Valery MATIUKHIN: “Music is an art where you have to perform naked”

Speaking to performers is difficult but very rewarding. On the one hand, you must never lose track of their way of thinking, and, on the other, you gain an insight into the performer’s complex inner life. All this has been evidenced by my interview with Valery Oleksandrovych Matiukhin, one of Ukraine’s leading conductors. Enumerating his achievements and awards would take very long. Suffice it to say that he is a gifted conductor and wonderful pianist, a subtle and unique interpreter of Ukrainian music. Most importantly, for twenty-five years he has been manager and art director of the Kyivska Camerata, the national ensemble of soloists, an ensemble that ranks among the very best for its quality of performances and repertoire, ranging from such great masters as Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, and Bortniansky, to the latest avant- gardists.

Valery Oleksandrovych, taking an overview of Ukraine’s musical landscape, one can see Kyivska Camerata’s special place in it as an active promoter of music by contemporary Ukrainian composers. Is such a repertoire policy your own creation or did it simply come with the territory?

Created in 1977, the group was first called a chamber orchestra of soloists with Ukraine’s Union of Composers. The basic idea was to represent Ukrainian music within the global context. Many chamber pieces were composed specifically for our orchestra, something that created a link with the work of the soloists. At the start and when the orchestra was just getting off the ground we played everything that came our way. Now we have our priorities, focusing on the music by Stankovych, Silvestrov, Kiva, Zahortsev, Vereshchahin, Zubytsky, Karabytsia, and Skoryk.

Could the present name of your orchestra be associated with the Florentine Camerata, a commonwealth of musicians, poets, and admirers of arts?

When choosing the name, Kyivska Camerata, I had two things in mind. First, of course, it is connected with the Florentine Camerata, a constellation of first class musicians, because we closely cooperated with its poets and performers on their visits to Ukraine. Second, my close friend and fascinating composer and musician Shavleg Shilakadze was art director of an orchestra named Tbilisi Camerata, so I based my choice on these considerations.

There is a belief in any musical environment that only highly mature musicians can take up the conductor’s baton. Do you agree with this?

The moment when I became a conductor was a landmark in my career. It seems to me that everything related to this profession has special significance. Besides, at 42 I was a definitely mature musician, familiar with various musical styles and trends. I must admit that I was extremely lucky: I was accepted by the orchestra both as a musician and conductor, something that happens rarely in this business. Not everything was smooth from the start as conducting skills are learned through practice, not to mention that it took me much time and sweat to establish my own individual manner. But I was helped by one thing: my musicians had trust in me and, if you feel their support, there is really nothing you can’t achieve.

When did you feel that you had actually become a conductor?

In February 1992 I first took my place at the conductor’s stand and already in November I was touring France with The Opera Stars of Ukraine concert series, something I still regard as a challenge for any conductor. After my trip to France I became aware that it had become my calling.

As a soloist, you played with many orchestras and came across various conductors. Whom of the conductors do you like best for their approaches to the profession?

The example for me to follow, both for the manner and inner perception in music, is Fedir Hlushchenko. He was and continues to be a model conductor for me. Our paths crossed when he worked for quite some time with the Kyivska Camerata, and I was able to benefit much from his experience. I can confess now that when he conducted my concerts in Moscow I felt as if I were taking an exam. I think I passed.

Has conducting influenced your career and artistic views?

No, but I must say this profession expands the skyline and performing potential, making it possible for me to play various music, from classical to contemporary vanguard. Conducting helped me to implement my creative concepts but it did not have any significant effect on my inner convictions.

What priorities does a conductor face?

Above all, any conductor must be aware of his objectives and what has to be done to achieve them. All work must be done according to an action plan. A conductor has to clarify the general outlines of a musical composition, imagine its form, and relay his image to the orchestra. There are conductors who spend hours practicing the same fragment but the orchestra is still unable to play it right. Generally speaking, any conductor’s and performer’s rule of thumb is to do his or her best in interpreting the music. How to achieve this is a different question.

What meaning does the frequently used term, conductor’s style, have for you?

The conductor’s style is primarily the conductor’s personality. There are conductors who are thrilled with the movements of their own bodies onstage, who talk at length about music, and impress reporters with their exquisite aesthetic tastes. But they often lack any real understanding of music. Once I read memoirs about Giotto and liked the episode when the Pope asked Giotto to prove that he was an artist. Giotto got up and drew a perfect circle. This is how one must prove one’s supreme skills. The same goes for conductors — they must get to the dais and prove their worth with real work. In general terms, the style is the conductor’s individual perception of the music. My empathy for the music of any composer should be embodied in an appropriate form, in my personal approach to how this music should be performed. The interpretation of music by one conductor can differ greatly from that by another, and it is only too natural. This discrepancy underlies the versatility of conducting styles and manners, something which affects the quality of body language and sound response. Sadly, there are conductors who are unable to penetrate the sound image structure of a piece. They take too broad a view of the music, without much caring for the score. Their major goal is to keep up with the rhythm, although they are very often unaware of its true meaning. For them the notion of style does not exist.

In your view, what Ukrainian conductors can be regarded as top ones in the profession?

Of course, Ihor Blazhkov, Volodymyr Kozhuhar, and Volodymyr Sirenko. These conductors rank highest in Ukrainian culture.

In your performing practice you are faced with a multitude of various musical materials. What are your criteria for choosing your repertoire?

Choosing a repertoire is a purely personal issue. I know that I will never play music by some composers. It could be technically superior music, but I do not have the heart to play it. With time I developed my preferences and criteria that helped me to chose my repertoire. The Camerata’s core repertoire (I hope, for a long time) is made up of music by Stankovych, Silvestrov, Kiva, Zahortsev, Karabytsia, and Skoryk. But there is music we sometimes perform from sheer necessity, guided by our immediate needs. The major criterion is beauty, both spiritual and formal. Music can be pretty light as to its meaning but amazingly structured as to form and fascinating in its quality.

