A dombra player in the Kurmangazy Orchestra
Kenzhebek Kumysbekov was a dombra player before he was a composer. In the 1950s he played in the Kurmangazy Orchestra — Kazakhstan’s state orchestra of folk instruments, named after the nineteenth-century dombra player and composer. There he began arranging traditional kui for orchestra, and from there he returned to the conservatory, now to study composition. This is how Chingiz Maiseyit describes the turn.
Decades passed between the dombra in that orchestra and the orchestra that recorded his song. Throughout them, other hands carried Kumysbekov’s music — qobyz, piano, voice.
Qalqama opens the record
Kenzhebek Kumysbekov’s Qalqama is the first track on a record released by Melodiya in 1966. Two musicians perform: Gulnafiz Bayazitova on qobyz, the ancient Kazakh bowed instrument with horsehair strings, and Maria Smitrovich on piano.
On the same record, Qalqama is followed by works by Sydyk Mukhamedzhanov, Kuddus Kuzhamyarov and K. Baibulatov. The entire release belongs to Bayazitova’s qobyz, and Kumysbekov opens it. Melodiya was the state record label of the USSR; its pressings circulated across the country, and appearing on one of its records meant being heard far beyond the walls of a concert hall.
Seventeen years later, the qobyz would return to Kumysbekov’s music — and bring the piano with it again.
Concert Piece: qobyz and piano again
On a record released in 1983, this pairing came together for a second time: Kamash Namazova and Askhan Nurbayeva performed the seven-minute Concert Piece for Qobyz and Piano on side two. It appears beside an art song by Latif Khamidi and Flower of Youth by Malgazhdar Aubakirov.
The hands had changed: in 1966 Bayazitova held the qobyz; now it was Namazova. The pairing had not, and the label names it twice, in Kazakh and Russian: Qobyz ben fortepianogha arnalghan konserttik piyesa, Concert Piece for Qobyz and Piano. The composition was written directly for this pair.
A singer’s voice and the Kurmangazy Orchestra
In 1990 Gafiz Yesimov recorded Kumysbekov’s song My Native Land, set to words by T. Moldagaliyev, with the Kurmangazy Orchestra conducted by Shamgon Kazhgaliyev. This was the very orchestra in which the composer had once played dombra.
A year later, in 1991, Melodiya released the recording on Yesimov’s own album: twelve tracks in which folk songs stand beside arias from the operas Abai, Makhambet and Alpamys. Kumysbekov’s song is the sixth.
Dombra and score
A quarter-century separates Qalqama from My Native Land. Across these records, Kumysbekov’s music was played and sung by two qobyz players, two pianists, a singer and a conductor with a folk instruments orchestra — from a chamber duet to a full ensemble.
And in that orchestra there had once sat a dombra player arranging traditional kui for its musicians. In 1990 the orchestra played his own song.