The jubilee gala concert of Kostiantyn Fesenko, Merited Artist of Ukraine and the National Opera’s concertmaster, stands every chance of being named the musical event of the year that is now drawing to a close. The people who filled the opera’s grand hall that night “went wild,” according to one spectator. Of course, part of the evening’s success was the element of surprise; few could have expected such a dazzling display of singers and vocal music that is so rarely heard in our concert halls, especially when it is performed so sublimely. The posters merely announced that this would be a creative evening of the concertmaster and pianist.
More than 30 years ago, when a talented piano graduate from the Kyiv Conservatory was hired by the Taras Shevchenko Opera Theater, his colleagues unanimously decided that his career was over, that he had walled himself in behind the theater scenery. He could have gone on concert tours, taught, and done research. Indeed, the work of an opera concertmaster is mostly unknown to the public, as it takes place in small rehearsal rooms, where one can hardly move, both in the literal and creative sense. Soloists must be helped with their parts and the whole score has to be played (each book of notes weighing a kilo or a kilo and a half). One has to “shovel” tons of musical “ore,” and then it is the vocalists who reap the laurels and applause at the premiere of an opera. A solo piano repertoire is out of the question; it dies in a concertmaster on the first day of accompaniment.
Many do not last, primarily because of the sheer physical strain on the hands, the vast repertoire, and professional routine. There is also the need to work every day with totally different vocalists with different creative orientations, and with conductors; to live in harmony with them, to act as an orchestra (during numerous rehearsals) and always keep in shape.
On the other hand, the best of the music world in our state is at the National Opera and Kostiantyn Fesenko’s benefit performance was eloquent proof of this.
On this occasion, in their short performances our talented singers showed their star status. Mykhailo Didyk, Ivan Ponomarenko, Liudmyla Yurchenko, Angelina Shvachka, Oleksandr Vostriakov, Mykola Shopsha, Oleksandr Hurets, Oleksandr Diachenko, and other vocalists chose the best of their repertoire for the concert, with Kostiantyn Fesenko accompanying them all.
Saint-Saens’s Dying Swan looked and sounded especially moving with Svitlana Dobronravova singing, Tetiana Borovyk dancing, and the anniversary celebrant at the piano. Nothing like this had ever taken place at the opera.
The concert included duets, trios, and quartets from operas that are not included in the company’s repertoire and which are therefore especially interesting to the audience. The concert performances of opera fragments did not diminish the soloists’ immersion in their characters; operatic passions flew on stage and the audience was ecstatic, which is how it should be during an operatic performance.
Stefiuk and Fesenko’s duet left an unforgettable emotional and artistic impression. After performing an aria and Rachmaninoff’s brilliant romance “Don’t Sing in My Presence, Fair Damsel,” the musicians obviously crossed the boundary line known as perfection. People’s Artist of the Soviet Union Maria Stefiuk sang with such inspiration and finesse that she seemed to glow with an unearthly light. (One was tempted to repeat the aphorism, “Doff your hats, gentlemen, there is a genius in front of you!”) Her partner worked miracles on the piano, achieving a unity with the soloist with his singularly subtle dynamic nuances. That night Fesenko showed his true worth as a deep and stylistically faultless interpreter of operatic and chamber vocal music.
Fesenko’s popularity and prestige have long extended beyond the opera’s walls and the borders of Ukraine. Our prominent vocalists working abroad invite the pianist to help prepare new operatic parts, preferring his experience, mastery, and talent to local accompanists, and paying his traveling expenses and hotel accommodations. He was recently invited to a theater in France to take part in the staging of an opera as a leading accompanist.
After the three-hour concert the audience was sorry that such benefit performances and celebrations could not be repeated. The concert left more sparkling music impressions than some repertory performances of the company. This is not surprising, considering that Fesenko managed to put our favorite artists on stage in their best operatic parts, with some playing unusual roles. Compositions by Verdi, Mascagni, Bellini, Lysenko, Shchedrin, and Rachmaninoff are part of the golden treasury of world musical literature.
