The concert in which N. Chepraga, M. Ivanush and — a beginner then — A.
Lazariuk performed Ye. Doga's songs came to an end. Then there were flowers,
asking for authographs, and Doga, his face helpless and naive, was standing
among this tumult. He was being shot for TV, congratulated by his famous colleagues,
who were telling him something kind and reassuring, touching him by the elbow.
Doga was beginning to be appraised for his ownness, to be assumed as himself.
His way to music was not a traditional one: there was no old 'Bekker'
piano, no parental insistent guidance and innumerable scales, rubbing away
tender fingers of the child. There were no musical celebrities in framed
portraits and their names did not form the background of his childhood. But
music, nevertheless, did find its way through an early orphanhood, the war and
poverty. It lived in the self-made — out of a waste sieve — mandoline, it lived
in the village weddings drum beating, in the headphones of the also self-made
radio set. The world was full of music for the boy, and his mother was the
first to understand it: 'Go and study, if you are so keen on it...' She could
give him for the way but a pair of trousers, altered from his father's old
ones. And if you wonder today where his infinite perseverance, obstinacy and
expectation are from, they are surely from his childhood. It may seem strange,
but a gifted person is not weakened by hardships, he only gets stronger in
overcoming them. And everything gained without effort often becomes ruinous for
one's love of life and one's striving after going forward.
At school and later at conservatoire Doga had teachers whom he tenderly
loved and whom he has been always grateful to. He became a musical school
teacher himself, but a certain feeling of discontent was inciting him to change
his life. Later he was an accompanist in the Moldavian TV and Radio orchestra.
His colleagues recollect that during the rehearsal intervals when all the rest
were playing chess or merely chattering the time away, Doga would not leave the
piano and was wholly engrossed in playing some musical bits. And it was obvious
for everyone that he was a composer and not merely a performer of somebody
else's music.
After rehearsals Doga usually mounted his motor scooter and rushed along
old Kishinev streets, all green with curly grape vines. A constant want of
speed, of acceleration in everything was the most urgent with him.
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