Passions for Archives

The concert billed as Masterpieces from the Collection of the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine at the House of Columns of the National Philharmonic Society turned out to be a true guided tour of the world of baroque music.

Practically all the compositions making up the concert program were marked in the booklet, “Performed in Ukraine for the first time.” No wonder as the scores were borrowed from the famous Bach collection (No. 441), brought from Germany after World War II, stored for decades in Kyiv, and currently the topic of heated debate. However, proceeding from Minister of Culture Yury Bohutsky’s assurances, a compromise has been achieved in the matter of the archive’s ownership (the collection consists in over 5,000 documents). Manuscripts belonging to Slavic composers (suffice it to mention Dmytro Bortniansky and Maksym Berezovsky) will remain in Kyiv, to be kept in a special reserve. Western compositions accordingly will be shipped to Germany, including 500 scores written by Johann Sebastian Bach. This seems a unique decision in museum practice, because under all the rules and regulations nothing can be removed from the museum stock, just as no museum collections can be permanently transferred anywhere or broken up in any way.

Returning to the concert, it had a definite trace of the archival battles. Kyiv music lovers had an opportunity to hear excellent performers: the Vienna Academy Chamber Orchestra (conducted by Martin Haselbek) and the Vienna Chamber Choir. They brilliantly handled the most sophisticated pieces by Johann Gottlieb Graun, Dmytro Bortniansky, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. However, from the purely emotional point of view, the music bore a certain mark of the epoch. Reasonably solemn and lyrical, it reminded one of eighteenth century landscape engravings, an invariable but unfrequented part of any museum exposition. Bortniansky’s overture to The Signor’s Holiday seemed to a have a more relevant touch, but this is, of course, a personal opinion.

In any case it is gratifying to realize that Kyiv has established good contact with Europe’s musical capital at least in this vein. Even now a similar program will be performed in Vienna and then a CD with the best recordings of the Kyiv and Vienna concerts will be released. Most likely Collection No. 441, which is still in existence, will offer us more than one opportunity to lay such musical bridges.