Trumpet solo

Valerii Posvaliuk, the Ukrainian trumpeter and soloist of the Symphony Orchestra at the National Opera of Ukraine, and Meritorious Artist of Ukraine, is famous not only in his native country but all over the musical world. His name can be found in a number of non- Ukrainian encyclopedias and reference books, where he is described as one of Europe’s finest musicians, an artist with an illustrious career. Besides performing with various orchestras, he gives solo concerts and teaches. He is also the founder of a unique association of Ukrainian instrumentalists, the Guild of Ukrainian Trumpeters, and has served as its president for close to a decade.

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF POSVALIUK’S ARTISTIC CAREER

Posvaliuk’s professional and creative life began when he was 10 years old (he is 60 years old). He was a musical prodigy whose playing stunned Kyiv Conservatory Professor Wilhelm Yablonsky, one of the most prominent 20th-century wind musicians, who not only helped the talented young boy form the powerful technical apparatus of the future leading trumpeter of a symphony orchestra, but also to instill in him a feeling for the role, place, and importance of a wind instrument within the sonic range of both a symphony and a chamber orchestra, and make him understand the self-sufficiency of trumpet compositions in the musical heritage spanning the 16th to the 20th century.

Years later this training allowed Posvaliuk to distinguish himself as a brilliant concert performer, who made his instrument sound at the peak of its capacity and mastered the subtlest classical works, including sonatas by Baroque composers, including the Italians Giovanni Gabrieli and Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, the German Georg Philipp Telemann, Henry Purcell (the representative of the so-called Golden Age of the trumpet), as well as concertos for the trumpet by such well- known Ukrainian composers Yevhen Zubtsov, R. Svirsky, and Zhanna Kolodub. The prominent trumpeter became by far the most illustrious promoter of contemporary music for the trumpet. As a member of ensembles that he founded, he performed a series of virtuoso concert numbers based on works by Aleksandr Arutiunian, Henry Clarke, Peter Eben, Ennio Porrino, Leroy Andersen, Eugene Bozza, Alan Howarth, and others.

Posvaliuk was a soloist in the first Kyiv performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (conducted by Ihor Blazhkov) and the Christmas Oratorio (conducted by Hryhorii Sorokopud). He demonstrated not only technical virtuosity but also the ability to make the instrument sing in a dominating and rallying manner. He succeed in drawing powerful and beautiful sounds from the trumpet, which in previous centuries was a solo instrument that charmed audiences with its mighty clarion call, serene, refined sounds accompanied by an organ, or beauty and subtlety when it was part of a small royal court orchestra.

According to music specialist Maryna Sutorykhina, “Valerii Posvaliuk was one of the first in Ukraine to perform on the piccolo trumpet sonatas and concertos that were written for the so-called clarino whose high-register sounds have deep amplitude, virtuosity, and polychromatic sound. His work includes a number of concertos for trumpet and orchestra by Vivaldi, Telemann, and Abinoni, sonatas by Purcell, Cazzatti, and Baldassare, all of which have considerably enriched and expanded Ukrainian music aficionados’ knowledge of the oeuvres of these forgotten Baroque composers.”

ROMANTIC STYLE

Posvaliuk’s virtuoso style, which the outstanding Ukrainian conductor Volodymyr Kozhukhar calls romantic, is brilliantly revealed in chamber music performances for which he is well known today. Together with his associates, he has created a series of brilliant and truly unique programs that enrich our knowledge of chamber and instrumental works of many European composers of different eras. Many of these pieces are now available on CDs and are highly appreciated by both Ukrainian and Western music professionals and listeners. So should you come across albums entitled “Baroque Music for the Trumpet” or “Concertos for Trumpet and Piano,” don’t hesitate to buy them. They will give you immense pleasure and you will discover a wonderful performer and a superb instrument.

