Almost 35 years ago, the name of the famous choirmaster, People’s Artist of Ukraine, Shevchenko Prize Winner, professor and academician, was linked with the National Hryhory Veriovka Chorus
The artistic director and conductor of this famous ensemble, Anatoly Avdiyevsky, and I agreed to talk after a rehearsal. Having come a little early, I sat quietly in a chair and began to look around. Hanging on the hall walls were more than a hundred portraits of chorus members, painted by singer Vasyl Zavhorodny, the first performer of the popular song about our capital, “How Can One Help But Love You, My Kyiv.” A lot of those depicted on the portraits are at the moment here in the hall. “With a dead figure you won’t achieve anything,” I heard the maestro demanding virtuosity of the vocalists. “Put more spirit in it! Sing happily and loftily!” And the artists began over and over again: “Oh, in the forest, in the woods...” But Mr. Avdiyevsky remained unsatisfied: “The rhythm, the accents! You are singing as if you were dancing. Major key, minor key, and then up, up and away!” He never calmed down until he heard exactly what he wanted to hear.
It is the harmonious combination of the folk and academic manners of singing that enables the chorus to have a large and varied repertory: from folk songs to a cappella arrangements of classics, as well as works by contemporary composers.
“Mr. Avdiyevsky, the Veriovka Chorus and the Virsky Dance Ensemble are often called symbols of Ukraine. These two groups have taken part in almost all official gala concerts, while foreign audiences looked on them as kind of a calling card for our country. Has the attitude toward your chorus changed now at home and abroad?”
“Our ensembles indeed still enjoy wide popularity. Since the time the chorus was organized, we have visited fifty countries. We have been regarded not as something exotic but as artists who revealed such a new side of folklore as authentic singing. This is the groundwork which the composer’s hand never touched. Our singers show not only good vocal qualities but also stage presence and the full vocal range. The group uses all the techniques of vocal and musical expressiveness that help reveal the greatness, richness, power, and unique beauty of Ukrainian folk songs.
“To our deep regret, we now perform more on tour abroad than in this country. Because of economic difficulties, our state has no targeted programs to support large academic companies. This is why we in fact live in isolation from our own people. We are still well remembered, and therefore invited to give concerts, abroad. For example, the world-famous Columbia Artis Company organized our tour in the United States of America three years ago. The trip was a great success, and we are going there again in the fall for three months to visit America’s big cities. We’ll have concerts in Washington and New York. And before that, we’ll take part in a folk festival in France.”
“What priorities do you think should be set in state cultural policy?”
“Not only do our agriculture and industry lie in ruins, nobody cares about intellect. This is what makes our life so hard. What we need is not only a Ukrainian national idea, now obscure in form and content, but also a clearly worded state ideology; we should teach the younger generation to love the culture and history of our country and soil. Just look at all those weeds growing across the mass media. At least on the radio some sprouts are making their way up. We have practically abandoned our traditional culture, while the whole world rests precisely on this. We can only move this heavy stone together with symphonic and philharmonic concerts. We should invite the best performers, directors, and musicians, and give their creative work the widest possible coverage. We must support the folk art that came into being owing to people’s love of their soil.”
“There is an opinion that young people now listen mostly to a different kind of music and are not very interested in chorus singing and folk songs.”
“Young people (not but a sizable part) lack any linchpin deeply rooted in folklore and linked to their parents, family. They are now oriented toward show business. This is one-day music. I am not against popular art, I am against the grayness and kitsch being foisted today. But, on the other hand, our collective is constantly growing younger. We conduct auditions and select those we need. Fresh blood, new names, and new voices make the chorus better. Many young people also come to the studio and the folk company. This is not only our tendency. I maintain a working relationship with all talented folklorists, directors of professional choruses, and educational institutions. We exchange songs to fill the repertory with new numbers. For example, Omelian Shpachynsky organized a wonderful Ukrainian choir in Russian-speaking Mykolayiv region, and Anatoly Zaturian set up the Buh Chorus. I recently returned from Sumy (historic Slobozhanshchyna). What a stunning and fragrant Ukrainian land, what a wealth of songs! There, I conducted master classes in choral music. There are so many young people who both go the disco and sing folk melodies. Ukraine possesses the world’s richest folklore. Our archive shelves have over 300,000 Ukrainian songs. The sky’s the limit! I’ve got a Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences publication from New York: 13 volumes containing the all-time masterpieces of Ukrainian melody, from the Maksymovych collection published in the eighteenth century to the creations of this day. Two volumes of Ukrainian Songs of the Presov Region (eastern Slovakia) and other parts of Slovakia where Ukrainians live. The works of Ukrainian Canadians, Brazilians, Americans, and Europeans. For example, the Byzantine Chorus in Holland sings songs exclusively in Ukrainian, although there is not a single ethnic Ukrainian among them. The singers came to love our songs. Is there another phenomenon like this in the world? And as for us, many Ukrainians who go to live abroad reject their culture and language.”
