As Boris Lyatoshynsky’s Fourth Symphony reaches a crescendo, expanding into every corner and crevice of the Kyiv Philharmonic’s auditorium, there’s a brief moment of ecstatic sensory overload. Enveloped by thunderous brass, your vision is overwhelmed by the sparkling chandeliers and kaleidoscopic column mouldings, and the smooth pea-green painted balcony is cool on your elbows as you strain ever closer to the music. The eccentric conductor is absorbed by his work, as if it’s some kind of cosmic mission, his musicians transfixed by his jolting and bucking, and the audience gaze on from the stalls.
But as the volume swells, suddenly wailing air raid sirens tear through the music, accompanied by a dispassionate, robotic voice instructing audience and orchestra alike to descend to the bomb shelter. The conductor gradually guides his musicians towards a natural-sounding diminuendo, and only then does the audience begin to arise from their seats.
And thus the Kyiv Philharmonic opens its new season.
“For us, we’re on another planet when we’re playing,” explains Ivanna, a 23-year-old flautist from Poltava, “then you hear the air raid sirens, and you come back to Earth, and it’s like ‘oh my god, it’s real life’”.
People descend the dark wooden staircases in an orderly fashion, some satisfied with the safety offered by the ground floor, and congregating in the high-ceilinged foyer. The basement below resembles one of the more understated rooms in a preserved imperial palace – moulded ceilings, decorative panelling, lime green walls in one chamber, and peachy orange in the other. After a short while, members of staff begin to arrive with folding chairs for those less keen or able to sit cross-legged on the carpet. Evidently someone has got the sense it could be a while before life above ground resumes.
One woman nods off, many are on their phones, some chat quietly to their children. The mood is one of resigned boredom and there is a distinct lack of the irritated anticipation that would dominate the interruption of a performance anywhere else in Europe.
The Philharmonic’s recent rehearsals have also been impacted, with one four-hour session reduced to only a single hour because of the alerts.
Just over 40 minutes later, the all-clear is announced by the dispassionate voice that emanates from the app on everyone’s phones. Chairs are folded and audience members stand aside to allow the musicians to reclaim their instruments and retake their positions on stage.
“You have to be concentrating when you play, but you can’t because you’re waiting for another alert. It could happen again and again – maybe we’ll just play two notes and be interrupted again,” Ivanna says of the mood upon retaking her seat.
The conductor, Teodor Kuchar, coaxes the orchestra into action and they return to Lyatoshynsky's symphony. He’s one of many composers who has been rediscovered and conferred with the status of a defining national figure since the full-scale invasion. Many Ukrainian musicians see embracing their musical heritage as their way of reinforcing their nation's identity, which they perceive as existentially threatened by Russia’s invasion.
Arseniy, a 24-year-old double bassist from front-line Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea, says musicians have a responsibility to fight on the “cultural front”. His colleague Oleksandr, principal viola and Kyiv native, describes performing Ukrainian music as defiance in the face of Russian aggression.
“Maybe we’re doing a little job to culturally defend Ukraine,” suggests Arseniy, before adding, “but you wouldn’t compare real defence with this kind of defence.” He is keen to make the distinction between his service and that undertaken by his countrymen in the military.
All three young musicians concede the bittersweet reality that the war has encouraged an international audience to engage with Ukrainian music.
“Now we have this opportunity to represent Ukraine all over the world,” Arseniy says, and the musicians describe travelling across Europe with pride. They also embarked on a 22-city tour of Japan, during which one of the local choirs with whom they performed sang a rendition of Ukraine's spiritual anthem ‘Bozhe Velykyi Edyny’. None of the three can articulate how powerful that was, only that it was “emotional”.
The Philharmonic plays host to members of the international music community too, and on opening night Taiwanese-American pianist Fanya Lin joins the orchestra. Travelling over two and a half days from Tucson to Seattle, and then onto Warsaw via Amsterdam before getting the train, she almost missed her entire first rehearsal.
She had been invited by Kochar to perform in 2022, but the plan was stymied by the full-scale invasion. (Unable to travel to Ukraine, they collaborated on a recording project in Poland.) But, she says “I had already made the decision that if the logistics worked out, I would go if I had another opportunity”.
Admitting to feeling “extremely nervous” about Kyiv’s lack of ballistic air defences, she found herself considering ignoring the air alert that sounded the night before the performance, in order to get some sleep. “But then that’s when I heard the missile,” she says, referring to the ballistic attack of the 7th–8th of August which killed three people across Kyiv Oblast.
After her solo, the orchestra moves on to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, lifting the auditorium with the familiar melody of ‘Summertime’ – apt given the heavy August air outside. Applause replaces music, accompanied by standing ovations and a palpable relief that the orchestra has not suffered any further interruptions.
“I think the adrenaline rush was the most I’ve ever felt, because of the pressure and how much more you have to mentally push yourself when you know your body – both physically and mentally – is not how it’s supposed to be”, Lin says, of the emotions she felt at the end of the performance. “I just felt very appreciated by the audience because of their response and reaction, and they were just so warm towards me, and I was just so grateful that they had me.”
Fanya says performing in a country at war taught her how much more people appreciate music during difficult times, saying it “really shines a different light on what you do because it feels so much more powerful, and even when I was performing I think I felt that too. It just has a different meaning”.
For Arseniy, the burden of responsibility he bears when playing Ukrainian music is worlds apart from the “pure joy” of performing something like Gershwin. “It just helps you feel better about the world”, he says.
The Philharmonic’s repertoire no longer includes the Russian composers that used to dominate the season. Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky once graced the venue with their presence, but now even listening to the work of such men is “taboo”. The Ukrainian musicians explain that even if their colleagues did so, they would not admit it publicly.
Oleksandr concedes the significance of such figures, but when asked if he would play their music again, perhaps after the war, he’s firm: “I wouldn’t want to, personally.”
Fanya hasn’t rejected them, but says “I think if I were Ukrainian I wouldn’t play Russian music either”. She draws a connection between the experience of Ukrainians and her roots in Taiwan, explaining that her trip to Kyiv made her reflect more deeply on what she would do if China made an incursion onto the island.
Despite being hundreds of miles from the front-line, the fighting doesn’t feel remote. They recall the double bassist and horn player who have joined the army, as well as the boyfriend of one of the violinists, and even one of Oleksandr’s students, who have done the same.
The applause and ovations over, the musicians and audience file into the foyer, and out of the grand entrance onto European Square, which in previous decades was dedicated to Lenin and then Stalin.
A breeze is just managing to pierce through the stuffy summer evening, and people are heading to the metro, their parked cars, or bus stops, keen to get home before the curfew. They are hoping for an uninterrupted night’s sleep – which they are unlikely to get, given the steep rise in air alerts for Kyiv this year.
“When there is a rough night, you can’t perform as well as you would in a healthy state,” shrugs Arseniy, frustrated but resigned to the prospect of running down more sets of stairs to the bomb shelter later that night.
See upcoming performances by the Ukrainian National Philharmonic Orchestra.