While he was still a student at the Kyiv Conservatory, Posvaliuk won a place in the State Symphony Orchestra of the Ukrainian SSR. He later went on to win the All- Ukrainian Competition of Wind Performers. This was followed by a competition for a place in the symphony orchestra of the Kyiv Taras Shevchenko Opera and Ballet Theater. The young musician received the creative blessing of the outstanding Ukrainian conductor Stefan Turchak, who immediately spotted Posvaliuk’s technical skill and his distinctly personal performing style, virtuosity, and profound feel for the sounds of wind instruments against an orchestral background. This is of great importance in an opera and ballet accompaniment, where there is always a more or less significant score for the trumpet.

Posvaliuk has been a leading soloist of the National Opera of Ukraine’s symphony orchestra for almost three decades. It is difficult to tally all the premiers that have take place with his participation at the National Opera of Ukraine in the past few decades. No matter what is being performed — an opera or a ballet, a symphony or an oratorio, famous requiems by Verdi, Mozart, Britten, or Stankovych, or a concert number - he enriches the musical palette with his trumpet.

Conductors have always appreciated his playing, proof of which is the large number of invitations that Posvaliuk receives on a regular basis. He has played with Yurii Simonov, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Kirill Kondrashin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Carlo Zecchi, Charles de la Compte, and Louis de Froment. Can you imagine Yurii Temirkanov, after conducting Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka, inviting to the proscenium not the first violin but the Ukrainian trumpeter Valerii Posvaliuk? Natan Rakhlin also invited him to go on a prestigious tour of Moscow together with the Kazan Symphony Orchestra.

HOW TO MERGE SCHOOLS

The Guild of Professional Trumpeters of Ukraine, chaired by Posvaliuk, is a very active organization that is having a strong impact on developing and promoting music composed for the trumpet, this ancient but eternally young instrument. It organizes concerts that expose little-known and somewhat forgotten stratum of instrumental music, particularly from the Baroque era, and the trends influenced by the American school of wind instruments. It also organizes special competitions for trumpet players: the Kyiv-based Open Competition of Child Trumpeters (2002), the traditional international competition “Art in the 21st Century” (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006), the annual All-Ukrainian Starovetsky Competition of Young Trumpeters (2000), and the All- Ukrainian Viacheslav Starchenko Competition of Wind Musicians (2005). The guild issued the CD “Anthology of Ukrainian Trumpeters,” which contains music selected by Posvaliuk, who initiated this recording project. He is now preparing a new CD that will feature the leading trumpeters of Ukraine.

Posvaliuk’s artistic biography would be incomplete without mention of his research and teaching activities. For many years he has combined performance with his duties as the head of the National Music Academy’s Department of Wind Instruments. In the foreword to Posvaliuk’s book The Art of Playing the Trumpet in Ukraine (2006) Edward H. Tarr, a professor at the Basle Conservatory and former director of the Trumpet Museum in Bad Saeckingen (Germany), wrote: “I first heard about the rich Ukrainian heritage from his brilliant report illustrated with historical audio recordings on August 5, 1997, in Goteborg, Sweden, during the annual conference of the International Trumpet Guild (ITG). The results of this research were later published in a few articles, including one in ITG Journal 22/4 (May 1998), and even in a two-volume book The Trumpeters of Kyiv: the Past and Today (Kyiv, 2000, in Russian and English), for which I had the honor of editing the English text. Valerii Posvaliuk was the first to launch an integrated project uniting Ukrainian trumpeters with their counterparts from other schools.”

This quotation is ample proof of Posvaliuk’s productive research endeavors. He is also the author of a series of articles and advisory notes that summarize his teaching experience and analyze the performance traditions of the Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk schools. Nevertheless, his chief mission is to teach the younger generation of musicians not only to master the extremely difficult technique of playing wind instruments but also to understand that music is an inexhaustible treasury of the cultural heritage of many peoples and civilizations.

Vasyl TURKEVYCH is Meritorious Master of Arts of Ukraine.