“You have a rich teaching experience: you have been professor at Mykhailo Drahomanov Pedagogical University for twenty years. To what extent have the students changed?”
“In 1949, while I was still a boy, I moonlighted as an accompanist in Dalnyk, a small town near Odesa (our family was large: five children, with me being the oldest). Then I conducted singing and music lessons in Odesa’s Comprehensive School No. 58. Teaching always appealed to me. I am sure that if we inspire love for the folk song in children, they will remain loyal to it all their lives. It’s a kind of addiction: if you’ve drunk pure spring water, you won’t take surrogates.
“Today, there are no obstacles hindering students from realizing their potential. When I was creating the Lionok Chorus, then worked with the Cherkasy Folk Choir and then even with the Veriovka Chorus, I was for a long time part of the retinue of the young and inexperienced. Many would lecture me. So I did not even notice that I became an experienced master and member of two academies.
“The Music Department of Drahomanov University trains teachers of music and the performing arts. Unfortunately, my projects to reform music teaching in high schools, also with due account of foreign experience, have not yet been implemented. Back in Soviet times, there was the so- called Dmitry Kabalevsky concept resting on three foundations: song, march, and dancing music. I think it is pseudoscientific and primitive. Take, for instance, our Ukrainian rites, those observed in everyday life and those marked in calendars as holidays. How many nuances they have! You just can’t squeeze them into the idea of a ‘march’ or dance music. Listen to a duma (traditional Cossack ballad — Ed.): this is an improvised action! In this case the performer not only knows how to play his instrument but also possesses a whole philosophy. Ivan Bunin described this in his short story, “A Psalm,” where a blind kobzar, singing a duma about an orphan girl, brought his listeners to tears. Then he said: ‘People, should you come across this orphan, don’t hurt her.’ This is the Ukrainian idea!”
“Did your company always sing and do what it wanted? Or did you feel the pressure of censorship when composing your repertory?”
“As recently as twenty years ago you were not allowed to sing Christmas carols onstage. We had to wriggle out of this, so the words ‘God was born’ were replaced by ‘A lucid light shone.’ In the 1970s, a Kyiv City Communist Party Committee secretary accused me of nationalism. The question was even put on a committee bureau’s agenda. They demanded that I include in the repertory not only Ukrainian songs but also those from other Soviet republics. I said in turn that, for example, the Pyatnitsky Chorus only performs Russian songs to nobody’s surprise. Our company is called the Ukrainian — not Jewish or Tatar — Folk Choir. Was it I who named it? Then please rename it as Chorus of USSR Peoples’ Songs or Songs of the Peoples of the World! I will then give notice and quit. Because I will have no creative aspirations. Of course, in a situation like this I can feel like a dumpling in sour cream: I’ll write letters to my counterparts in other republics, and they will send me two or three of their best songs. No problem! But who will listen to a chorus like that? Will we really sing an Estonian or a Kirgiz song better then they would? So I managed to convince them.
“Yet, we have a tradition. When we go on tour, we always prepare a special number a song of the hosting country. We even have a record Songs of the Peoples of the World. For example, our repertory now includes the Mexican ‘Curucucu Paloma’ and the Venezuelan ‘A Prairie Soul.’”
“Do you think it possible for us to stage folk shows on a grand scale like the Singing Fields festivals in the Baltic states?”
