With a moving rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem, the first concert of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra came to an end in Warsaw on Thursday night amid thunderous applause from a packed hall at the Polish National Opera. It was hard to believe that two weeks ago this orchestra did not exist and that these musicians had never played together.
The 74 musicians, all Ukrainian, come from many different orchestras within the country and in other parts of the world. They met in Warsaw 10 days before the concert for intensive rehearsals. More than half have spent the war in Ukraineand it remains only to join the tour.
After its debut in Warsaw, the orchestra now heads to London, where will perform on sunday at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms. Later stops include Edinburgh, Berlin and Amsterdam before the tour concludes with concerts in New York and Washington DC in late August.
“It’s amazing to be a part of this, to create this music at this time,” said cellist Yevgen Dovbysh of the Odessa National Philharmonic.
For Dovbysh, the tour has given him the chance to reunite with his wife, violinist Hanna Vikhrova, after five months apart. He left Odessa with his eight-year-old daughter on the first day of the war and has lived in the Czech Republic ever since.
Dovbysh stayed in Odessa and spent the first few months of the war volunteering to help with the war effort, even helping fill sandbags with sand from the city’s beaches. Most recently, on July 1, he participated in Odessa’s first live concert since the beginning of the war, with an improvised orchestra made up of those who remained in the city.
“It was terrible for the first two months, when we couldn’t play at all. Now it feels great to be focused on the music and let go of the feelings of war for a short while while playing,” he said.
Thursday’s concert began with the somber and meditative Seventh Symphony by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. It was followed by Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, performed by the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova, and an aria from Beethoven’s Fidelio performed by the soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska.
Monastyrska, one of Ukraine’s best-known opera singers, said she immediately agreed when she received the invitation to join the tour. “She was very happy and very grateful. It is a very pleasant surprise that so many people are supporting us,” she said the day before the concert.
He hasn’t been to Ukraine since the war started, but his son, brother and parents have spent the war at home near Kyiv, so he has been compulsively reading the news from Ukraine every day. “It’s hard to concentrate when you’re always worried about your family,” she admitted.
In a note to the concert program, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stressed that the orchestra’s tour should be seen as part of the war effort. “Each one is getting closer to victory on their part of the front: in the military, diplomatic, humanitarian, informational and, of course, cultural fields,” he wrote.
“The artistic resistance to the Russian invasion is one of the most important, because the seizure of territory begins with the seizure of people’s minds and hearts.”
The idea of the orchestra was conceived by Keri Lynn Wilson. The Canadian conductor, who is of Ukrainian descent, canceled her Moscow engagements after the war began and began planning an impromptu orchestra made up of Ukrainian musicians from around the world.
She asked Ukrainian friends to find the players among their friends and contacts, and hired her husband. Peter Gelb, CEO of the New York Metropolitan Opera, to provide organizational strength. In Warsaw, the culture ministry agreed to finance a short residency for the hastily assembled orchestra to rehearse the program.
“It’s been fantastic to channel all my energy and anger about what’s going on into music,” says Wilson.
The orchestra met on July 18 in Warsaw to begin rehearsals, with more than 40 musicians arriving by bus from Ukraine. The male musicians received a special pass to leave the country during the tour, as Ukraine has a wartime law that prohibits men of military age from leaving.
Rehearsals began with many of the musicians exhausted from long journeys from the Ukraine and the first day was interrupted by the musicians’ need to go to the British embassy to apply for visas for the London leg of the trip, as Britain is one of the only countries in Europe do not give up visas for Ukrainians.
“It was tough, the first rehearsal,” Wilson recalled. “But the progress between the first and second trial was amazing. These are professional musicians and you can see how dedicated they are to this.”
The Warsaw audience agreed, giving the orchestra a long standing ovation as Monastyrska and Fedorova came out for a curtain call draped in Ukrainian flags.