“Salt Symphony 3”

The third international festival “Salt Symphony” will take place on May 27-28. Audiences will have to go into a mine 288 meters down to hear the musicians of the Donetsk and Luhansk symphony orchestras and their musical guests, the Vienna Philharmonic’s rock band, the Turkish soloist Erdem Baydar, and many other performers.

The concert program includes popular works by Austrian, German, Turkish, and Ukrainian composers, including Part 4 of Beethoven’s famous 9 th Symphony, now the European Union’s anthem. The choir of Luhansk National Pedagogical University will perform “Ode to Joy,” written by Schiller. The festival organizers are not revealing all their secrets but promise that the audience will be in raptures.

The aim of the Salt Symphony festival is to present the cultural and artistic values of Ukraine’s various regions. Apart from concerts, there will be exhibits of paintings from the collection of the Eidos International Charitable Foundation. The festival was organized on the initiative of the Embassy of Austria in Ukraine (trade counselor: Christian Gessl) and supported by President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, the Donetsk oblast council, and several sponsors.

These underground concerts are the brainchild of the Austrian conductor Kurt Schmid, the longtime director of the Luhansk Symphony Orchestra. He was the one who suggested setting up an improvised concert hall in a salt mine. This idea seemed outlandish at first, but Schmid managed to convince the authorities that such a concert would make a lasting impression on the audience.

Preparing for the first festival on Oct. 2, 2004, the conductor invited the legendary Ukrainian soprano Viktoria Lukyanets, who has been living in Vienna for many years and singing on the world’s most prestigious stages. Their recital created a furor, and elated with success, the organizers decided to repeat the event.

“When I first came down to the salt mine, I was shocked by the ‘hall’ in which we, artists, were supposed to perform,” Ms. Lukyanets told The Day. “Everything looked gray, and I had the impression that there were slabs of crystal or ice all around. But when the electricians switched on the hidden lights, I felt as if I were in a fairy tale, in the Snow Queen’s castle. I was astonished at the mastery of a local sculptor, who carved veritable pieces of art out of lumps of salt. It turned out that the salt hall had wonderful acoustics. It is very easy to breathe there. The concert was a memorable event for both the artists and the audiences.”

Since very few people had the pleasure of attending the underground concert, the organizers held a Salt Symphony concert in Kyiv last year. The foyer and hall of the National Opera were decorated with original salt-block compositions and fresh red roses. The concert began quite unusually: an elevator brought Kurt Schmid down to the stage. He was wearing a tuxedo and a miner’s helmet, and he had a conductor’s baton in his hand. Then the audience was plunged into a whirlwind of popular classic tunes. A large screen showed slides depicting salt sculptures by the Artemsil Company, which created the illusion of being in a mine. Both Ukrainian and European television viewers were able to watch this program.