Ukrainian pianist, organist, conductor, composer, teacher in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine. Together with Istvan Marton, he was the founder of the Transcarpathian school of composition.
Honored Artist of Ukraine.
Biography.
His parents were Zador's first music teachers. His mother was a teacher, choral singer, violinist, and his father was an organist and church choir cantor. In Uzhhorod, he played the organ during church services, gave his first solo piano concerts, and presented his children's compositional attempts to the public.
Zador Desiderii Yevhenovych.jpg
Zador took piano lessons from a private teacher, Zygmond Lendel. He graduated from the Prague Conservatory (1932-1934) with honors in three faculties: organ, conducting, and piano. He attended lectures on composition by V. Novák and J. Krzychka, and lectures by Z. Nějedla at Charles University.
In 1934-1936 he performed as a performing pianist, in 1936-1938 he took a postgraduate course in composition and musicology in Prague, at the same time he was a musical adviser from Subcarpathian Rus at the Ministry of Education, and from 1938 he worked as a teacher in Subcarpathian Rus (Czechoslovakia).
As a conductor, he began studying Transcarpathian musical folklore, organized folklore expeditions, during which he recorded more than 300 folk songs, kolomyikas, carols, and ritual songs. As a result, some of them were published in the collection Folk Songs of the Subcarpathian Rusyns (Ungvar, 1944).
Zador wrote a theoretical work "Kolomyika in the Ruthenian Folk Art".
The Hungarian period of his work
As a performer, he repeatedly performed in prestigious music programs of the Budapest Academy of Music, Budapest and Kosice radio.
In 1943, Zador was invited to teach piano at the Kolozsvár Conservatory. He was mobilized into the Hungarian army. Czechoslovakian repatriation authorities sent him to Uzhhorod. Here he became the organizer and later the director of a music school.
Period of work in the USSR
After the annexation of Transcarpathia by the USSR, he was accepted into the Union of Composers, and in 1947-1950 he was a conductor and soloist of the Uzhhorod Symphony Orchestra.
In 1948-1949, he suffered from the campaign of "struggle against cosmopolitanism". He was dismissed from the post of the school he created, and the journalist V. Khomenko was appointed in his place.
In 1954-1963, he was the artistic director of the Philharmonic in Uzhhorod, and in 1963-1985 he was a professor at the Lviv Conservatory.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Desiderii Zador's birth, the Uzhhorod State Music College was named after him. A classroom museum was also opened in memory of the school's first director.
Musical works
Symphonic work, cantata "Carpathians" (1959), symphonic poems "Verkhovyna" (1971), "Carpathian Rhapsody" (1974), piano pieces "Transcarpathian Sketches", "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra", choruses, romances, songs, arrangements of folk songs "I'll put, I'll Put a Badge on the Window", "Oh, the Violets Blossomed", arrangements of folk songs for voice and piano - "Ivan Went to the Meadow to Mow", "Ballad of Dovbush", "There is Game Among the Village", "Legionnaires", "Hey, Ivan", "We Cut the Finger", "It Will Rain", music for theater productions.
Since 1954, Zador's arrangement of the Transcarpathian folk song "Verkhovyna, our world..." has been gaining nationwide popularity, becoming known to almost all Ukrainians.
He brought up several generations of students: performers, composers, conductors, musicologists.
Together with I. Marton, he is the founder of the Transcarpathian school of composition. His role is comparable to the role of Bedřich Smetana for Czech music, Ferenc Liszt for Hungarian music, and Stanislav Liudkevych for Western Ukrainian professional music.
Personal life
D. Zador's grave in Uzhhorod
He was buried at the request of the deceased in Uzhhorod. On September 23, 2006, his wife, Magdalyna, was buried near Zador's grave.