“We tried to do something similar. I put forward an initiative to conduct this kind of festivals back in Soviet times. I knocked on all the doors. Finally, our first Singing Field was born in the Ternopil region. It was a grandiose event accepted with great joy by the people. Groups from almost all regions of the country took part in the festival. Then the same was repeated in Poltava, but on a smaller scale because there were no special structures and natural acoustics. And, in the long run, we’ve got a Singing Field of our own on the Dnipro’s sloping banks. Our festivals are not identical to the Baltic ones because they reflect different mentalities. For them, it was a political act uniting the people on the ground of musical culture. They sang songs of their own authors and folk songs. You had to compete for the right to participate in a function like this for four years: at first there were regional competitions, and then they selected the best of best who later performed on the Singing Field. It is during these functions that they felt they were a free nation that had not lost their identity. They were right. After the proclamation of independence, they became truly independent states, while we, to our keen regret, cannot say the same.”
“You were member of the Shevchenko Prize Committee for a long time. The press published a lot of criticism about the way it worked.”
“In Soviet times, the Shevchenko Prize Committee was subordinated to the ideology department of the Party Central Committee. Although the committee members’ high-principled stand somewhat restricted the freedom of political functionaries, there was pressure on them. And this makes itself felt, to some extent, even today: officials try to impose their will and tip the balance one way or the other. Still alive is the tendency to award posthumous prizes because, as before, an individual is often harassed in his lifetime and praised only after death.”
“But you can’t complain about this: you stood at the head of a famous chorus when you were still rather a young man. Did the Veriovka Chorus accept you favorably?”
“There were thirty candidates for the post. So when I was appointed artistic director, everybody was surprised. Rumor even spread I was a family relative of Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (then KPU first secretary — Ed.). But this is untrue. My father and mother were veterinarians by trade and never belonged to the Party. I was born in the village of Fedvari, Znamyanka district, Kirovohrad oblast. During the manmade famine, the village died out almost completely. My parents managed to move to the Odesa region, where they worked on a collective farm. Father never graduated any music universities, but he sang so well that he could beat even the most famous singers. I consider Hryhory Veriovka my guardian angel. He invited me to be his assistant, for he saw and remembered me working with the Lionok Chorus in the Zhytomyr region. Later in 1962 Nikita Khrushchev exclaimed: ‘Enough singing and dancing at state expense!’ This call was heard only by our Ukrainian leaders. They disbanded almost all folk choirs, dance ensembles, and even chamber and symphonic orchestras came under this purge.
The Ministry of Culture did not protect Lionok, for it had been set up not on their initiative but by instruction of Oblast Party Committee First Secretary Mykhailo Stakhursky, who, incidentally, was a great folk song aficionado. I remember our conversation, when I was just beginning to work with Lionok: ‘You graduated from the Odesa Conservatory. So make an ensemble which could perform our Polissia songs so well that all our people, now floundering in the poor sandy soil, can straighten their backs and stand up.’
“When we first performed “The Blackthorn Is Blooming,” I was denounced to the culture department for whipping up religious sentiments. This is the way they took a cappella singing: they did not understand that to sing without musical accompaniment is the apex of the choral art. Only the intervention of the oblast Party committee secretary resolved the conflict. But when a circular letter arrived ordering the troupe be closed, he only managed to keep 36 people. I refused to go on working on the ruins of the chorus. And I became unemployed. I moonlighted, delivering lectures in a musical college. It was hard. And suddenly I received a call and was invited to work as Mr. Veriovka’s assistant in Kyiv. At that very moment fortune smiled on me.”
“A host of wonderful soloists worked in your company, but one of the brightest stars was Nina Matviyenko. Why did she leave the chorus”?
“Perhaps it was fate. Nina has got a great many good qualities. She comes from the village of Nedilyshche, Zhytomyr oblast. When she came to the studio she did not pass the audition at first: she sang songs from Ludmyla Zykina’s repertory, but her voice was not loud enough, so the teachers did not like her performance. I decided to make sure and suggested that she sing any folk song she chose. Nina was very nervous and in fact failed to show a nice vocal quality. But her performance was so heartfelt and she showed such a deep love of the song that I decided to take the risk and give her a chance to work in the studio. And I was right. In 1967, for the first time ever, our chorus took part in the EXPO exhibition in Canada. Then we gave concerts in Mexico. Our performance was triumphal. When Nina started to sing ‘From a Faraway Land,’ the song ‘My Dear Storks’ enchanted the audience. The concert was awash in tragedy-laden emotions. The audience laughed, cried, and picked up the tune. After the concert the ОmigrОs surrounded our artists. They kissed their clothes and invited to visit them. Incidentally, I had some troubles with KGB after that. I had to write an explanation when I returned.
