The following edition is the first attempt to present a clear picture of the vocal chamber works by St. Petersburg composer German Grigorievich Okunev (1931-1973). With few exceptions, they are largely unknown to musical audiences.
According to Galina Sergeyevna Okuneva, the composer’s widow, her husband did not place vocal chamber music high on his list of compositional priorities. However, performances of these works and research provide evidence of their high artistic value, which enriched the body of mid-to-late twentieth century vocal chamber music as well as the composer’s heritage. Performers of G. Okunev’s vocal compositions concur with this statement, specifically his student Vladislav Pashinsky, a soloist with the Bolshoi Theatre, Eleanor Lyons from the Manchester Opera, and others. The study of G. Okunev’s artistic development also reveals that vocal chamber music was a vital influence in his creative life. His earliest compositions, written while he was a child during the Great Patriotic War in besieged Leningrad, feature several settings of patriotic verses by Soviet poets B. A. Kezhun, V. A. Rozhdestvensky, M. V. Isakovsky, and V. I. Lebedev-Kumach. These songs enjoyed performances in the struggling city, and the young composer received the medal ''For the Defense of Leningrad.'' Each period of the composer’s short and vivid life contributed to the development of the genre. His last vocal pieces, two children’s songs with lyrics by B. Kozlov, date to 1969.
The final list of his compositions, which German Okunev compiled shortly before his death in 1973, is of particular evidence of the high standard he set for himself and his works as the list appeared to be one opus shorter than the earlier version from 1968. Therefore, the final list featured 39 works instead of the previously listed 40. Despite the composer’s productivity, much of what he had regarded favorably at first, he later ruthlessly and sometimes arbitrarily struck off the list.<br