The National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine hosts a concert dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Shchedryk Children’s Choir, which has no analogues in Ukraine, and maybe in the whole world.
The choir may be called children’s only according to the age of its members, because the rest of the indices – repertoire, level of performance, numerous victories in choir competitions, international music status – prove that it is an absolutely adult and serious ensemble. The tickets for the anniversary concert Shchedryk gave in the Lysenko Column Hall were sold out in a flash. The most fastidious part of the audience – professors of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine – were listening to Shchedryk’s performance of Mykola Leontovych’s works, Ave Maria and cantata How to Paint a Bird by Yefrem Pidhaiets, five-part Missa Brevis by Mozart with surprise and tears of amazement. For the largest part of the concert Shchedryk sang to the accompaniment of Kyiv Chamber Orchestra (conductor: Vitalii Protasov) and soloists Oksana Nikitiuk, Valentyna Matiushenko, Olha Chubareva, and Olha Tabulina, whereas the artistic director and chief conductor of the choir Marianna Sablina was behind the curtains. However, namely Marianna and her mother Iryna Sablina who founded Shchedryk in 1971 were the main heroines of the anniversary. In an interview to The Day Marianna SABLINA told about the beginning of Shchedryk, how the choir has changed in the 40 years and shared the secrets, owing to which she is capable of keeping a children’s ensemble on a high-professional level, which adult musicians sometimes fail to achieve.
LIKE PREVIOUSLY, WE ARE CONSIDERED A CHOIR SOCIETY
Ms. Sablina, how do you select children for Shchedryk? Are there any age restrictions or any particular demands to its participants?
“There are no formalities in our work. On the one hand, it is bad, but, on the other hand, nobody dictates us anything. In this concern we are a very ‘mobile’ ensemble. Believe it or not, there are no rules whatsoever. In Soviet time we held selection in schools at the beginning of every new school year. Now it is impossible: most of secondary schools have turned into ‘closed clubs,’ with each one considering the pupils its own ‘property.’ Whereas the activity beyond school was welcome, now the situation is different. Besides, parents, in my opinion, are not really eager to teach their children music. I have been member of Shchedryk since I was nine, I have sung for 10 years, like most of children. Our ensemble has no strict age restrictions, this is a very individual thing. The choir members include not only schoolchildren, but students as well. There are people who come only for a week, they do not want to take part in the choir’s active life, they simply sing for their own pleasure. Formally we have amateur talent activities. ”
They say it is hard to get into Shchedryk. But the situation looks quite different in your story.
“Selection of children is a constant process. It is a myth that it is hard to get into the choir. Moreover, we do not eliminate anyone at once, we just recommend people to go to the preparation lineup. There are ‘silent people’ who begin to sing not even in the first year.”
So, Shchedryk is not a many-year choir, it is divided into several different choirs?
“There is a concert choir, which goes on tours. The number of its members varies, depending on the repertoire, sometimes on the conditions dictated by the accepting side, and sometimes simply on the number of places in the bus. Separate rehearsals are held for the main and preparation lineups. Children aged six to nine, who are too young to perform in the choir, sing in the preparation lineup. They get into the main lineup since the age of eight. There is a group for small children, aged three to four.”
Do children learn how to read music notes and play music instruments, besides the choir rehearsals?
“Unlike music schools and music-choir studios, widespread in other countries, we work in the Palace of Children and Youth’s Creative Work, Pechersk District (former Pioneer Palace) and are still called in an old manner, a choir society. Additional subjects are inadmissible luxury for the society. They require additional classrooms, time, teachers, and, correspondingly, funding, for you can demand anything but enthusiasm from a teacher. I build the plan of rehearsals within the frameworks of the program which is being studied, but it is rather spontaneous and depends on the lineup. Currently the classes on working days have become problematic because of the huge number of lessons in secondary schools and preparation to various Olympiads. It turns out that only Sundays we have a rehearsal, which is full-fledged in terms of time and feedback.”
Do the participants of Shchedryk include children who do not know notes and sing from what they hear?
“Such children make the majority. They learn the parts from the choirmaster’s voice, which has turned out to be no less efficient. I am getting more and more convinced that such approach – communicative rather than scholarly – has its own advantages. Children have no fear before the complicated note text, they are not restrained by the thought about the changeable size, atonal music, combination of far tonalities, etc.
“I think you should study music works with children from the main idea, and only then get into details. And music thought is what organizes the work and unites all of its components.”
They sing many compositions in foreign languages in a very intelligent manner. How do you manage to achieve this?
“The main thing is not to emphasize the complexity of the text, you should not say: ‘And now we are going to learn a Japanese text.’”
How do you learn the Japanese texts?
“This is a different question, but it’s a secret. Everything is perceived in a much better way on the run, in live performance. We learn foreign texts only through singing, by phrasing. Therefore neither I, no the children can tell you the text of a music work like a verse, separately from the melody.”
Do you discuss with children at the rehearsals the sense of the music compositions, its philosophy – for example, when you sing Mozart’s Requiem in a language they don’t understand?
“Now you can find any information you want. They can learn everything from the Internet. Sometimes you have just to embarrass them, saying in a confidential manner: ‘You know this, don’t you?’ – and that will be enough. It is better to communicate with children on equal grounds, like with your fellows. This obliges them much more than any school lectures.”
