Beginning of The Game
Even now the symphony concert of Yevhen Stankovych, marking the occasion of the composer’s 60th anniversary and serving as the prologue of the Thirteenth Kyiv Music Fest International Festival, can be described as one of the focal events of the new theatrical season.
Stankovych (The Day carried an interview with him on the eve of his jubilee) occupies an exclusive place in Kyiv, rich as it is in composer talents. It is not time or place to list his kudos or quote from his service record. I will only note that, after confidently embarking on his career and becoming a leader in the national symphony realm in the 1970s, he has constantly and indefatigably sought to bestow on the world as much excellent music as he could create. There is nothing second-rate or of minor importance about what he does. The grand architecture of his four symphonies dating from the 1970s, the intense dramatics of Holodomor, the epic fantasia- style folk opera The Flower of the Fern, the subtle chamber symphonies, the overwhelming fresco of the Kaddish Requiem, spectacular ballets and concerts, numerous chamber and choral pieces, each being the only one of its kind, form the main points in the composer’s messages after which anything spoken using plain words seems totally worthless.
That evening, the jubilee concert at the National Opera boasted Ukraine’s top performers. The National Meritorious Academic Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (chief conductor Volodymyr Sirenko) played with topnotch soloists: Russian-Finnish violinist Eduard Ilchevsky and Danish alto- player Daniel Raiskin. The program consisted of well-selected pieces adequately representing the composer’s various creative stages, regarded at different, often quite unexpected angles. The only hitch was the mercilessly drawn-out official pomp at the beginning, kept in the best kulturtregger tradition, with prolonged applause addressed not to the celebrity but to ranking bureaucrats that deigned to attend the event to convey their greetings (some appearing in what Mykola Zhulynsky would describe as a dubious double-faced Janus capacity, even though he read out the diploma on behalf of all three that were not in attendance). Fortunately, the bureaucratic prologue ended after more than half an hour (!).
The first part of the concert included Stankovych’s early Pastoral Symphony for violin and orchestra (1980) and the second one featured the Alto Concerto and the Suite from the ballet Christmas Eve. Emotional fluctuations, from pastoral, cloudless to dramatic moods (in the Symphony), the paradoxical concerto composition, the rhythmic puzzle of the kazachok dance, the poetic adagio in the Suite – all were handled by Sirenko’s orchestra and soloists with a flawless mastery.
The concert, as has been mentioned, started the Kyiv Music Fest 2002 ten-day marathon. This year its program is rich in premieres and new names, which is the best way to commemorate the late founder and invariable director of the festival Ivan Karabyts (he passed away at beginning of the year). Among the participants are sizable delegations of musicians and composers from Norway, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and the United States. More than 60 premieres of modern and classical compositions will take place during the festival’s ten days. Those keen on antiquity will certainly appreciate the very first rendition of Carl Philip Emanuel Bach’s Passions according to St. John, just as the All Sonatas of Aleksandr Skriabin piano cycle, to be performed by Michigan University Prof. Arthur Green, and the concert of piano music “From Tonality to Serialism” will gather sizable audiences. The Ukrainian musician Yevhen Hromov will play pieces by the fathers of the “new Vienna school” Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, never before performed in Ukraine, and rare later compositions by Richard Wagner.
The Ukrainian composers’ contribution will be rather tangible. In the first place, notice should be made of the premieres of Valentyn Sylvestrov’s Waltz of Moments and Yevhen Stankovych’s Humble Pastoral. In fact, the National Philharmonic Society and Music Academy will feature new works by composers of all generations. Poleva will present her beautiful piece Blossom with William Blake’s lyrics. The indefatigable experimenter Serhiy Zazhytko is very likely to embarrass the adherents of academic performance with his Phallocycle sextet. The program includes Lesia Dychko’s monumental Swiss Frescoes for a reciter, choir, organ, and percussion; new compositions will be presented by Yulia Homelska, Serhiy Pyliutikov, Sviatoslav Lunev, Bohdan Filts, Levko Kolodub, and Volodymyr Huba.
In a word, the new age is beginning on Kyiv stage as one of music, the age of Stankovych and Sylvestrov.
Probably this age is not the worst of the times.
