Ancient photos of the Central Archives of Literature and Arts, located next to St. Sophia Cathedral, can be seen in some monographs dedicated to Ukrainian classics composers. And this is no wonder, since this building was initially erected as the St. Sophia Seminary in the middle of the 18th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the famous Ukrainian composer and choir conductor Kyrylo Stetsenko studied there. It should also be mentioned that Liudmyla Protsenko was the first director of the Archives Museum. She descended from a renowned family of musicians (her father was a flute professor at the Kyiv Conservatory, and her mother was a famous singer). And she herself, after obtaining an archivist historian diploma, entered the Kyiv Conservatory (the class of Maria Donets-Tesseir, who brought up a whole group of brilliant vocalists). Therefore, since the very day of the founding of the institution, music has always echoed here, and serious attention is paid to collection and preservation of documents related to the history of music art.
The “Artistic Gatherings at the Archives” project, initiated by the director of the Archives Olena Kulchy, was designed to restore the connection between the huge archive heritage that is preserved there and the modern art process. Let us remind that a number of concerts took place as a part of this project. Among them are those of the famous accordion player Roman Yusypei (the program of the concert consisted of works by young Ukrainian, Russian, and German composers, and was complemented with an exhibit of books and documents “The Accordion in Ukrainian Music”); the Kyiv children’s choir Zirnytsia, directed by Pavlo Merezhyn (the Archives Museum presented the choir with a copy of one of the works by Mykhailo Verykivsky, whose hand-written scores are preserved at the Archives); a popular bard, winner of numerous contests of poetry put to music, and the Archives research officer Olesia Naidiuk; and also an artistic meeting with philosopher and writer, president of the festival “Stairway to the Sky,” Volodymyr Simonov.
One of the latest events of the “Artistic Gatherings” was the concert “Piano Monographs. Book 1: Oleksandr Shchetynsky.” It was created and held thanks to the help of pianist Oleh Bezborodko and music expert Iryna Tukova. And the third hero of the evening was the Museum’s grand piano, made in 1926, which once belonged to the actor, theater director, and famous member of the Les Kurbas Theater Vasyl Vasylko. After his death, the grand piano was moved from Odesa to the Archives Museum, along with the maestro’s manuscripts and museum collection.
It is planned that Bezborodko and Tukova organize one concert “book” every six months and create rather unexpected images of rather well-known modern composers. That is what actually happened at the opening concert: Shchetynsky’s music is known to everyone! He is an accomplished maestro, but his works performed on piano became a revelation even for his colleagues.
“EACH WORK HAS ITS STORY AND SEQUENCE OF EVENTS”
Iryna TUKOVA, P.D. in art history, associate professor at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine:
“Shchetynsky’s music is not easy to comprehend. One needs to listen carefully for a number of times before eventually understanding the beauty of the music and the author’s brilliant solutions to some conceptual and technical tasks. If we talk about some general features that unite the composer’s most different works, I think those are sincerity and emotional tension of the expression. It is true that for a composer who admits to his own serial and post-serial type of thinking, this quality cannot seem to be a typical one. However, I want to stress that if you listen to his works multiple times, you start comprehending the special expression of thinking, which in some cases transforms into tense monology.
The second important feature of Shchetynsky’s music is its dramaturgy. Every work has its story and sequence of events. This feature is emphasized by the composer in names of works and authorial comments to them. I would like to draw attention to the composer’s careful attitude towards the sound, his desire to create a unique sound atmosphere in every work.
“Shchetynsky wrote about 10 works for piano solo and 1 for a pair of pianos. Four of his piano pieces were played during the concert. They gave an opportunity to create a vision of the evolution of the author’s style, because they have been written in the time period from the mid-1970s (Four Preludes) to 2006 (Double Gleam, Prelude Dedicated to the Memory of Shostakovich).
“The peculiarity of Shchetynsky’s music lies in the fact that it requires not only ‘its listener’ (a person who is an expert in culture, who is willing to follow the music’s plot, to trust music as much as the knowledge the person possesses), but ‘its player’ as well. The duet ‘music by Shchetynsky, performed by Bezborodko’ seems to be extremely successful, because the piano player showed the open emotionality of the composer’s works, some special details of sound (for example, creation of purely vocal sound production in composition Praise God’s Name), their integrity, and logicality of composition.
“This concert left a very vivid emotional impression, thanks to a combination of various factors: the wonderful hall of the Archives Museum, Vasylko’s old grand piano, the sincere and emotional music by Shchetynsky, and Bezborodko’s brilliant and stylistically perfect performance.”
“IT IS AN INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGE TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING HIMSELF, THE COMPOSER, AND THE PUBLIC”
Oleh BEZBORODKO, Ph.D. (Arts), pianist, composer, associate professor of special piano department at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine:
“Oleksandr Shchetynsky plays the piano himself and knows very well how this or another sound effect or quality can be achieved. He has his own unique sound image of the instrument. Moreover, Oleksandr can explain everything very precisely, often referring to things known to a professional pianist. I remember how, in the second part of the Quintet, I was playing a tuneful, expressive melody with a deep, saturated sound. But then the composer said, ‘No, you are playing it very much Rachmaninoff style, while you should look up to Chopin.’ And this was said about the music which might appear to be worlds apart from the Romantic style!
“Shchetynsky’s work abounds in a world of subtle allusions which are not always obvious, but they fill his music with sense diversity and add new, multiple planes to it, which is what makes classical music different from any other kind.
“I think I have heard of Shchetynsky since I first started to work on composition seriously. I got acquainted with his work at Serhii Piliutikov’s presentations on modern music, which he held at the Union of Composers. Then, working on my doctoral thesis, I read some papers on his music. My impression of Shchetynsky was of a very interesting composer, whose works, for some reason, were very seldom performed in Kyiv. We met five years ago at the concert of Kyivska Kamerata, where my Kazka koroliv (The Kings’ Tale) was played. Oleksandr asked for records and scores of my pieces, listened to them, and offered some quite critical, yet very important remarks. Then followed various joint projects, such as the concert of the German band MusikFabrik, projects with the National Wind Band, the Kyiv Symphonieta, and performances at the Lviv Contrasts and GogolFest.
“I have been ‘pregnant’ with the idea of Monographs for quite a long time. I have been playing contemporary music for a long time, too. I could compile several authorial programs from the pieces by certain composers I have already played. Still, I would love to play Sviatoslav Luniov, Vitalii Hodziatsky, Ihor Shcherbakov. Playing one composer’s pieces is interesting but dangerous at the same time. There is a bit of experiment and trial in it, both for me and the composer. Even monographic classical pieces are extremely hard to play. It is an intellectual challenge to everyone, including himself, the composer, and the audience.”
“WE NEED TO GET RID OF THOUGHTS ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY AND INACCESSIBILITY OF ART”
Oleksandr SHCHETYNSKY, composer:
“The program and Prelude Dedicated to the Memory of Shostakovich, which was created right before my trip to Kyiv, included the pieces I wrote back in Kharkiv. Four preludes were written back at school, I entered the conservatory with them. I played them at concerts for a couple of times and then, when other piano compositions started to appear, which seemed to be more ‘advanced’ to me, I stopped performing them. And when the idea of this concert emerged, I thought it would be interesting to show them along with the latest opuses.
“During my studies I wrote a lot for piano because I performed everything myself. In the 1980s, Praise God’s Name and another opus, Kharkiv’s Music, appeared.
I wrote the piece Alone in 1990, and Double Gleam – in 2006. In general, I have about 10 compositions for piano.
“We created the concert program jointly with Oleh Bezborodko. It was clear right away that Praise God’s Name should be in it, because it was the most large-scale composition, which had to be the centerpiece of the program. I had almost nothing to do during the rehearsal: Oleh understood everything in the way I had planned. The internal core of his performances is something I can relate very much to. Oleh is an exceptionally deep and experienced musician.
“Another important moment is the choice of the hall. At first, we went through a number of options, but then we decided that the Archives Museum was the best place. And we were right, since the program was full of music rich in spiritual content, even in the compositions that did not directly state that. Listening to my music being performed within the St. Sophia Sanctuary was an extraordinary event in a spiritual sense for me.
“I think that this series of concerts is very promising, if the rest of them are done in the same uncompromising way. I liked that the presenter Iryna Tukova did not flirt with the audience. She said what she thought was necessary, without fear that somebody might not understand something. I think that we need to get rid of thoughts about accessibility and inaccessibility of art. You never know who is going to come to the concert. And you need to trust the audience. It is quite possible that the things people don’t understand today will become comprehensible to them in the future.”
