page_title: Yuri Khanon
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Yuri Khanon / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Балетмейстер Алексей Ратманский, его жена Татьяна и композитор Юрий Ханон на премьере балета "Средний Дуэт" (сцена Мариинского театра, Санкт-Петербург, 24 ноября 1998 года)
context_page_description: Yuri Khanon is a pen name of Yuri Feliksovich Soloviev-Savoyarov, a Russian composer. Prior to 1993, he wrote under a pen name Yuri Khanin, but later transformed it into Yuri Khanon, spelling it in a pre-1918 Russian style as ХанонЪ. Khanon was born on June 16, 1965 in Leningrad. In 1988 he became a laureate of the European Film Awards, and in 1989 he won "Nika", a Russian cinematographic award. Due to his numerous concerts throughout Russia as well as to TV and cinema appearances Khanon reached the peak of his popularity in 1988–1992, but in 1993 decided to stop performing in public.
context_section_description: In 1988, in spite of an opposition of his old-fashioned professors, Yuri Khanon managed to graduate from the Leningrad Conservatory, specializing in composition. He named Erik Satie and Alexander Skryabin as his teachers and predecessors, worshipping their ideology and originality.‹See TfM›
  Yuri Khanon is not  just a composer; he is also a writer, a philosopher, a painter, a studio pianist, and a botanist-selectionist. Khanon is author of libretto and texts of almost all his works. His grandfather was Mikhail Savoyarov, a comic actor and composer, who was very famous in St.Petersburg (Petrograd) on the eve of  the Revolution of 1917.
  Khanon became famous in 1988–1991. During this period he composed soundtracks to three films, gave numerous concerts, had several appearances on TV and published a series of articles and interviews. Many of his performances yielded public scandals, especially his concerts "Music of Dogs" (Moscow, December 1988) and "Dried Embryos", where he performed with Erik Satie (Leningrad, May 1991). In 1992 produced CD "Olympia" (England), symphonic works of Khanon (as a Yuri Khanin): "Five smallest orgasms", "A Certain Concert for piano and orchestra" and "Middle Symphony". 
  "Five Smallest orgasms, oc.29 (1986) were written as a direct response to Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. A "Certain Concerto" for piano & orchestra, oc.31 (1987) was written in the genre of "false concerto", concerto/deception, where the listener is constantly deceived, having his/her expectations crowned with emptiness. The theme of deception is one of the main features of Khanin’s creations. "Middle Symphony", oc.40 (1990), with a text by the composer, is a large, quite extraordinary work with a rather unnatural and affected structure. It ends with a canon in which the three singers sing the same text backwards for 81 bars. The text is very abstruse, in fact almost absurd; it becomes necessary to overturn one’s impression of the whole symphony just listened to… Does this discussion exhaust the subject of this disc? I don’t know – I doubt it".
  After 1992 Khanon ceased his public and TV appearances, as well as interviews and concerts, and stopped publishing his music works. Instead he decided, in his own words, "...to work and live in his own company ". Khanon never participated in any professional organizations and is notable for his independent ideas and reclusive way of  life. 
  "... Beyond all doubts, Yuri Khanon came into the history of music as "the most closed and enigmatic composer". He was 23 when he won fame in Europe and made a sensation in Russia, but, after only three years of performing in public he stopped any public appearances contrary to the standards of a composer’s career. Metaphorically speaking, he  stormed out and started a life of a recluse, thus having declared: "I’m done! You’d better think I exist no more!" And we, his contemporaries, have nothing  to respond"... 
  — prof. V.Tikhonov, "White Mask Empire" (Khangёre Simnun, Seoul, 2003).
  Among Khanon's works for theatre the most famous is "The Middle Duo"  ballet (the first part of his "Middle Symphony"), put on the stage in Mariinsky theatre in 1998  and short-listed for the Golden Mask  Theatre Award in 2000, then put on the stage in Bolshoy Theatre  and in New York City Ballet theatre in 2006. As a concert number "The Middle Duo" is performed around the world by almost all soloists of Russian ballet, though for 10 years Khanon's music has been used without his permission.
  From the very beginning of his career Khanon deliberately evaded calling himself a composer, a writer, or an artist.  Creative work is the least important for him, because, according to his ideas, there's more than enough composers and artists in our world. "It’s impossible to walk down the street without bumping into just another writer or composer," – Khanon ironically wrote in one of his articles in 1993. He viewed his main mission not in creating works of art, but in promotion of certain concepts put to life by the means of art.
  "...Yuri Khanon is a doctrinaire and an adherent of canons
caption: Alexei Ratmansky & Yuri Khanon, «The Middle Duo», Mariinsky theatre, 24 nov 1998
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