There was the usual sound of voices and of seats being taken in the audience. The musicians onstage were checking their instruments, producing all kinds of sounds, often very unmusical. Then there was a splattering of applause, a signal that the audience was ready and impatient. Then the curtain was rung up and silence rushed from the stage, rolling all the way to the gallery. And then an ovation greeting the conductor as he quickly walked onstage, his tails billowing. It was instantly clear that the master of the house had taken his rightful place.
With the first wave of his baton reality seemed to vanish. One had to be there to understand it, to watch the audience become transfixed, the conductor’s sincerity, the magic of his personality leading the orchestra and those in the audience into a different world, making them participants in a fairy tale starring the famous Italian solo violinist Uto Ugi. His violin sang a bewitching song, making listeners groan with delight. The orchestra, conductor, and violinist were competing, making themselves, the audience, every stage hand in the wings ineffably happy.
The Italian musician responded to every encore, appearing onstage hand in hand with conductor Volodymyr Kozhukar and bowing to him, paying tribute to his talent.
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This author is fortunate enough to have attended almost all the concerts and performances prepared and conducted by Volodymyr Kozhukhar over the past several years, always marveling at the purity of every sound, enjoying anew the familiar classic pieces often heard on stage, tapes, and CDs.
What makes him stand out as a creative individual? What makes his talent so special? I believe that it is his skill at completely subordinating himself to the composer. As a student, he developed a fancy for reading scores, trying to perceive the author’s key idea, so now Kozhukhar can brilliantly reproduce it, rendering every composition the way it was originally conceived, never allowing an iota of approximateness, let alone innovation or solely his own interpretation. “You don’t need to be a co-author with Bizet or Tchaikovsky,” he says, “you must make your audience overwhelmed with the real Bizet and Tchaikovsky.”
Not coincidentally, a number of composers want no one else but Volodymyr Kozhukar to conduct their premieres and ask him to conduct the orchestra during their memorial soirees. He has conducted such concerts for Kara-Karayev, Khrennikov, Sviridov, Rodion Shchedrin, and others. He has premiered compositions by Liatoshynsky, Revutsky, Karabyts, Stankevych, Maiboroda, Filipenko, and Shtoharenko. And he has left the world’s leading musicians — among them David Oistrakh, Lev Oborin, Yakov Fliyer, Stanislav Neigauz, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oleh Krysa, Gidon Kremer, Bohodar Kotorovych, — performing with orchestras conducted by Maestro Kozhukhar equally impressed.
All this is thanks to his approach; if it is a piano concerto, then the piano is the sparkling diamond in the tasty mounting of the orchestra, adding beauty to the precious stone, emphasizing its refined cut. This ability to fade into the backdrop [while highlighting the forefront] appears unexpectedly combined with Volodymyr Kozhukhar’s other skill which easier sensed than expressed in words. His orchestra’s musician say simply, “Kozhukhar does it all!”
A whole library of music critics’ professional definitions of the maestro’s creative modus operandi could be collected. They are scattered in newspaper and magazine reviews originating from many countries where the theater [i.e., the National Opera of Ukraine] has been increasingly frequently on concert tours. Here one finds expressions such as “utmost clarity of gesture,” “the orchestra’s faultless, so very expressive rendition, breathing and singing in perfect harmony with the vocalist...”, “Kozhukhar knows exactly how to convey all the warmth and poetic finesse of the music...”, “the conductor does something inexplicable to the audience, rendering it almost hypnotized... The listener, totally overwhelmed, is filled with lofty sentiments radiated by the orchestra...” Hundreds of other such descriptions could be cited.
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It stands to reason to assume that the National Opera has Ukraine’s best musicians on payroll. And this approach should be expected from the leading national opera and ballet company. After all, it is generally known that the greater one’s talent, the higher the bearer’s degree of independence, the worse the bearer’s disposition (in terms of daily life, routine, and other trite components of modern human existence) the less. Such personalities are least inclined to agree to compromises; they tend to speak their mind and often neglect to hold their emotions in check, circumstances notwithstanding. A professional conductor must have an orchestra shaped up as a solid and obedient team, with every musician obeying the conductor’s will and retaining his/her own creative identity, aware that there is a certain objective this team must achieve, and that one must act accordingly. The conductor must persuade every musician to acknowledge the conductor’s creative potential, faultless taste, and erudition, so every musician will follow his instructions unquestioningly — even if with reservations kept to him/herself, concerning certain minor aspects, and while preserving that musician’s creative individuality, so that every individual talent is added to the team effort, in order to translate the conductor’s idea into life. Only after achieving this degree of respect and obedience can the conductor expect the orchestra to play in a truly inspired, highly professional key. This is very difficult to achieve. A hundred or so people under your baton’s command, so many personal relationships, family and other problems, taking ill, taking care of children... How does all this relate to music? The sad fact remains that it does. Volodymyr Kozhukhar does not allow himself to shrug off any of such “minor issues,” knowing they are affecting any of his musicians. Here one cannot go through the motions of being kind and helpful; one must actually be all that and more. Talented people are keenly aware of the slightest manifestation of false empathy. Kozhukhar does not have to pretend to be sincere. He is, perhaps owing to all the many ordeals he has experienced, something few others his age would have endured.
