A VIRTUOSO OF THE BANDURA

Kostiantyn Novytsky is a bandura-player, or bandurist. If you picture a blind kobzar minstrel portrayed in the duma Cossack ballads or in Shevchenko's verse, you are wrong. This man is quite modern, with an aristocratically courteous touch (Polish blood?) and unimaginably focused. Suffice it to say that he is the only bandurist in Ukraine with a solo album of classical music usually performed on the piano, violin, or cello.

He decided to show that the bandura, the Ukrainian national instrument, was as good for classical music as any other instrument. This took countless visits to bureaucrats at all levels, accompanied by numerous verbal attacks from colleagues and listeners. Above all, this called for boundless devotion to the bandura with which Kostiantyn Novytsky, now Meritorious Artist of Ukraine, has not parted for 35 years. It all started with a childhood insult.

"I was seven," the musician recalls, "my mother arranged for me to take bandura classes with her friend's son. As often happens in such cases I had no choice and obliged. Very quickly I developed an affection for the instrument, but then it transpired that I knew nothing about it. Once, on my way to the bandura teacher, I met a man and a boy about my age. The boy asked his father what I was carrying. The man was at sea. He suggested it was a gramophone, no, it looked like a balalaika, no, a concertina, no, a cello. He never used the word bandura. He didn't know the instrument existed, period. That was in Kyiv. I'm a born Kyivite, you know. Later, I went to my aunt for the holidays. She lived in a village. That was before I entered a music school. I had to practice, so I took the bandura with me. Even as I approached the house my uncle started thinking out loud what that thing could be his nephew was lugging. A band saw? An extractor? What? Then my aunt appeared. She greeted me and said, "All right, dear, you can put that bandura over there, in the corner." I was happy. Here was someone who knew. But then she asked, "So what did you bring this time?" I was bewildered, "What do you mean? You just said bandura." She smiled, "And so I did, I saw that you brought some bandura, so I wondered what was inside." Then it dawned on me: bandura in the vernacular means anything bulky or heavy, packed or wrapped. The realization hurt like hell. It was there and then that I swore I would prove that the bandura was as good as any other instrument, and deserved as much respect and recognition."

Easier said than done. Now, thinking back to his second year at the conservatory, the man is amazed at his audacity. The year was 1968 and he, together with Volodymyr Kushpet who was his friend and classmate from the Glier School of Music (later they would serve together in the army), organized a performing group and named it Kobza. It took boundless dedication to make electric banduras and have them pass muster with an ever-suspicious government high commission at a time when long hair and electric guitars were officially frowned on). Even if the commission smelled a rat, the young musicians' enthusiasm was overwhelming and their professional skill too obvious. Approval was granted unanimously.

"We created Kobza to make propaganda for the bandura. The original idea was a rock group. Hence electric banduras. Actually, there were only two. Volodymyr's and mine. At first we just played, but a rock group needs voices. So we got ourselves several singers. Bandura is unthinkable without folk songs, so we performed folk arrangements. Remarkably, our first album won first place at an unofficial hippie congress somewhere in Western Europe. We knew nothing at the time, of course, and found out much later. Why the popularity? Because we were the first to try folk music.

"Kobza played to packed audiences precisely because it played folk tunes. Our success surpassed all our expectations. I remember posing with the rest of the group for a commercial on the stairs leading to the newly built Ukraine Palace of Culture . I also remember thinking, ‘Oh God, let us perform here soon!' Several years later we gave three concerts in succession there with standing room only. Buses were chartered to bring people from other cities. Crowds gathered by the entrance hoping to get tickets despite the sold-out notices. I was then Kobza's artistic director and planned concerts so that folk numbers would be the finale, with preceding numbers to warm up the audience. And most people would come specially to hear the finale."

