Dmytro Tkachenko, the artistic director and spirit behind this year’s music festival, is a wonderful violinist and the winner of several prestigious international contests. The administrative tasks and painstaking work involved in organizing this event did not prevent the musician from elating his fans with his concert performances. In addition to touring all over the world, from Japan to Europe to the United States, constantly promoting Ukrainian music and premiering contemporary Ukrainian compositions, Tkachenko has always taken part in several concert programs of this festival.
Dmytro Tkachenko is a graduate of Mykola Lysenko Music College and the National Music Academy of Ukraine, where his teachers were Bohodar Kotorovych and Yaroslava Rivniak. He was then invited to study with Ifra Nieman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Today he is studying with David Takeno and Krzysztof Smietana. In Ukraine, Tkachenko has been performing in the most prestigious concert halls, accompanied by famous orchestras, including the National Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine.
According to the festival organizers, its main objective is to promote and support Ukrainian composers and their works not only in Ukraine but abroad. This kind of musical cooperation is interesting and mutually advantageous for the participants, and serves to foster understanding between various fields of creative endeavor.
The concert began with the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor (Op. 15), featuring Valeria Kucherenko and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, conducted by Viktor Ploskina. Among the other concert numbers were Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (arranged for the symphony by S. Gorchakov) and works by Mozart, Skoryk, and Britten. The featured performers were Tkachenko on violin and the Symphony Orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, conducted by Mykola Diadiura.
These different works created a solid and harmonious program. Thus, the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute was followed by Myroslav Skoryk’s Carpathian Concerto, Alban Berg’s violin concerto Dem Andenken Engels, and Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Op. 34).
A concert entitled “Camerata Time” was staged as part of the festival, starring soloists Bohdana Pivnenko (violin), Bohdana Stelmashenko (flute), Dmytro Tavanets (piano), and Oles Yasko (violin) with the Kyiv Camerata (conducted by Valeriy Matiukhin) who performed compositions by Stankovych, Piart, and Akmasha’s Etude for Two Violins and String Instruments (2006).
The Ukrainian National Academy’s Small Hall was the venue of a concert by the British pianist Steven Guttman, who tours frequently, records, and teaches a master class in contemporary piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His playing and teaching style is marked by expressiveness, temperament, quality of sound, and attention to detail. He performed contemporary Ukrainian compositions with utmost precision, having analyzed every composer’s instructions.
A number of British composers have written compositions especially for Guttman. The Ukrainian public had an opportunity to appreciate the special talent of this gifted pianist, while Ukrainian composers, like Oleh Bezborodko, Yevhen Braha, Maryna Denysenko, Mykola Kovalinas, Hennadiy Liashenko, Ivan Taranenko, Viktor Telychko, and Viktor Yantso, thrilled the audience with their original piano versions of Ukrainian folk songs composed especially for the concert. The concert program also included compositions by Berg, Sylvestrov, and Tippett. Among the noted guests of the soiree was the world-renowned Ukrainian composer Valentyn Sylvestrov, whose reclusive nature is legendary.
A bright entry in the festival’s history was a concert by the Kyiv Soloists, conducted by Bohodar Kotorovych, featuring violonist Myroslava Kotorovych and pianist Oleh Bezborodko. The concert program included Mozart’s Divertissement for string instruments and two French horns (arranged by Carlo Zecchi for solo violin) and Benjamin Britten’s Variations on Frank Bridge for a String Orchestra Young Apollo for piano and string orchestra.
TARIVERDIYEV AND CHORNOBYL
The festival’s closing concert was entitled “Quo Vadis,” commemorating two dates: the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster and the 75th anniversary of the birth of Mikael Tariverdiev, a noted Soviet-era composer of operas, ballets, chamber and vocal music, music for organ and other instruments, as well as soundtracks for 132 Soviet films. His Chornobyl Organ Symphony was performed together with the premiere performance in Ukraine of the romantic concerto for an alto and stringed instruments.