* * *
At the age of ten or so, Volodymyr could play his father’s trumpet well after his death. He joined the village club’s brass band not only because he loved music so much (they would play for audiences lit by kerosene lamps, village weddings, when seeing off army conscripts and people on their last journey to the village cemetery... On such occasions the little trumpeter had enough to eat. At thirteen, the bandleader would now and then entrust the boy with handling the baton. Then came the day when Volodymyr, a junior village herder from Leonivka near Kryzhopil, was enrolled in Kyiv’s most prestigious Lysenko Music School sans concourse, meaning he was not even required to take any entrance exams after passing muster with a specially formed examination board. Quickly he caught up with his classmates, but in midwinter decided to quit. He had to freeze in streetcars for more than an hour to get to the school on time, then back from the Yevbaza to Chetverta Prosika Street in Sviatoshyn [an outlying Kyiv suburb at the time] where he rented a room. On learning this, the school principal arranged for the boy to be enrolled in a boarding school for gifted young people. From then on he was fully provided for by the Socialist State. * * *
As a Conservatory student, the young trumpeter Volodymyr Kozhukhar discovered he could actually hear everything he read in the score. Perhaps there was something to do with the subconscious, but he did hear every note, which was a new experience so thrilling he would borrow a thick tome of opera or ballet music from the Conservatory library and spend the night reading — and actually hearing — it. Many of us simple mortals his age have spent nights reading James Fenimore Cooper or Erich Maria Remarque. It was different with Kozhukhar. Squinting at the score, he could hear not only his trumpet, but also every violin and flute, how the sounds of the wind and string instruments merged into a single accompaniment highlighting the violin or French horn solo complimented with a thudding double bass. In his second year at the conservatory, Volodymyr began to attend symphony orchestra direction classes. He played with the orchestra and vied in a variety of contests, winning every one. Owing perhaps to his being recognized in the local world of music, even at that early age, his ascent on the professional music ladder was quick. Through with a postgraduate course at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, majoring in operatic and symphony conducting, under the able guidance of Prof. Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Volodymyr Kozhukhar found himself appointed Conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine at 23. At 26, he became its Artistic Director, conferred the prestigious title Meritorious Worker in the Arts of Ukraine. At 32, he became Conductor of the Taras Shevchenko Academic State Opera and Ballet Theater. At 35, he was invited to conduct the orchestra of the Soviet Union’s second most important Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater. There he was awarded the even more prestigious title of Meritorious Artiste of Russia. In 1989, the Ukrainian government invited him to become Chief Conductor of the National Opera of Ukraine. Kozhukhar agreed and returned to Kyiv to occupy a post worthy of his talent.
* * *
Somehow we forget that every performance at the Kyiv Opera House played to a half-empty audience, with tickets being supplied to various organizations and state-run enterprises rather than sold [as part of a nationwide cultural enlightenment campaign, so that few were actually willing to accept them]. After that busloads of such “enthusiasts” from factories, collective farms, or military units would park in front of the theater, all expenses paid by the Soviet trade unions, just so the audience could be filled to a certain extent. Not every performance on the National Opera’s repertoire is regarded as a very important cultural event within Ukraine and beyond. Every premiere gathers producers from Germany, Spain, France, and other European countries. These people arrange for concert tours in advance. Of course, every such premiere is preceded by painstaking work involving everyone on the National Opera payroll, ranging from management to stage director to production designer to choreographer, soloist, cast, choir, and every stage hand. And all this must be taken into account and orchestrated by the chief conductor, so as to have every piece fall in the right place, forming a single harmonious picture. It is important to remember that there is an aspect to every performance, something no one can rehearse or otherwise program, but without which any performance loses its magic power. The audience. Here the conductor plays the leading role; his creative personality, his very special individual aura capable of guiding rather than subjugating the orchestra, the cast, and the audience. One is reminded of Kozhukhar’s direction of Nabucco, Aida, Carmen, and the latest premiere of Turandot, where the cast lived rather than sang their parts, where Maestro Kozhukhar would hold the fragile and captivating unity of the choir, orchestra, ballet dancers, and the hearts in the audience (from the front raw all the way to the gallery) literally at the tip of his baton. Naturally, these productions had an envious press following. One of the newspapers dedicated a whole page with photos of scenes, giving the stage director, production designer, and the cast their due, stressing the innovative impact. Yet no mention of the conductor (considering that it was an opera).
I showed Volodymyr Kozhukhar that newspaper page (interestingly, the editorial office was across the street from the Opera). He shrugged and said, “Never mind. Another trifle. Vanity of vanities. Music is the main thing.” He really meant it. He has always stood above such “trifles,” sincerely believing that there must be nothing to distract one from one’s creative effort.
* * *
One last point. I have not been fortunate enough to visit any of the symphony and operatic conducting classes supervised by Prof. Volodymyr Kozhukhar, People’s Artiste of Ukraine and Russia at the Kyiv Conservatory of Music (he taught at the Moscow Conservatory at one time). But I do think that his students can learn the most important lesson every night there, watching him at his conductor’s stand.
Volodymyr Kozhukhar, Chief Conductor of the National Opera of Ukraine, has been nominated for the Taras Shevchenko Prize.