IN A SENSE, THERE ARE NO PLACES TO SING IN KYIV, AND IT IS EXPENSIVE
Your repertoire does not include any usual children’s songs about elephants and hares.
“It does not, and it never will. Music should be good, interesting, and simply genuine. Incidentally, Yevhen Pidhaiets’s Bird is much more appropriate for children than all other things we sang.
“Currently we have begun to prepare for participation in the famous festival in Kronberg, which was headed for a long while by Mstyslav Rostropovych. I have long dreamt about Shchedryk’s participation in this music forum. The festival’s resident orchestra is Kremerata Baltica its regular participants include Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Natalia Gutman, Ivan Monigetti, Harry Hoffman. Some programs of the festival take place under the patronage of the widow of great cellist Pablo Casals. The head of the festival Raimund Trenkler heard Shchedryk four years ago, when we sang in Cologne Cathedral on Christmas. And last spring the choir performed in Kronberg and took part in the concerts in commemoration of Rostropovych, after which we received an invitation to the festival. We are supposed to prepare several big works; one of them may be written by Gia Kancheli.”
Where can one hear you in Kyiv in the breaks between anniversary concerts?
“It turned out so that we started this season with an anniversary concert, and last season, besides solo performances, we eagerly participated in several philharmonic projects of the Lysenko column Hall. Unfortunately, this is the only hall in our capital, which meets all the parameters needed for a choir. In our time we frequently performed in Lutheran Church and St. Alexander Catholic Church. Before going on a tour to Rome we sang in the Greek Catholic Church of St. Basil. For example, it is hard to sing in the National House of Organ and Chamber Music – everything’s droning there. The Small Conservatoire Hall is too small. In a sense, there is no place to sing in Kyiv, and it is also expensive.”
Ms. Sablina, you continued choirmaster’s dynasty. When did your mother pass to you the reins of government in Shchedryk?
“I sang in Shchedryk since the moment it was founded. I began to work as a choirmaster in 1978 when I was a second-year student of a music school. I became officially a staff member in 1983, it seems to me. There was no ceremony of passing the helm. Mother stopped to conduct the choir in 2003, when she moved together with my father to work to Bonn for five years [Marianna’s father is the famous conductor Roman Kofman, currently head of the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra. – Author].”
WE FINISHED THE “SOVIET PERIOD” IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY: WE WENT ON TOUR TO THE US
In your opinion, has the choir changed strongly in 40 years? Has children’s attitude to Shchedryk and style of the choirmaster’s work changed?
“The choir is getting mature: the repertoire extends, it becomes more confident, the geography of tours is widening, and the number of victories is increasing. Today, compared with the past, the life rhythm of the ensemble has speeded up, you have to work quicker, in a more efficient way, and be more target-oriented. Mother had more possibilities to communicate with children and parents beyond the rehearsals, help to develop general background of the choir members, for example, hold literary readings. For our generation Shchedryk was a kind of shelter, where people hid from the lies of the Soviet reality.”
Today Shchedryk performs very frequently abroad. Was it possible in the Soviet time?
“Shchedryk finished the ‘Soviet period’ in a beautiful manner: it went on tour to the United States and won the grand-prix of a Canada competition in 1990. The idea to invite us was a brainchild of the head of the Canada choir, who came across a cassette with our recoding. They raised money and sent an invitation addressed to Shchedryk to the Ministry of Culture, but for some reason the invitation was given to another Kyiv ensemble. We managed to go on tour at a second attempt, when the organizing committee of the International Choir Competition in Powel-River, near Vancouver, joined in the invitation, where Ukraine was officially represented by a more ‘worthy,’ in the opinion of the government of our republic, choir. The absurdity of the situation was aggravated by the fact that at the same time we received an invitation to represent the USSR’s art in the Games of Good Will in Seattle (together with Suchasnyk Theater, Borodin Quartet). That what the first of the choir’s four tours to this continent was like. Before then we had not been abroad, but we could go to every corner of the Soviet Union, which was no less interesting. We annually went on tours and had time to see the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, and Moldova. It was much simpler to organize the tours at that time, because we had a widespread system of choir associations and trade unions.
“Several years ago we decided to refresh our touring experience. With the company UHMK we held ‘Ukrainian Music Seasons of the Shchedryk Choir’: we have been to Zaporizhia, Horlivka, Stakhanove, Lviv, and Kharkiv. It was really interesting. When you go to the West, you have some notion of what you may expect, but here the touring was full of surprises. Cold hotel numbers and halls could come along with warm reception of knowledgeable, competent audience. Ukrainian cities have preserved decent halls and wonderful museums. These trips were very useful for the children.”
Do you agree to corporative performances?
“Of course, it is contrary to the overall spirit of Shchedryk. But my fellows persuaded me, so we decided simply not to compromise. If people call us and ask to sing ‘Little Mammoth’s Song,’ we don’t do that. But if people take interest in our main repertoire, why not? And the participation in the Christmas program for Deutsche Welle was also a wonderful promotion of the choir: we received an invitation to take part in the prestigious Beethovenfest.”