This composition revealed an unusual side of the celebrated composer’s creativity. His organ symphony captivated the listeners seconds after the first chord. This original composition evokes allusions to old musical traditions linked to the featured instrument. It expresses dramatic sentiments stemming from the nuclear tragedy and the sense of death. The magical sound and inspired quietude of the music convey the listener to a different dimension, provoking thoughts of the value of life. However, the greatest gems in Tariverdiev’s creative legacy are his melodies and diverse themes, although his Chornobyl composition appears to leave no room for anything living or human. Although his Chornobyl composition is performed by only one soloist, its richness of ideas, completeness of sound, and rich timbres serve to create an entire symphony. The flickering lighting effects accompanying the performance added to the apocalyptic sensation.
The “Quo Vadis” concert program was introduced by the composer’s widow, Vera Gorislavovna Tariverdieva, who said that various versions of this program exist, but the Chornobyl Symphony remains its core. The union of this symphony with the Concerto for alto is an organic one, in her opinion, and seems to continue the narration begun in the Chornobyl Organ Symphony.
During the festival we spoke with Mrs. Tariverdieva. “The main trend in the Foundation’s activities is the Tariverdiev Organ Competition, which is held every two years in Kaliningrad. Since last year (the fourth competition) its geography has expanded; the first round was held in Hamburg and Moscow; the second and third ones in Kaliningrad. I hope Kyiv joins the competition. Mikael Leonovich was very fond of your city. He was shocked by the Chornobyl disaster and this can be heard in his music.
“I am pleased to see that Kyivans remember his legacy. Tariverdiev did a number of concert tours in Ukraine, offering various programs in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. He considered the performance of the Chornobyl Organ Symphony a top priority in 1988. This music penetrates people’s hearts. Tariverdiev’s legacy may be divided into two categories: music for films and academic compositions. The composer never made any such distinction. He was worried when he was tagged as a movie composer. When he was creating the Seventeen Moments of Spring soundtrack (a popular TV serial including 4.5 hours of music), we were amazed by its overwhelming symphonic scope and plot.
“Of course, filmmaking has its own laws, but Tariverdiev treated every production very seriously. It is no secret that films were a haven for him and many of his colleagues. No one could ever accuse Mikael Leonovich of doing a slapdash job of writing music for movies. Today even the legendary Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki is writing music for films, although at one time writing this kind of music was considered undignified in certain composers’ circles. I believe that the ability to write such music is a godsend, on a par with the ability to write scripts. Mikael Leonovich had both these gifts.
“By the way, his shock from the Chornobyl disaster affected the music that he wrote for films. He later wrote music for documentaries dedicated to Chornobyl. Then the overwhelming topic of the Requiem emerged. This was his last composition. Tariverdiev said, ‘I like music that appeals to the soul and to the Lord.’ That was probably why his music was so popular with the people, why everyone understood and responded to it.”
MASTER CLASS
The festival’s enlightening trend was manifested at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Kyiv, where the winner of the Johanna Hondius Prize was announced.
The prize is named after the distinguished musician and professor Johanna Hondius (1926-2001). The winner was selected by a jury of three, including two Ukrainians — National Music Academy Rector Volodymyr Rozhko and composer Yevhen Stankovych — and Johanna Hondius’s niece Caroline Hondius. This year the prize went to Ukraine’s noted violinist Yaroslava Rivniak. Born in Ternopil, she graduated from the prestigious Moscow Conservatory and combined performance with teaching at Lysenko Music College and later at the National Music Academy of Ukraine. During several decades spent at these two prestigious schools, Rivniak has helped cultivate many excellent musicians, who have made their names in Ukraine and abroad. Her current pupils played beautifully during their professor’s awards ceremony.
The young musicians remembered the master class conducted by pianist Steven Guttman at the National Music Academy’s Choral Hall. The celebrated British pianist demonstrated that every score requires utmost attention and perception, and that this is a sure way to translate a composer’s ideas into life.
This year the festival included consultations given by Florian Leonhard (German and the UK), one of the leading world experts in Italian stringed instruments and a consultant to many famous soloists and orchestras in the UK, Netherlands, Israel, and the United States.
