As published in The Times, 21 July 2022.
‘On February 23, 2022, we played Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, and it was such a nice concert. We didn’t expect that on February 24, we would wake up to terrible noises at five o’clock in the morning,’’ Aleksandra Naumov, a Ukrainian classical musician who lives in Kyiv, tells me.
“We were shocked and scared . . . I’m sorry.’’ She breaks off to wipe away her tears. “We decided to go to Germany,’’ Naumov continues, explaining that she had lived in Leipzig with her husband before. “I took my grandfather and my dog. I asked my parents if they wanted to come with me, but they said no. They said if they were to die, they wanted to die at home. I didn’t know if I would see them again.’’
I’m talking to Naumov, a 34-year-old bassoonist, in Warsaw, Poland, where an extraordinary new orchestra has gathered to play for the first time. Dark T-shirts worn by a few of the 74 professional musicians, emblazoned with their new band’s name and the colours blue and yellow, reveal its identity. This is the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra (UFO) and this summer it will bring its message of hope to the West, drawing fresh attention to the devastating war in its players’ home country.
I’ve arrived on the second day of the UFO’s life, joining as they launch into Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which fills the vast auditorium of Polish National Opera’s Teatr Wielki with bittersweet music. While it might be musical business as usual in rehearsal, what’s at stake here is far bigger: a fight for freedom and independence.
“This orchestra represents the artistic voice and soul of Ukraine,” Keri-Lynn Wilson, the conductor, says during her lunch break. “We are determined to show Putin that he cannot erase Ukrainian culture. Art speaks more powerfully and louder than any human being. We will not be silenced.”
It may still be a fledgling orchestra, but already the UFO has a distinctive spirit and sound: gutsy, warm, full of heart. It’s incredibly moving to hear. Sure, there are some rough edges, but that’s to be expected so early on.
“I’m pleasantly surprised how fast the difference is from one rehearsal to the next,’’ says Wilson, who is a dynamic and focused presence on the podium. She has only ten intense days to prepare the UFO for its debut concert in Warsaw, before it tours 11 venues around Europe and North America. First up is the Royal Albert Hall in London at the BBC Proms on July 31, followed by visits to the Edinburgh International Festival and Snape Maltings in August.
“At the onset of the war, I was so disturbed and horrified,’’ Wilson says, when I ask how the UFO began. As a Canadian-Ukrainian, the pain was personal. Not least, she has extended family in Ukraine — one member has been in the military since 2014; another cousin now delivers military supplies to the front line — and she was acutely conscious of the liberties they had lost.
“I was texting them, and they had no freedom to go outside, to speak, to play music,’’ she says. Wilson wanted to help. “I was seeing all these images of refugees pouring into Poland, and I thought I should try to form an orchestra.’’
She got in touch with the Polish National Opera, with whom she’d worked in the past, and flew to Warsaw to pitch her idea. The organisation immediately said yes. The opera orchestra’s Ukrainian trumpeter began to recruit players, and Wilson’s dream became reality.
Every UFO musician I speak to says they joined without hesitation. They believe it is important to bring Ukrainian culture to the world. They want people to see Ukrainians not just as soldiers in the news but as artists too.
More than 30 of the players (all Ukrainian) live abroad, playing with orchestras in countries including Poland, Germany, Sweden and Belgium, whether that’s been for years or as recent refugees. About 40 still live in Ukraine; they gathered in Lviv, before travelling to Warsaw by bus.
Whether it’s the cellist Lesya Demkovych, who wears a silver “freedom ring’’ with a cutout map of Ukraine (including Crimea, she emphasises), or the clarinettist Oleg Morov, who says, “our music is our gun in this moment’’, each musician has a story to tell and a powerful emotional drive to be part of the UFO.
On arriving in Warsaw, Naumov realised she knew ten other musicians from her home city; there are several small clusters of colleagues, friends, and family — including four married couples and four sets of siblings — in the orchestra.