Your favorites are Stankovych

and Silvestrov, representatives of the older generation of musicians. Is this choice due to personal preferences or convictions that they are stalwarts of Ukrainian music?

The list could be complimented by the names of Yaroslav Vereshchahin, Volodymyr Zubytsky, Hennady Liashenko, and Ihor Shcherbakov. Their music is of high quality and spiritually deep. It is important for me that these creative individuals matured together with me. This fact helps foster my better penetration into the world of their music. In my profession, every penetration into the world of a new composer provides new impressions and emotions.

How do you explain the wide range of your repertoire?

I am a person with rather versatile choices and would like to learn and perform as much music as I can. And the first and foremost criterion is that my orchestra must play as much good music as we can. You can hardly talk about enlightenment in this case. Even if it is present, it is primarily targeted at a conductor and musicians. Very often you have to convince musicians that there is a lot of wonderful contemporary music. At the bottom of my wavering between Vivaldi, Heiden, Mozart, Grieg, and contemporary vanguard music lies my craving to attain a performance level such that my orchestra can with equal ease play classical and avant- garde music. The orchestra’s cultural potential is very important and should encompass music of various styles, epochs, and trends.

How deeply do you become involved with the author’s concept?

When performing music by contemporary composers, you must perform in unison with their imaginations. On the other hand, some elements of the original must often be altered. The depth of penetration in music is contingent on the time factor. Once I read Buzzoni, a prominent pianist and first-class interpreter of Liszt. He said that he had to play one of Liszt’s sonata’s 300 times and only when he played it for the 301th time was he satisfied. Only through lengthy continuous performing you can acquire a deep understanding of all the sense implanted in the music by a composer.

Stravinsky rejected any interference by performers in his original music viewing them as mere vehicles for his ideas. What do you think about such an approach?

If the performers and conductor just follow blindly the composer’s ideas and do not have their own interpretation, the end product will be of low quality. Of course, you have to consider the author’s ideas, but looking for one’s own sense is something very important for a conductor. This is made even more so by the fact that the present time has a large role, affecting our ideas about the time and rhythm of life, with all this leaving a mark on our perception of the art. Every new epoch brings new meaning to one piece of art or another. Consequently, retaining all the beauty of the author’s original concept, a work begins to acquire a new cover. Farsighted performers help unveil such new nuances and dimensions, while the amount of freedom an interpreter has is provided by the music itself.

What kind of music is easy to perform and what poses problems?

A conductor must strike a psychological harmony with the composer and his work. This is very difficult, but, if attained, everything else will come off all right. If, on the other hand, there is no inner contact, the success of a performer could become subject to dispute, let alone the fact that a conductor himself will not be fully satisfied, being aware of one’s own hypocrisy or even cheating. Although the Camerata performed both Britten and Hindemit, they still remain too complex and opaque for me, perhaps due to the discrepancy in my or their inner emotional tuning.

What is your opinion about the present condition of Ukraine’s musical culture and its style?

When in the 1980s I actively tilled the virgin lands of Ukrainian music I was convinced that the Ukrainian school of composers was among the leaders in the former Soviet Union. Today, its condition has changed, and it is difficult to evaluate it with the same certainty. Many of the present trends are beyond my understanding and many seem bordering on crisis. The worst thing is that the number of international contest laureates is larger than the number of good musical pieces.

What are the reasons for the crisis?

There is a critical contradiction between music and its role. There are a vast number of musical compositions with their focus on their technological aspect. Such creations are given promising, absolutely boggling titles, with their authors writing lengthy philosophical treatises to explain their sense, but when you hear such music you realize that the treatises outshine the music. I will never play such music, because it is interesting to face the technical challenges of the masters, not the technological mess of such contemporary music.

Perhaps we are currently in a period of stagnation which is good for those who want to hide their lack of talent behind some dense technological smoke screen.

An absolutely precise formulation. Some early trivial opuses of some composers cannot call forth anything but a weak smile, because their failure was due to a lack of talent. Now they compose mammoth pieces of absolutely empty music adorned in beautiful form but with zero content. It seems to me that they do not realize that any technique, serial or avant-garde, can be used for writing music but everything must be justified in terms of its content. Incidentally, one of my goals is to perform, once again, Silvestrov’s Meditation and thus demonstrate the squalor of all this empty music. This composition has everything in it and is real post avant-garde music.

But don’t some current academic musical works have at least some reasonable basis?

To date, the meaningful personalities are those I mentioned earlier, with none of the contemporary composers, unfortunately, being able to make their way up to this Olympus. You cannot cheat anyone with superficial knowledge. Music is an art where you have to perform naked.”

In one of his interviews Stankovych, assessing your organizational skills and versatility, called you the Ukrainian Diaghilev. How difficult for you is to reach your creative objectives and what are they?

It is so difficult to implement all of one’s objectives as objectives in one thing, and reality is quite different. I would like to organize a festival next year, staging a series of jubilee concerts to mark the 60th anniversary of Stankovych’s birthday, the 65th of Silvestrov’s, the 55th of my friends Oleh Kiva and Latvian composer Peter Plakidis. I also have plans to attend a festival in Uzhhorod, the Contrasts Festival in Lviv, and the Two Days and One Night Festival in Odesa. If I were able to implement all this schedule I would be the happiest man alive. But unfortunately, I am not sure that everything will be the way I want it. We don’t have the money. Were there the money, I would not have any doubt. I just hope that some of my plans will come true.