The Actor’s House in Kyiv recently held a mini-festival of accordion music, featuring musicians ranging from music students to experienced professionals.
The main idea of this festival, the fourth of its kind, is to show the broad harmonic possibilities of the accordion, which were demonstrated by the festival participants, who played classical music, jazz, pop, modern versions of folk tunes, and avant-garde pieces.
The two nearly three-hour-long concerts featured performances by nine highly original accordionists: Ihor Zavadsky, a well-known musician, who organized the festival, students from the National Music Academy of Ukraine and other music schools, winners of international competitions, a Kyiv-based quartet of saxophonists led by Yurii Vasylevych, and Mykhailo Zaikin, a saxophonist from the Crimea.
The audience was impressed by the performance of Ivan Stamenych, an interesting accordionist and first-year student at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy, who played several compositions with ethnic motifs called “Zymushka-zyma” from Suite No. 2 “Russkaia” by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zubytsky, the exotic “Romanian Piece,” and “Srpsko Oro” by the Serbian composer Ljubisa Pavkovic.
What really impressed the audience was the performance of two accordionists, Vitalii Isaiev and Yevhen Havryliuk, both students at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy. Isaiev played an extremely difficult piece called “Paganiniana,” by the contemporary German composer Hans Brehme, a mosaic blend of fragments from various works by this virtuoso violinist and composer. For his encore, he did a brilliant job of playing “Hora martisorului” by the Romanian composer Grigoras Dinicu.
Havryliuk, who won second place at the Accoholiday competition last year, played a refined waltz from Victor Gubanov’s “Retro-Suite,” which listeners associated with the French musette waltz and “Boite a Rhythme” by Franck Angelis. The duet of accordionist Yevhen Havryliuk and the young saxophonist Mykhailo Zaikin played an interesting piece called “Piazzolino” by Raymond Alessandrini, which was a real treat for the jazz music fans in the audience. The pairing of an accordion and a saxophone is a rare occurrence on the Kyiv stage, although it is a harmonious and self- sufficient ensemble, as the French duet of Richard Galliano and Michel Portal successfully proves. Another accordion-saxophone duet was performed, this time in a classical version. Zavadsky and Vasylevych brilliantly played Albinoni’s famous “Adagio.” Then the intimate atmosphere of the Birthday of the Accordion, when the accordionists were left face-to- face with the audience, was disturbed by a surprise, when the Kyiv Saxophone Quartet came on stage and played fragments from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.
Then accordionist Oleh Mykytiuk, a graduate of the Music Academy, took over from the saxophonists. The last to play at the festival was master accordionist Yurii Kalashnikov from Luhansk. He amazed the audience with his special way of playing works in different genres, which showed his professionalism and virtuoso style. The house heard Figaro’s energetic cavatina from Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville, Viktor Novikov’s Gypsy Paraphrase, and Viktor Gridin’s Sparkly Star Fall.
Zavadsky’s performance demonstrated the accordion’s potential. He premiered a few pieces, such as Scarlatti’s “Sonata in E Minor,” “Sonata in A Major,” and “Sonata in F Minor.” The latter composition is considered one of the most difficult pieces in terms of polyphony, and perhaps only winners of the Vladimir Horowitz International Young Pianists Competition are brave enough to play it. Scarlatti’s sonatas, written for the harpsichord (there was no piano at the time) are a bit unusual for classical music buffs because they are not often performed. Also interesting was the “Sonata in A Major,” played by Zavadsky, who is a virtuoso accordionist and subtle interpreter of refined harpsichord music. For the first in his career he performed Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor for Flute and Chamber Orchestra (“La Notte”) and gave a solo performance of the music of Bach, Albinoni, Chopin, Dvorak, Doga, Monti, and other pieces.
All the accordionists, even the children, got a warm reception, thunderous applause, and flowers. The geographic scope of this year’s mini-festival has been expanded to include Serbia and Congo, joining Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Lithuania.
