Valentin Gaft and Sainkho Namtchylak in “Love On The Short Waves”

Igor Pomerantzev, radio “Liberty”: “From the time that I discovered the language of radio, I have been working mostly wit it, and not with events, themes, and people. I have the greatest feeling of freedom in the genre of radio play. It is a worthy, dignified genre. Internationally famous playwrights and writers of many countries work in it. Their radio plays are willingly published by literary journals and publishing houses. But the last provokes some doubts in me.

If the language of the radio is inimitable, then why it is possible to read the plays, which were written for the ether, with pleasure in a book? Why, then, radio? Once I managed to write a play that is impossible, and also unnecessary, to publish. It exists only in the ether. The name of the play is “Love On The Short Waves”.

It was first aired in 1995. There are two protagonists in the play: a radio-archivist and his colleague, a female journalist. They are played by Valentin Gaft and the Tuvan singer Sainkho Namtchylak.

I recorded Valentin Gaft in the Moscow studio of “Svoboda”. During the recording, he bravely fought with a cold, and defeated it. Sainkho, at my request, sent four variants recorded on a cassette from Vienna. That is the kind of role I created for her.

But the main thing, and I am truly proud of it to this day, is that “Love On Short Waves” is really a radio play, with the accent on “radio”. It can exist only in the medium of air.”