The celebrated Kuban Cossack Choir tours for two weeks to packed houses
The State Academic Kuban Cossack Choir (named for the Kuban River region, where Russian Empress Catherine II resettled the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks after destroying their fortress in Ukraine) ended a two-week tour of Ukraine after giving concerts in eleven cities, invariably to packed houses. This tour was organized by the Muzychna Khvylia Agency in connection with the program of the Year of Russia in Ukraine.
This popular choir has for the past three decades performed under the able guidance of Prof. Viktor Zakharchenko, People’s Artiste of Russia and Ukraine, savant of the arts, composer, collector of, acknowledged expert on, and arranger of folk songs. The Maestro celebrated his 65th birthday on March 22, and his name is inseparable from the choir’s international acclaim. The repertoire is the most versatile: folk, religious, classical, and contemporary music.
The choir has more than once toured Ukraine and has countless admirers here that would not miss a single concert — among other things because every time the program is different. It always gives a virtuoso performance: the voices ringing strong and clear, the vocal range broad with a multitude of overtones. Every concert number is a miniature spectacle. Plus it boasts an excellent orchestra, dance group, and actors performing unique displays of skill with sabers and daggers. One number is followed by the next with lightning speed. The choir was accorded a special welcome in Kharkiv, Poltava, Kremenchuk, Kryvy Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Myrhorod, and of course Kyiv where the Kuban Cossacks appeared in a gala concert at the National Opera, commemorating the 189th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko and then in two solo concerts at the Ukraine Palace. It was in Kyiv that the choir premiered Viktor Zakharchenko’s As a Child I Sometimes Fell... (based on a poem by Lesia Ukrayinka).
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“The Kuban Cossack Choir’s history dates from 1811. Its first concert took place on October 14, marking the Feast of St. Mary the Protectress. At first it was just a choir, appearing in concerts,” says Viktor Zakharchenko. “Even then folk songs sung for centuries by Cossacks at their stanitsa settlements were a special attraction. Much religious and classical music was performed before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The 1920s marked a dark period for the choir, when Sverdlov and Trotsky ordered the Cossacks suppressed. In the early years of the Bolshevik rule propertied Cossacks were physically destroyed and exiled to Siberia. Human life was worth nothing, and it was no time for singing and dancing. The choir was disbanded... In 1936, the authorities changed their mind. Stalin even turned to the Church, allowing it to open several Orthodox churches and making some concessions to the faithful. At this time, two professional performing groups were organized in Krasnodar and Rostov: the State Kuban Cossack Choir and the Don Cossack Song and Dance Ensemble. We are the legal successor to the Kuban Cossack Choir. There is also a spiritual aspect. In 1995, Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and All Rus’ visited Krasnodar. He met with Cossacks and heard our religious songs. He asked why we didn’t sing in church the way our ancestors had done and gave us his blessings. From then on we have been the only choir to take part in divine services. We sing at cathedrals on all important religious occasions.
“Every year I travel across the Kuban territory, collecting old songs from descendants of the Black Sea (Ukrainian) Cossacks who settled here, coming all the way from the Zaporozhzhian Sich, and Russian songs of the Don Cossacks. I have recorded several thousand of them, and I arrange them myself, trying always to preserve their special folk flavor. Otherwise you could arrange an old song so that no one will recognize it for what it really is. I am for carefully preserving the original sources. The Small River Kuban is one of our recent discoveries, to the lyrics of Oleksandr Piven, a Ukrainian prerevolutionary poet. I have prepared a CD with Ukrainian songs, My Musical Tribute to Ukraine. Quite a few songs in our current program are to the lyrics of prominent Russian and Ukrainian poets, among them Pushkin, Shevchenko, Nekrasov, and Lesia Ukrayinka. We sing folk songs and modern compositions, including those by Gennady Zavolokin, author of the popular television program ‘Play, Concertina!’ Unfortunately, he died a tragic death a year and a half ago. Our repertoire includes songs by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Oleksandr Dudnyk. I also write music, bearing in mind what every soloist with the choir is capable of, and I know who will sing a solo or duet.
“Our choir is gradually reviving. We keep our doors open to talented people. There are 125 singers at present and I can tell you frankly that we have financial problems. Our people are paid little and our payroll doesn’t allow us to hire top vocalists. By the way, we had Serhiy Yaroshenko from Ukraine, a Kyiv Conservatory graduate. He sang with your National Opera. He has an excellent bass and he also performing abroad. We also had Bolshoi soloist Igor Morozov, a beautiful baritone. He was offered a good contract and is in Austria now. Several of our vocalists work in China and Japan. Parting with them is sad, but we can’t help it. We are a state organization. Sponsors help sometimes, but we can’t compete with foreign impresarios and their money. Although our performers can boast interesting work. The choir often goes on tours and we have been to all continents. The children’s school of the Kuban Cossack Choir is our pride; it has 600 students in five age groups.”
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During Soviet times, the Kuban Cossack Choir performed Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished in many concerts, unafraid of being branded “nationalist.”
“Every time we did, people in the audience would rise. Once, after we performed it in Kyiv, some frightened bureaucrats approached us backstage and asked if we knew that the song was forbidden. I feigned surprise and said I didn’t, adding that back at the Vasyurinskaya stanitsa it is popular as an old folk song. Of course, I knew that it was written by Pavlo Chubynsky and Mykhailo Verbytsky. I am happy every time the audience joins the choir in the finale.”
The Kuban Choir and Nina Matviyenko, Ukraine’s guardian angel of folk songs, are old friends. Their joint virtuoso performance in Kyiv was an extremely pleasant surprise to music lovers.
“Somehow I can’t establish contact with Ukrainian composers,” complains Viktor Zakharchenko. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, I brought two authentic folk groups from the Leningradskaya and Anastasiyevskaya stanitsas to Ukraine. I arranged for several meetings and then noticed with surprise that none of the local authors wanted to cooperate. In an interview at the time I pointed out bitterly, ‘Ukrainian composers must believe that they can write better music than the people. Mikhail Glinka said that music is created by the people and we composers only arrange it’.”
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“I’m Ukrainian. My ancestors come from the Poltava and Chernihiv regions. My great grandfathers left Ukraine and found themselves in the Kuban land, looking for a better life. My parents became orphans at an early age and had to work hard to earn a living,” recalls Viktor Zakharchenko. “We always speak Ukrainian at home. We lived in the Diatkivskaya stanitsa, and it was there I first heard beautiful folk songs.
“I have a strong character, my mother’s. She received a killed-in-battle notice with my father’s name several months after World War II began in Russia, so she had to take care of four children by herself. In 1996, I got hit by a car, fracturing my hip, and spent seven months in the hospital, having six operations. After that I walked on crutches for two and a half years. After I got a little better and could limp around without the crutches I went on a concert tour to Kyiv. Colleagues helped me on the stage and the audience rose to greet me. How can I ever forget this? While bedridden, I wrote some 300 arrangements of folk songs and music to the lyrics of Lermontov, Yesenin, Pushkin, and Rubtsov. I felt such a thirst to create! After that traffic accident I also had ten CDs cut. We are mortal, but music and song live forever.
