An Orchestra’s ‘Ode to Joy’ Calls for Ukrainian Freedom

Not lengthy after the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, Leonard Bernstein traveled to the once-divided German metropolis and led a efficiency of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” changing the phrase “Freude,” or pleasure, with “Freiheit” — freedom.

In an echo of that historic live performance, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, a touring ensemble shaped within the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, offered Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony within the suburbs of Berlin on Thursday. And, for the well-known “Ode to Joy” choral finale, the textual content was translated to Ukrainian, with the important thing phrase being “slava,” or glory, as in “Slava Ukrainii”: Glory to Ukraine.

“I’m driven by my passion for Ukraine,” the orchestra’s conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson, mentioned on Thursday afternoon earlier than the live performance, on the backyard of Schönhausen Palace. “And my desire to get rid of Putin and his regime through culture.”

Around her was a bustle of exercise: ushers laying pillows on chairs, sound technicians consulting in a sales space, pink umbrellas being positioned to protect an orchestra from the solar. The orchestra, made up of 74 Ukrainian musicians — a few of whom reside in that nation nonetheless, a few of whom have fled — was about to carry out as a part of its second summer time tour of Europe.

“Russia says there’s no Ukrainian culture, or music, or language,” mentioned Anna Bura, a violinist within the orchestra. “They want to erase Ukrainian culture. We want to show people we are here.”

The program included the second violin concerto by the up to date Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych, and ended with the Beethoven. While on trip three weeks in the past, Wilson arrived at the concept the “Ode to Joy” needs to be sung in Ukrainian, and labored with Mykola Lukas and the vocal coach Ivgeniia Iermachkova to create a brand new singing translation of the Friedrich Schiller textual content.

The orchestra’s cease in Berlin coincided with Ukrainian Independence Day. Kyrylo Markiv, a violinist within the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, helped rehearse the choir, the Ukrainian Freedom Chorus, which was assembled for the event from the Diplomatic Choir of Berlin and different singers. He serves as a first-desk violinist within the Odesa Philharmonic and is choirmaster on the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, which was constructed within the early nineteenth century, reconstructed between 1999 and 2003 after which broken final month by Russian airstrikes.

The evening the cathedral was bombed, Markiv had left his violin there in preparation for a live performance the following day. “My colleagues wrote in a work chat that the building was on fire,” he mentioned. “I got dressed and went with my brother, who is a deacon there, and saw destroyed cars, fire. In the building, I looked for my violin. Everything was destroyed, but my violin was about 80 percent OK.”

Now, his violin is being repaired by a luthier in Lviv. The assault, he mentioned, strengthened his resolve for the tour. “I’m proud that we came to show our art,” he mentioned. “These times are hard for us. We’re strong, and the European people make us stronger.”

Peter Gelb, the overall supervisor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Wilson’s husband, helped to rearrange and lift cash for this tour and the one final summer time. “The intensity of the war has raised the stakes this year,” he mentioned. “These musicians all live there or have families there. The war makes everything more intense: their playing, their relationships with each other. Everything is magnified.”

At a rehearsal on Thursday, as Wilson led the orchestra right into a breakneck run-through of the Beethoven’s second motion, the 2 first-desk bass gamers, Nazarii Stets and Ivan Zavgorodniy, bounced alongside to the rhythm with broad smiles on their faces. Stets, who lives in Kyiv, mentioned in an interview that this summer time’s tour was much less celebratory than he had hoped: “I expected it would be the victory tour, and it’s still a tour with continuous fighting.”

A member of the Kyiv Camerata, a chamber orchestra that performs up to date Ukrainian music, he had a solo recital scheduled on the day after the invasion started.

“My bass was already at the concert hall,” Stets mentioned. “I spent the night in my house, and then the war started.” After two months along with his household within the west of the nation, he returned to Kyiv. Since then, he has performed in “a lot of charity and benefit concerts,” he mentioned — principally for the Music Unites charity fund, which donates drugs and meals to kids, and automobiles and communications gear to troopers.

