The Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival returned this weekend for its third edition, with a series of works related to themes such as nature and mythology. During an introduction in the Merkinzaal, the audience was told that while the event has taken on a new relevance in recent weeks, its spirit has remained unchanged. (Indeed, it was planned long before the Russian invasion.)
Nevertheless, war loomed over these performances: some artists could not leave Ukraine, and the concerts were adapted to their absence. And the very existence of the festival has always been President Vladimir V. Putin’s rejection of Russia’s claim that there is no real Ukrainian culture.
Our critics were on two of the three programs: “Forest Song” on Friday and “Anthropocene” on Sunday.
‘forest song’
The festival’s first concert was a travelogue through the trees, fields and mountains of Ukraine: an agricultural landscape that has inspired the months of the country’s calendar; been the subject of Hitler’s envy; and suffered from modern disasters such as Chernobyl and the recent invasion.
Some works were transcription-like tributes. Ivan Nebesnyy’s “Air Music 1” (2001-04), combined the vocal group Ekmeles with four flutes and Sean Statser — the busiest player of the night, on percussion — for variations of elaborate technique that made something completely human elusive. The sustained final note of the percussion was a reminder of how much it owes to music, or any sound for that matter, to be broadcast.
There was also imitation in Zoltan Almashi’s “An Echo From Hitting the Trunk of a Dry Mountain Spruce in Rycerko Gorna Village” (2015), whose prepared piano was reminiscent of the tapping of a dead tree. A slow screeching violin was like a bending branch; the clarinet, a melancholic folk song played in the shadows. And Ostap Manulyak’s 2012 “Trees” was a tree exploration from the ground up, with higher and higher pitches played lightly by a violin and cello where their strings meet the tailpiece – and, at the top, piano tinkling like birdsong.
The other two pieces were more abstract and haunted. Anastasia Belitska’s “Rusalochka” (2019), a purely electronic work of distorted found audio from the Chernobyl zone, told of a traditional mermaid Easter celebration, as distorted as the ecosystem there. Alla Zahaykevych’s “Nord/Ouest” (2010) accomplished much of the same, his quest for vanishing folklore in northwestern Ukraine documented over 50 discursive minutes whose snatches of folk songs – in voice and violin – felt like precious discoveries.
“Nord/Ouest” normally includes percussion, vocals, and live electronics. But because the creators couldn’t leave Ukraine, it was reworked for Statser on Friday, alone with his drum kit, next to a laptop with the sounds of his fellow artists. This spectacle, like the ghostly messages of music from a fading history, spoke for itself. JOSHUA BARONE
‘Anthropocene’
The Sunday afternoon program was also disrupted: Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko, the composers who planned to perform their post-apocalyptic “Chornobyldorf Partita” in the second half of the concert, were unable to travel to New York. So they sent a 45-minute film, a selection from a seven-hour performance of “Mariupol” which they streamed on March 16 from Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, where they are hiding.
Conceived as a new part of “Chornobyldorf Partita” and named after the city currently under siege, “Mariupol” is written for dulcimer and a microtonally retuned bandura, a lute-like folk instrument. The two men sat opposite each other, their instruments almost touching, the strings of the bandura pointing upwards like those of the dulcimer.
With both instruments struck with drumsticks, the sound evolved from a rustling metallic crackle to a shimmering brassy drone to a clattering, contracting industrial sound. This was challenging, ritualistic music – aggressive and desolate, but with the poignant warmth of its formation as a duo.
In the first half of the program, pianist Steven Beck played Alexey Shmurak’s “Greenland” (2020-21), a reflection on another crisis, that of the Earth’s climate. In the minimalist first two movements, repeating figures worked through gradual but unexpected transformations, often turning from chilly to warm nighttime and back again – thawing – and in the opening “Railway Étude” taking on some of the relaxed swing of a rag. By far the longest section of this 45-minute work is the third and final movement, “Icy Variations,” which expands a Bach-style chorale theme into icy expanses, wandering through subtle, organic shifts. ZACHARY WOOLFE