school based on the notes of Alexander Tikhonovich, for a long time believed that Grechaninov was the author of exclusively children's albums.
It is precisely the theme of the composer's return to his homeland that our film is dedicated to, which is called "The Return of the Holy Week". In honor of probably Grechaninov's most famous spiritual work.
Many famous musicians, historians, musicologists, students of children's music schools, including the A.T. Grechaninov School (No. 28), which has been hosting annual Grechaninov festivals for 25 years, took part in the creation of the film.
The first version of the film was prepared for the 140th anniversary of the composer and published on DVD, then it was finalized and supplemented, so that the final date can be considered 2022.