Just as the Kobza reached its apex Kostiantyn, pressured by his wife, quit the group to try a solo career. Liudmyla knew better than he himself how much he cherished his dream and was determined to make it come true (a gifted dancer, she had left Virsky's group to join Kobza). She knew that what he did was just the beginning of the bandura's road to real acclaim. She remembered his story about how he had been enchanted by Bortniansky's music performed by a Moscow piano professor. The Ukrainian composer had sounded like Bach or even Mozart! And yet his music was far less popular than that by any of his West European contemporaries. The idea was obvious: little known music should be performed on a little known instrument. And that instrument, the bandura, had to make a name for itself first. Previously, this had been the Novytskys' family secret. Now the time was ripe and Kostiantyn set to work out a solo repertoire.

"Do you remember your first solo concert?"

"Of course I do! That was on May 13, 1990, my son's birthday. The family and guests were at the table and I had to leave for my first solo concert, meaning a trip to Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast. I came early and planned to spend the day seeing the sights. It's so nice walking round a city where no one knows you. I brought a bottle of cognac thinking I would sit in my hotel room alone and silently toast to my son and the family. I went back to the hotel and then a car drove up. It was time to go to the concert. I hadn't noticed the time, and then everything happened so fast. The concert was a great success. The place was a summer resort where people came from all over the Soviet Union. A crowd gathered after the concert. I got invitations from the Baltic republics, Central Asia, and the Far East. My bandura was finally recognized. That was how my concert career began. And it wasn't simple. The hardest part was overcoming stereotypical attitudes toward the bandura. Everybody expected me to play and sing. Instead, they would watch and hear me play for two hours. Not a pianist or violinist. A bandurist! So every concert was a challenge, a test of strength. I knew that the way I played would determine people's attitude toward the instrument. Several years passed, and I had in many concerts. But now..."

Now is a transition period for Novytsky. He is no longer in a position to give solo concerts after leaving the Kyiv Concert Association and joining the National Bandurist Capella. He is very grateful to its artistic director Mykola Hvozdev for support and understanding. He performs with the group and teaches at the conservatory where he has three students. What he misses most from the past is not his solo career (with musicians the out-of-sight-out-of-mind adage is especially true), but the children's audiences he loved so much.

"I even gave concerts for juvenile delinquents and they were excellent listeners. Children are a very special audience that demands a special approach by a performer. Children are very aggressive toward performers who don't take them seriously, don't even bother to dress properly for a concert and, give a pro forma performance. Children are extremely sensitive and never forgive this. Even worse, such musicians risk making them hate the piano or violin and this hatred will stay with children long afterwards, perhaps for the rest of their lives. One has to reach out to children, explain things to them. Too bad that there are no funds for concerts in schools. The bandura is not merely a musical instrument. It is one of the symbols of Ukraine, and childhood is the best time to be shown such symbols and hear stories about them."

"You are used to working with large audiences, aren't you?"

"Yes, precisely with everyday with large audiences."

In fact, Kostiantyn Novytsky can work one on one just as effectively. Three conservatory students can hardly qualify as an audience, and yet there is perfect rapprochement. Like most professional performers now, he moonlights at the conservatory. Oleh Tymoshenko, Rector of the Musical Academy resisted this arrangement as long as he could, but finally was pressured to permit the Academy's student body to become larger than its faculty. Kostiantyn is a strict taskmaster with his students. His right wrist is bound by red cotton thread to keep the hand from over-tiring and going numb. And helping students before exams is back-breaking toil.

"You see, they are all very busy young men. They have no time to practice properly during the semester, and they have to take their exams and pass them, so the heaviest strain is the period before the exams. That's why I keep thread on my wrist."

I listened as he played Debussy's prelude, "A Flaxen-Haired Maiden." Subconsciously I tried to hear a note of "provincialism" in the bandura and couldn't. The instrument now sounded like a harpsichord, then like a harp, and sometimes like a small orchestra. In skilled hands the bandura can handle the most sophisticated modern and classical works. In Novytsky's hands it is like a concert piano, capable of conveying the most subtle variations and overtones. I was about to thank him for his time when I remembered that I had not yet asked about his private life.

"I have two immediate relatives, my wife, and my bandura. It is alive and a member of the family. I don't need any other sources of inspiration. I have kept the bandura next to my heart since 1962, it has become a part of me. I love it; it makes me happy."

Photo:
Kostiantyn Novytsky