“I guess Ms. Matviyenko became a recognized singer in our chorus. She had a good repertory. At that time we saw a renaissance of Ukrainian culture. Serhiy Paradzhanov made Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and our chorus began to sing carols. The collective picked up popularity. Nina started to perform solo and to display the manners of a star: she could come late or not to turn up for a rehearsal at all. She has got quite a difficult nature. A frail, small, and shy woman at first glance, she is very stubborn. She could refuse to sing a song, she even incited other girls to sound off. And don’t forget what kind of period it was. Sometimes one had to pay the piper. For example, Ihor Shamo wrote a song about Volgograd on the order of the Ministry of Culture because we were going there on a tour. The song had the following lines: ‘Dew is falling on the grass, dew is falling on the grass, hot dew is falling on the grass, like the tears of mother Russia.’ Ms. Matviyenko balked and refused point blank to sing ‘Russia.’ I understand her, but it was an order. And when we sang, ‘Russia’ turned into ‘in a dew’ (consonance in the Ukrainian language — Ed.). We had many disputes like this. We were both in trouble when the Central Party Committee received a letter saying that our soloist had been married in church. I, as a Party member, had to make the weary round of all kinds of officials. When in office, (First Secretary) Volodymyr Ivashko demanded we strictly punish Nina Matviyenko. The then Minister of Culture Serhiy Bezklubenko dressed me down and passed on to me the words of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine: ‘How dares he criticize the Party line? Summon and tell him to sing in silence.’ And although Ivashko did not like Matviyenko, she was granted both an apartment and title.
“What is very important in a chorus is the idea of an ensemble. Everybody is equal here. If somebody starts putting on airs, it breaks the harmony of singing. 55 of my singers bore the titles of Meritorious and People’s Performers. We often performed without our soloist when she was making foreign tours on her own. She was part of our chorus just formally in the last years of our joint work. Nina and I never quarreled. When she wrote her resignation, she broke into tears. Perhaps I did not behave well when I found no diplomatic words, and each of us went our separate ways.”
“Do you think your chorus is your family?”
“Yes, it is a family. Now we have 150 performers: the chorus proper, the ballet, and the orchestra. Each has a character and problems of his/her own. I try keeping my hand on the pulse and never allow big conflicts to break out. Given goodwill, all kinds of problems can be solved. Unlike Hryhory Veriovka, I am a stricter person, for I think the leader has to be responsible for everything.”
“Your wife was a chorus soloist for a long time. How did you meet her?”
“Under certain circumstances, when I was assistant to Hryhory Veriovka, I had to go to Cherkasy to head a folk chorus. My first encounter with Maya was not so happy for me. Just imagine: I am putting on a May Day show. Everything is OK, but one pretty dancing girl does not follow my instructions. So I asked her to leave the rehearsal. That was nobody else but Maya. A few days later, we had a straight talk, then we began dating, and finally got married. I must admit she still displays a peppery character, although we’ve been together since 1963.”
“Do you have interests outside music?”
“I like painting portraits and landscapes. I have a lot of friends among artists. My best friend was the late Mykhailo Romanyshyn, curator of the National Museum of Ukraine. We used to paint studies together. He worked professionally, but I was an amateur. Once, an old man came up to us and said to me: ‘You must be his teacher. Would you draw my horse? I’ll open a bottle of moonshine.’ The point is that Mykhailo was only making preliminary sketches, with finishing touches to be put at home, while I was painstakingly putting down every detail. So when the old man looked at our works, he saw a flower on my canvas and only general lines on that of Mykhailo. I also have a large collection of photo cameras: about 400, from a Leika to the most modern. The first came about as long ago as in 1945. I like taking pictures. Had it not been for choral singing, I might have become a photographer.”
