“It is up to us to take care of ourselves”

Kyiv-born Kyrylo Karabyts [internationally known as Kirill Karabits. – Ed.] (39) has often said that a considerable part of his life is spent in trains and plains. The Ukrainian maestro leads three top-notch collectives: the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (one of Britain’s oldest), the experimental I, CULTURE Orchestra (dubbed “the EU’s music team”), and since recently, the Deutsches Nationaltheater and the Staatskapelle Weimar (Germany). His appointment calendar is full with a tour in Japan, performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg. However, despite his extraordinarily busy schedule, Karabyts finds the time for projects in Ukraine. Last year it was the high-profile performance with the I, CULTURE Orchestra and the concert “Madonna Ukraine.”  Recently he gave a concert at the National Philharmonic Society, where Mozart’s Symphony No.39 and Strauss’ symphonic poem A Hero’s Life were performed.

The Day talked with the conductor about his life and work in Weimar, the perception of Ukraine in Europe and their reluctance to admit Ukraine to the EU.

“In Weimar I gave my first concert,” said Kyrylo KARABYTS, “and the impressions are beautiful: an old quaint city, associated with such great names as Goethe, Schiller, Bach, and its legendary theater where Goethe staged his Faust and which he led for some 30 years… The Weimar public is sophisticated and loves music. The New Year’s concerts on December 31 and January 1 were given to the full house. For Germans, such concerts of classical music are a tradition. They start at six in the evening, two hours later the spectators leave the theater to celebrate the New Year. It even occurred to me to transplant this tradition onto Ukrainian ground. By the way, while preparing concerts in Weimar I was thinking about the program for our New Year’s concerts (if I ever was to pull them through in Ukraine). It must be a special festive program, positive and light, because this holiday is first of all the feast of hopes, expectation of a miracle. Together with the German musicians we prepared and performed Mykola Leontovych’s Carol of the Bells. The local public was amazed. I will open the next season with another Ukraine-themed piece: Franz Liszt’s Mazeppa. I accepted the offer to become this theater’s music director and principal conductor not only to come to Weimar and merely become part of another culture. My ambition is to acquaint them with the culture of my own country. And of course, to reintroduce Weimar as the European cultural center, where positive shifts in music are happening right now. It is not the city whose glory belongs to the past.”

WHAT IS OUR CULTURAL HERITAGE LIKE?

What do Europeans (the Germans, the English with whom you work in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, or your French neighbors in Paris) associate Ukraine with?

“With war. ‘Are you still at war, or is it already over?’ An average European has a dim idea of who is fighting, against whom, and for what; what sort of state Ukraine is – that very Ukraine, which for a long time was part of the Russian Empire and later the USSR, which had agreed to the role of the ‘younger brother’ and then suddenly declared that it has nothing in common with Russia. For how long has it been independent? Twenty-four years? Why was it silent then? How am I to explain these things to the French, whose country developed its relations with Russia for centuries and who know that Russia means Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev… We, Ukrainians, are largely to blame for this misunderstanding: we still do not have a clear-cut, systemic policy which would be to our state’s advantage, working to create Ukraine’s positive image both at home and abroad. It might sound paradoxical, but we do not quite realize who we are, where we come from. What is our cultural, artistic, state and other heritage? I would like to invite you to the concert of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine on June 15. We will be performing a symphony by our fellow countryman Maksym Berezovsky, which has never been performed or published in Ukraine. I found it in New York! And in Russia this work was performed as ‘the first Russian symphony.’

“We do not know ourselves, but we want the whole wide world to know us. Well, Europe knows the Klitschko brothers. They have heard of Shevchenko (more often than not it is not the poet, Taras, but the former footballer, Andrii).”

What about Nadia Savchenko, maybe, her name is on their radar screen?

“I would not say so. For some reason we have a misconception that the first thing a Frenchman or a German thinks about as he wakes up in the morning is ‘How are my Ukrainian brothers faring?’ It would be lovely, but it is not so, no one gives a damn. Europe has a life of its own, and is preoccupied with its own problems. And our Donbas, or Crimea, annexed by Russia, or our political prisoners are not among them. The streets of Paris are still full of the military, people are warned not to attend concerts because this can be dangerous. At my son’s school (he is five) children were instructed how to behave during a chemical attack! They were told how you can survive if toxic substances have polluted water or air. In Belgium stories about prevented terror attacks and neutralized terrorists have become daily news. Germany has opened its door to refugees and does not know how to get it closed again. Britain is shaken by offshore scandals and reports about possible bombings in London and elsewhere…”

Ukrainians resent the outcome of the referendum in the Netherlands, which suggest that two-thirds of the Dutch are against the EU-Ukraine association.

“No wonder. It is the highest time for us to realize that it is up to us alone to solve our problems: domestic, international, any sort. But instead of solving these problems, we accumulate them and wait for help from Europe or the US, as if other countries have no citizens of their own to take care of. I would not make a big drama of the Dutch referendum. I think that it has been much longer discussed in Ukraine than in the country where it was held. There the people cast the ballots and went to the pub. It is not an action against Ukraine, rather a protest against the EU policies, its constant expansion. How many countries comprised the EU at its dawn, in 1957? Six? Now there are 28 of them. As soon as the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, and Romania joined the EU, their citizens rushed to Old Europe to earn money. Old Europe is long unable to control the influx of migrants, and now they get Ukraine on their hands, too.”

“YOU CANNOT PLANT A TREE IN THE AIR”

Yes, with thousands of displaced persons ready to move.

“That’s right. Ukrainians should not take the results of the referendum personally. After all, this is only the opinion of one part of the population of one country. But it is yet another signal that we must take care of ourselves. Meanwhile, our policy is to follow the most generous giver. We had for years been dancing to Russia’s tune: hey, Putin has promised to lower gas prices, so let’s do as he bids. Today, hey, the IMF will give us loans, so we must agree and promptly implement the transformations it needs. Without even considering their appropriateness in the Ukrainian context. Without any public discussions, without conferring with the nation or informing it (on Donbas’s example we have seen that if people do not get information from their own leaders, they are inevitably informed by strangers). Hurry up, or we won’t get any money. And then the money comes and vanishes into thin air, no one knows where, and the country is in a fix. You cannot plant a tree in the air, it needs earth to grow – if it gets proper care, of course.”