“A cry of pain from every musician”: The new reality for musicians in Ukraine | music

IIt begins with a literal scream, a cry of pain from every player in the orchestra. Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun’s piece Terricone is one of the most shocking creative works of the war that began four years ago this month. Korsun was born in Donbass, where slag heaps from the mining industry bear witness to the way humanity has always reshaped the landscape. Her piece was premiered by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its then principal conductor, Ukrainian Kirill Karapets, at the beginning of 2023 – when news of the invasion brought global shock and horror.

I will never forget being in Poole for that performance, where the vividness of that scene brought the fear and desolation of the emotional landscape of war to the audience. Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski – a staunch critic of the Putin regime – brought this powerful piece to London last month, as part of a bold Ukrainian/Russian program with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Korsun’s creative courage is astonishing but not unique, as Ukrainian musicians and composers find ways to live and work during the war. Other performances bringing the cultural realities of the conflict to the UK include Aperta’s opera Chornobyldorf, which the Kiev-based company presented at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2022. Part opera, part video installation, and part folk ritual for the post-Soviet and post-nuclear era, the show brought to life the seismic forces of Ukrainian history in a stunning and unforgettable event.

But it’s not the compositions and performances of Ukrainian musicians that matter: the war continues to expose and demolish the half-truths and hypocrisies of classical music culture. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev’s closeness to Putin’s regime was as evident in 2012 as it is in 2022, yet these ties were questioned only after the conflict began and his performances and contracts outside Russia were cancelled. (And I am as guilty as any journalist, in the years when Gergiev was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and when he was conductor of the World Orchestra for Peace – yes, that actually happened, from 1998 to 2019, when Gergiev conducted 23 concerts and a world tour.)

For some Ukrainian musicians, their new chosen reality is “no Russian words from my lips, no Russian music from my hands,” says Nazari Stets, one of the players of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra (UFO), founded and conducted by Kerri Lynn Wilson. Works such as Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies – both of which the UFO toured and recorded (with a version of the Ode to Joy sung in Ukrainian) – were also composed at a time of conflict, and have been packaged as aggressive ideological soundtracks ever since. The frenetic intensity and commitment of UFO playing, in the new recording of Symphony No. 5 in particular, is a sound of intense hope, a sound of life based on the purpose and potential of this music as a harbinger of peace and a call to action.

Four years later, war has become more terrifying and more confronting precisely because it has become a fact of life, a constant state of terror. It no longer makes headlines in the same way, and those of us in the West risk forgetting that for millions of Ukrainians today, the horror and trauma of the conflict remains ever-present. Pieces like Corson’s reveal the deeper truths of the consequences of war. It is among the most urgent musical messages in the world.

Happy 100 years, Kurtaj!

Hungarian composer György Kurtág celebrates his 100th birthday tomorrow. His response to the world of conflict into which he was born is a radical journey inward, to a place where every note pulses with energy and possibility: “F# is also human,” is a typical phrase.

Kurtag’s longest-running piece, Beckett’s opera Endgame, premiered in 2018, when he was just 92 years old. If his music isn’t part of your listening life, all you need are his greatest pieces, the 11 volumes of Játékok (Games). These are aphoristic piano pieces, some just seconds long, and often taking just one idea or even a single note on a short stroll through time. It’s like a composer’s diary, full of puns, playfulness, and fun, with titles like The Bunny and the Fox, Thistle, and – my favorite – Play With Infinity. They are also tributes and memorials to his friends, fellow musicians, and his life partner, pianist Marta Kurtag, with whom he shared a soul and a piano bench. (Listen and watch their duet performances, with her arms around his at the keyboard in transcriptions of Bach, and you’ll immediately sense what I mean.)

But beware: these are “games” that play with the deepest, most existential things musically: they all play endlessly.

This week Tom was listening to: Kurtage movement for viola and orchestra. Written in 1954, this is music that goes straight to your soul. The piece builds from miserable dissonance to a strange, radiant vision of hope in its final moments.