Farbotony is a powerful and enduring creative project that occupies an important place among Ukrainian music festivals. This year the Farbotony festival featured traditional concerts by the Kyiv Camerata national ensemble; Music Dialogues: Ukraine-Germany, showcasing the renowned German pianist Frederica Richter; and a literary-music soiree based on the poetry of Sofia Maidanska and Ivan Franko. An added bonus was the 2nd International Contest of Young Composers and Pianists, involving more than 40 musicians and a highly prestigious jury comprised of noted pianists and composers from Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Canada, and the United States.
“Kaniv is the true spiritual capital of Ukraine,” says Farbotony’s director general Ivan Taranenko, a native of Kaniv, who lives in Kyiv, where he works as a composer and pianist. “During our trip to Chernecha Hora all the festival participants felt this...In this area the poems of Taras Shevchenko sound so topical, it seems as though they were written today. The spirit of the great poet seems to be floating above us.
“Farbotony is a small-scale festival, but it is known in Europe. My concert plans include not only Kamianets and Horodyshche, the birthplace of Hulak- Artemovsky, but also Uman, Cherkasy, and Korsun (with its Castle of the Countess Lopukhina in which Nikolai Berdyaev lived at the beginning of the 20 th century).
Were previous festivals held at the Shevchenko preserve?
Taranenko: Yes, some of them were. The first piano competition was held in 2003. We brought the restored concert piano of the renowned Ukrainian composer, Mykhailo Skorulsky. I would like to use this occasion to express sincere gratitude to his granddaughter Roksana Skorulska and to the curator of the Mykola Lysenko Museum. They both helped us at the time; Kaniv needed a good grand piano that could be used by festival competitors. This concert piano sounds great, since it is more than 110 years old. By the way, the museum’s foyer in Kaniv is sort of a miniature version of the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine. Many leading Ukrainian performers have appeared there, including the Kyiv Camerata and the harpsichordist Natalia Svyrydenko. It was under her creative guidance that Bortniansky’s opera Sokil (The Falcon) was performed in Kaniv for the first time in 100 years.
Kaniv is experiencing a bad patch these days. What are some ways that the festival can attract local residents?
Taranenko: These days there are many Ukrainian towns in a state of decline or stagnation. The situation in Kaniv is especially painful. Still, music life is blossoming not just in the capital. For example, music teachers, despite their meager salaries, continue to act as champions of this movement; they are aware of their duty to uphold cultural life and introduce beauty to life. One hundred years ago Kaniv had a drama company that always played to packed halls (the famous pre-revolutionary actor Lensky is buried in Kaniv). This high cultural standard was lost under the Soviets. But, compared to these days, the district House of Culture hosted leading performers like Moscow’s Small Symphony Orchestra directed by Konstantin Simeonov and Zakhar Bronn. We are trying to use our cultural projects to revive this high standard. I ask my musician friends to visit Kaniv more often. The local public is very appreciative and every concert will fill the performers with positive energy.
They say that the first Farbotony festival was considered a reckless scheme.
Taranenko: During the first festival I acted as manager, bookkeeper, even driver; I had to do everything myself. When I visited Cherkasy’s Department of Culture and proposed my festival idea, they told me it was a reckless idea. I had to prove that the town needed the festival, that a number of prominent musicians were willing to participate, including the bandura player Roman Hrynkiv, the piano duet of Yuriy Kot and Iryna Aleksiychuk, and Dmytro Radyk’s Choir of the National University of Culture and Art.
I should point out that we organized four festivals without any support from the regional authorities and relevant ministries, only thanks to sponsors and art patrons. This year we have good sponsors, including Rembudrestavratsiya, the Europe-Contact Foundation, and the Ukraine Kontakt Society. But we don’t have powerful patrons like we used to. I am grateful to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for helping us with our projects for the past three years.
I believe that Farbotony must keep evolving. If we ever feel that this festival is starting to repeat itself and is losing the public’s interest, there will be no sense in continuing. Our main objective is to get the younger generation interested, offer young people an opportunity to discover the wonderful world of music. We are planning to hold the 2nd String Competition, including the violin, cello, guitar, and bandura. Next year we will take part in the Days of Ukrainian Culture in Germany. Our laureates performed during the conference “Ukrainian Music: Ways to Assert the National Idea in the European Context” in Leipzig. Our plans include concert tours of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, and France. Our friends have offered to arrange a Ukrainian-German-Polish festival next year.
Let’s focus on creativity. You may be the only cultural figure in Kyiv who has succeeded in creating an original folk-jazz community in the Ukrainian capital. How does this “nonstandard” attitude gibe with an academic composer’s standards?
Taranenko: I can’t imagine not creating academic music; I would do only that if I could. Unfortunately, there’s no money in it these days in Ukraine. I began to love jazz and folklore a long time ago. It is interesting to combine these different musical genres. For example, I have written a jazz arrangement of the Ukrainian folk song “Oy, bula ya sim lit udovoiu” (Oh, I was a widow for seven years). The female soloist sings it in the original, authentic manner, but there is a sax playing a counterpoint improvisation. The singer is also accompanied by a string quartet doing “aerobatics” on the strings. I think this number can be performed at any kind of festival: jazz, folk, academic, even modern.
Your recent Ivan Franko project at the National Philharmonic Society got a lot of public response.
Taranenko: The program combined words, music, choreography, actors on stage, and songs. Franko was presented as a romantic young man, rather than a revolutionary or the Kameniar rock-smasher as we had all been accustomed to visualizing him in Soviet times. The poetess Sofia Maidanska used his poetry and letters to Olha Rozhkevych to create a composition that was reminiscent of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Among the performers that night were Bohdan Kotorovych’s Kyiv Soloists, the baritone Valeriy Buimister, a young singer by the name of Markian Sviato, the guitarist Yevhen Mitin (one of the winners of our competition), and the bandura player Roman Hrynkiv.
Hrynkiv appears to be your favorite musician. You often perform together. Who is the more dominant of your duo?
Taranenko: That’s hard to say. We feel each other when we are doing joint improvisations. We know who will do what next, so we can even finish our performance at the same time. Roman Hrynkiv is a unique individual. He can take something out of nothing and turn it into something that everyone will love listening to. He can pick a note and make a whole composition out of it. He has turned his bandura into an all-purpose instrument. Roman is on a constant creative quest. He is restless in his creative search and never lets his friends and colleagues take a break. He wants everyone to forge ahead.
