Last weekend’s momentous cultural event was the opening of the main Ukrainian festival of serious music, the Kyiv Music Fest.
The first day of the festival bore witness to a brilliant success, a choral concert at Kyiv-Pechersk Laura. There were renditions of works by Dmytro Bortniansky, Maksym Berezovsky, Artem Vedel, Mykola Diletsky, Lesia Dychko, Volodymyr Zubytsky, Mykola Lysenko, Yevhen Stankovych, and Viktor Stepurko. It should be noted that not only was the performance high quality, modulation pure as the driven snow, ensemble transfers flawless, polyphonic musical canvas immaculate, but also the perfectly chosen place of performance. The resounding acoustics of the Trapezna Church vaults and the grandeur of its ornamentation produces the effect of angelic music being born here and now.
The symphonic concert at the National Philharmonic, conducted by Kyrylo Karabits, deserves to be called a daring experiment. The audience’s attention was captured by the complexity of the program and by the name of renowned pianist Mykola Suk. The performance itself, however, called forth ambivalence. The audience accepted the offered variant of the conductor’s interpretation, although they had a lingering feeling of amazement with Bach and of confusion with Stravinsky. The fragility of Webern’s punctilious melody was accounted for by the impromptu construction of the composition. Webern’s characteristic pointed and subtly encrusted musical texture was replaced by sudden senseless changes from piano to forte. While performing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the musicians impressed the audience with their desire to be heard. The register of openly happy emotions, the dynamics of the sound’s pressure, and the special solo parts by the brass and the percussion sections made up the performance’s defining feature offered for the audience’s judgment.
The highlight of the second day was the final concert of the Selmer-Paris International Contest that was staged in the Philharmonic. This was the first Selmer to be held in Ukraine, but hopefully not the last. As could be judged by the final concert, the winners in all age groups showed wonderful mastery of their instruments
The fest program, lasting until September 30, and its program included many concerts, which aroused great interest, if not agitation, among music lovers. First and foremost was the final concert at which the People’s National Academic Orchestra of Ukraine (conducted by Volodymyr Sirenko) was slated to perform the symphonies of Gustav Mahler and Vitaly Hubarenko (representing the beginning and the end of the twentieth century). The sixth day of the festival also had much to offer. First was the concert at the national academy of music, the program of which included pieces by our own classic Borys Liatoshynsky, performed far too rarely (still it has to be mentioned that for the level of the Kyiv Music Fest the Night Songs offered constitute a very humble representation of the composer’s heritage). Second was the concert at the National Philharmonic, which included pieces by Bach, Shnitke, Karabits, Bibik, and Britten (the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra conducted by Roman Kaufman). As a clear organizers’ shortcoming in juxtaposition to this concert a no less interesting musical event took place at the House of Organ Music, where opuses by Yevhen Stankovych, Alfred Shnitke, and Valentyn Sylvestrov were performed by the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra. Incidentally, for the people’s consideration, the majority of the Kyiv Music Fest’s events offered free admission.
Before its eleventh convocation, the Kyiv Music Fest finally discarded its cultural-educational strategy, turning into a forum of the Ukrainian symphony music of the last decade. To better understand the importance of the current event, it seems worth recalling previous festivals, the decade of creative and organizing experience under the motto, Ukrainian Music in the Context of World Culture, especially since each festival year was marked by its own special events, statistics, and history.
1990: Kyiv Music Fest was founded and, following Season Premieres, became one of the first in a long line of cultural discoveries — theoretical forums, master classes, young composers’ and performers’ contests. Its emergence against the backdrop of collapsing Soviet totalitarianism with its omnipotent bureaucratic structures, was like the raising of another iron curtain since Kyiv Music Fest for the first time introduced Ukrainian audiences to twentieth-century foreign music.
1991: The second year was marked by a young performers’ contest named for Marko and Ivanna Kots, its sponsor, held within the KMF framework and based on the thematic principle. Among the themes offered are different years filled with dramatic events in Ukraine: the 1933 Holodomor Manmade Famine, Chornobyl nuclear disaster, Babyn Yar massacre, etc.
1992: The third KMF was extremely rich in premieres. 100 creative debuts took place in seven days! And, unexpectedly, much choral music (later, this type of music would become a KMF specialty). Among the renditions were compositions by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Maksym Berezovsky, Dmytro Bortniansky, Mykola Lysenko, Lesia Lychko, and Yuri Ishchenko.
1993-94: These festivals were marked by an active incorporation of Borys Liatoshynsky’s creative heritage (commemorating the composer’s centennial), but not all went smoothly. In 1994, the composer’s Fourth Symphony (seldom performed in Ukraine) had to be canceled, as one of the performers fell ill, and no prizes are awarded at the young composers’ contest.
1996: The KMF underwent a severe test of its viability. Its financial condition was catastrophic, and the complete lack of state support threatened the festival’s very existence. Only 16 concerts were held, with just one dedicated to symphony music. Unprecedented!
1997-99: A period of stabilization. The fest revived in 1997 with 4 symphony, 12 chamber, and 2 jazz orchestras. Fest 1998 was marked by a very sad event: Volodymyr Symonenko, one of the founders and director of the Composers Union’s Musical Information Center, passed away. The ninth festival coincided with Myroslav Skoryk’s seventieth birthday, climaxing in the author’s concert at the National Opera.
In the ten years of KMF’s existence, 1995 proved to be its peak: 30 concerts, including 14 symphony, 7 chamber, and 3 jazz ones. The 1996 festival turned out to be the most critical: 16 concerts. The other festivals have been more or less stable, as to the number of concert and repertoire.
Despite the variety of music offered during the festivals, one can discern a degree of genre specialization. The original orientation toward stylistic and temporal versatility does not seem fully justified. Classical music of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries is not adequately represented, while twentieth century music — Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich — is seldom performed and mainly represented by textbook compositions or miniatures. The program largely consists of premieres by young composers, more often than not presenting chamber or symphony pieces. What about Ukrainian and foreign composers of the first half of the twentieth century? Is it disrespect for music from the recent past or an inability to perform it? Perhaps both, because the former implies the latter. Where can that ability come from, considering that music by those masters is practically never heard onstage? A whole layer of world music of the second half of the twentieth century is left out. Only popular numbers are borrowed from the immense heritage of Sylvestrov, Stankovych, Hrabovsky, Hodziatsky, Denisov, Shnitke, and Gubaidulina (e.g., Shnitke’s Grosso or Sylvestrov’s Symphony No. 5).
One more fact. KMF organizers always emphasize the versatility and scope of foreign modern music. However, statistics show that the United States and Canada are the main and permanent guests, while Japan, Great Britain, Israel, and France are just footnotes introduced in the general musical context.
The Kyiv Music Fest is meeting its eleventh anniversary as a firmly established musical tradition, although it no longer claims to envelope the whole boundless musical massif. Without its previous musical-educational ambitions, the festival is now a serious presentation of the Ukrainian symphony and to a lesser extent chamber music of the past decade, which cannot be heard anywhere except at this festival.