Many musicians have used their artwork to lift cash. The cellist Denys Karachevtsev now lives in Berlin however spent the primary 12 months of the struggle in his hometown, Kharkiv, the location of vicious preventing originally of the battle. More than 600,000 residents fled that metropolis as Russian shells and rockets destroyed properties and public buildings. A video he recorded of Bach’s fifth cello suite among the many ruins garnered consideration and donations.

But music, Karachevtsev mentioned, was only one a part of his efforts. “I had my car,” he added, “so I was evacuating people and taking them to the trains, bringing back medicine and food. We didn’t know how the situation would go on.”

The movies introduced him to the eye of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which invited him to take part this 12 months. “I think it’s a good way to continue helping our country,” he mentioned. Now, Karachevtsev is learning in Berlin whereas persevering with to show college students in Kharkiv on-line. It continues to be thought of too harmful to have in-person classes. “The nearest Russian city is about 50 kilometers away,” he mentioned. “It takes 30 seconds for the bombs to come.”

As the solar started to set in Berlin, the orchestra ate dinner. Dignitaries, together with Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeev, and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, arrived as viewers members started to file in for the free live performance. Some sat within the chairs, and others unfold out picnic blankets. Children ate ice cream; the ambiance was heat and pleasant.

Some folks wore Ukrainian flags and a few a vyshyvanka, a standard embroidered shirt. Viktoria Neroda, who arrived in Berlin as a refugee from Rivne in western Ukraine final 12 months, mentioned she was there primarily to have a good time Ukrainian Independence Day. “I love Ukrainian music,” she mentioned in a German-language interview, “but I’m hearing this orchestra for the first time tonight.”

This tour’s performances are happening at an uneasy second for Ukrainians. The struggle has dragged on far longer than many anticipated, and hopes for a fast victory, heightened by the success of Ukrainian self-defense early on, have light. Life is lived between air raid sirens. Every week brings extra unhealthy news: mates killed preventing on the entrance, relations’ properties destroyed by drone strikes or rocket assaults.

European solidarity, too, is shifting. Berlin is 10 hours by prepare from Przemysl, the Polish metropolis close to the Ukrainian border the place, within the struggle’s first weeks, refugees poured in.

Berlin residents swung into motion: working welcome facilities, bringing provides to coach stations, providing rooms of their residences. Governments introduced particular visa guidelines for Ukrainian refugees. German lawmakers spoke of a “Zeitenwende,” an epochal change in German protection coverage, and despatched, if generally reluctantly, weapons and tanks to the Ukrainian military.

At the Berlin State Opera, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko withdrew underneath strain from a brand new manufacturing of Puccini’s “Turandot” as a result of she had not, the home said, adequately distanced herself from the invasion. She was criticized for performances at marketing campaign occasions for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Solidarity continues to be seen, however it’s also starting to splinter. Many Germans, combating inflation, gasoline payments and the nation’s financial stagnation, are questioning the worth of assist. The far-right Alternative for Germany social gathering, which has been sympathetic to Putin, has surged within the polls. And classical music levels, the place Russia was lengthy a moneymaking vacation spot, have additionally wavered. As the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra rehearsed final week, Netrebko was set to start out rehearsals for a revival of Verdi’s “Macbeth” on the State Opera in September. (The firm’s chief, Matthias Schulz, informed Berlin public radio this 12 months that Netrebko had spoken out, in his opinion, so far as she was ready.)

Thursday’s live performance, then, was each a celebration of Ukraine’s independence and Germany’s solidarity, and a part of an effort to protect these two issues. After speeches from the dignitaries, the orchestra launched into energetic, insistent Verdi, adopted by a searing account of the Stankovych concerto. That piece ends with a sustained, harmonious main third within the strings, which clashes with the solo violin’s plucked minor third. The dissonance holds, softly, then fades out.