The mood, Naumov says, is one of excitement. Already, by day two, this new orchestra has its rituals. The afternoon begins with an impromptu rendition of Mnohaya lita, a traditional celebratory song, and a bunch of red flowers to mark a viola player’s birthday. Rehearsals are in Russian (and a smattering of English) — a delicate but necessary compromise, since Wilson doesn’t speak Ukrainian and not all the players speak good English.
Wilson knew the programme was a chance to champion Ukrainian art, so she has chosen music by Valentin Silvestrov, who at 84 has sought refuge in Germany. “He is the most prestigious living composer in Ukraine, and his Seventh Symphony is perfect, musically, for this,’’ she says.
“I chose this piece as a homage to our dead soldiers. It starts violently with these great dissonant arpeggios and chords, then goes into this very simple, nostalgic line of melody. At the end, there is a sound effect that he writes for the horn. Blowing into the instrument, you inhale and exhale. I interpret it as the breath of life.’’
And the rest of the music soon fell into place. “I wanted a big symphony to show the virtuosity and musicality of the orchestra. I chose Brahms’s Symphony No 4 because it’s so rich, emotional, and beautiful and Dvorak [Symphony No 9] because it’s symbolic: it’s a new world of hope,’’ she says; each concert includes one or the other piece.
“The Chopin Piano Concerto No 2 is our homage to Poland, which gave us our artistic home. And we have two Ukrainian soloists, of course, with pianist Anna Federova and soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska. She’ll be singing Beethoven’s Abscheulicher [from Fidelio], which represents fighting against tyranny followed by hope and love. She’ll sing the hell out of it.’’
For Yurii Khvostov, 33, an oboist from Lviv, using culture to draw attention to war in Ukraine has been on his mind for years. “To be honest, I was quite surprised and disappointed that this kind of orchestra didn’t form in 2014 when the war in the east of our country started,’’ Khvostov tells me through an interpreter. “It was already a strange and difficult situation in Ukraine, but quite quickly it was kind of forgotten. People understand it’s not a joke any more. There is bombing all round Ukraine.’
The financial and logistical hurdles are surely the main reason no similar orchestra has got off the ground before. The whole enterprise will cost about €1.5 million (£1.2 million). Wilson had a head start with reaching this big number and making her vision happen: her husband, Peter Gelb, is general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and has the know-how for ambitious artistic projects and a powerful contacts book.
Sponsors were enlisted, including Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Ford Foundation; the Polish government agreed to fund the Warsaw trip. When Askonas Holt, a UK artist management agency, came on board, a chain reaction happened, Wilson says.
Booked-up festivals made room in their schedules and momentum started to build. Ukraine granted exemptions to the male performers of military age (18 to 60), allowing them to leave the country legally, while the UK waived its £18,000 visa bill for the players.
Goodwill has also gone a long way: the Polish National and Met Operas have offered staff, time and services free of charge. It means that money has been spent where it counts — paying the Ukrainian instrumentalists a professional salary — while any net tour profits will be donated to a Ministry of Culture fund to save Ukrainian arts and culture.
These Ukrainian musicians need all the support they can get. Classical music was put on hold in Ukraine in February and it’s only in recent months that green shoots have emerged.
The first concert since the Russian invasion took place in Kyiv on May 21. In Lviv, orchestral and opera performances have resumed but at first they were limited to 45 minutes — because, once fired, Russian rockets take an hour to reach the city. Now audiences are limited to 350 to 400 people.
“That’s the amount of people who can go into the underground shelters if the sirens go off,’’ Khvostov says. Naumov has returned to live in the capital, where she can see her parents and play in her orchestra when concerts resume this autumn: “It’s still not safe, and it’s still not normal life, but Kyiv is not occupied any more. There are rockets, but it’s not like east Ukraine, where it’s really bad.’
And what does the future hold? “My hope is that we’re going to win,’’ Naumov says. “We just want to live in our country, with our beautiful language, our beautiful culture, and our beautiful people. And that’s it. I hope maybe this year it will happen.’
The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra appears at the Royal Albert Hall (July 31), Edinburgh International Festival (August 6) and Snape Maltings, Suffolk (August 8); the Prom will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and on BBC2/iPlayer on August 7