Roman Mints, far left, with members of Another Chamber Orchestra, © Guy Rickards
Nicholas Daniel (ob), Sasha Grynyuk (pf), Roman Mints (vn), Julia Morneweg (vc), Luba Tunnicliffe (va), Dmytro Udovychenko (vn), Karen Wong (fl), Another Chamber Orchestra / Natalia Ponomarchuk
St John’s Waterloo, London, January 26, 2025
Another Chamber Orchestra? Yes, that really is their name and a rather fine ensemble they are, comprising mostly Ukrainian students (“immensely talented” Ukrainian students to quote their artistic director, Roman Mints) strengthened by a few British performers. The juxtaposition was particularly appropriate for this sold-out charity concert set up to raise funds for Medical Life Lines Ukraine (which provides reconditioned ambulances in good running order, with drivers, for the war-torn nation), as set within the Ukrainian programme for (mostly) string orchestra were two works by Malcolm Arnold.
The concert was topped and tailed by two emotive arrangements or reworkings of pre-existing Ukrainian songs. Viktor Rekalo’s chillingly elegiac Plyve Kacha is based on the wistful folksong ‘Plyve kacha po Tysyni’ (‘A Duckling Swims in the Tisza’) and was created as a memorial to those killed in the Euromaidan protests and Revolution of Dignity (2013-4) and the ensuing war with Russia. The resonances of the Tallis Fantasia in the tutti sections provided a wider harmonic context for the whole. Euromaidan also provoked Yuri Shevchenko (1935-2022) to write his dignified Paraphrase on the Ukrainian National Anthem, Mи Є! (‘We Are!’), which gave the concert its title. A different war gave rise to Arnold’s rather weightier Variations on a Ukrainian Theme (1944), which he composed as a piano piece for John Kuchmy, a violinist colleague of Ukrainian descent at the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1993, Roger Steptoe made a virtuosic arrangement which brings out the subtleties of Arnold’s invention all the more. The starkness of the original is lost—some of the jazziness in early variations too—replaced to the work’s advantage by a wider palette of colours to match Arnold’s characteristically broad, if not kaleidoscopic, expressive range. The orchestra audibly relished this tribute to their heritage in playing of real fervour, though perhaps an additional viola or two (there were just three players) might have balanced out the inner part a little, which seemed a little thin, though conductor Natalia Ponomarchuk made as light of this as she could.
There was no problem with viola tone in Vitaliy Hubarenko’s Concerto Grosso, Op 33 (1981), with its concertino for string trio, in this case Roman Mints, Luba Tunnicliffe (whose viola tone was commendable robust) and Julia Morneweg. Although Hubarenko (1934-2000) is one of Ukraine’s finest composers, he is largely unknown beyond its borders, and little is available currently on CD or other formats (the Presto Classical database has nothing), but the Ukrainian Music Channel have made recordings available which are accessible in YouTube. [e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffS6vQnm6Lg] Concerto Grosso, receiving its UK Premiere, is a rather stern succession of three slow-paced movements (‘Sostenuto, mesto’; ‘Andante cantabile’; ‘Adagio tranquillo’) blending, as concert annotator and second violinist Sofi Lomidze commented, “the Baroque concerto grosso form with modern musical elements.” The modern musical elements are largely confined to the melodic angularity and harmonic dissonances, the form itself with its interplay of concertino (with lots of solos and duos between the three players) and ripieno quite recognisable. The work is very well laid out for a string ensemble, and in the finale achieves a true catharsis at the centre, followed by Shostakovich pathos towards the close. Miroslav Skoryk (1938-2020) is better known in the West with several albums widely available on Naxos and other labels. His much-recorded Carpathian Rhapsody, composed for the David Oistrakh Competition in Odesa in 2004, is a real crowd-pleaser. Its almost Nationalist-Romantic idiom has made it a popular item and Dmytro Udovychenko produced a barnstorming performance to close the first half, full of fire, relishing its technical and stylistic challenges, not least the flashes of Bartók and klezmer along the way, enthusiasm shared by the orchestra and Ponomarchuk, who proved herself a real firecracker of a conductor.
Probably the best-known work opened the second half, Valentin Silvestrov’s The Messenger (1996), in the version for piano and a tape (or CD) or wind sounds (an alternative to the prescribed synthesizer) with muted strings. Following the pyrotechnics of the Carpathian Rhapsody, Silvestrov’s ethereal contemplation prompted by the death of his wife made the maximum possible contrast, with its Mozartian resonances, and haunting effects. Sasha Grynyuk was the delicate soloist (though played with the piano lid open, ignoring the composer’s suggestion to keep it closed), joined by Roman Mints for the violin solos that punctuate the piece. Another inspired by a composer’s wife—living, thankfully—then followed, the vibrant single-movement Chamber Symphony No 3 for flute and strings (1982) by Yevhen Stankovych (b1942). An altogether fierier work (see YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPhwpE5yEjU], its many faces (could this be a portrait of the lady?) were projected with jaw-dropping virtuosity by Hong Kong-born flautist Karen Wong, currently a Britten-Pears Young Artist. It is a very impressive piece and Wong’s breath-taking performance of its very busy flute part, with Ponomarchuk’s intensely responsive support, was a highlight of the concert.
Nicholas Daniel then joined the orchestra for the other UK Premiere: Victoria Poleva’s White Interment, which the composer (b1962) describes as a ‘symphony’ scored for oboe and strings. Composed in 2003, the work is again in a single span and based on the poem ‘Teper vsegha snega’ (‘Now always snows’) by the Chuvash writer, Gennady Aygi (1934-2006). