The National House of Organ and Chamber Music hosted a concert featuring works by the noted French composer Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). It was organized at the initiative of People’s Artiste of Ukraine Natalia Svyrydenko, a harpsichordist and tireless propagator of baroque music. She performed with Olena Kharachko (soprano), Olena Pushkarska (violin), and flutist Volodymyr Dmytriyev, who is a laureate of international contests.
The program included five of Rameau’s Pieces de clavecin en concerts (Concert Music for Harpsichord, 1741) arranged to the accompaniment of a flute and violin. Apart from everything else, the music immortalizes the composer’s contemporaries, among them prototypes of his lifetime musician colleagues. Natalia Svyrydenko’s rendition is usually marked by maximum immersion in the epoch and she cuts a unique creative figure. She could be described as a Ukrainian Wanda Landowska. She teaches and heads Ukraine’s only harpsichord factory. She is the founder of the Chamber Music Society and artistic director of the Bortniansky Trio. While propagating old music, she does many things for the first time, often despite rather than thanks to the times that are far too distinct from the refined baroque epoch. A series of CDs with her performances will soon be released.
The second part of the concert included the cantata Diana and Actaeon, a rarity, for the music is hard to find even as a record. As the name implies, the subject is mythological (many times reflected in works of art). A hunter named Actaeon spotted the goddess of hunting naked, she was bathing in a forest pond. Outraged by the intrusion, Diana turned him into a stag and he was later torn to pieces by his own hounds. The cantata is written from the author’s person (three arias with recitatives accompanied by violin and harpsichord). The young singer Olena Kharachko already has a reputation as a meditative and masterful exponent of music. This time she had to use her voice to convey all the peripeteia of the unfortunate hunter (with satyrs, angels, and all kinds of evil forest spirits).
The new concert program has brought Rameau’s seldom performed music closer to modern audiences, due to the excellent performance and exquisite choice of music.
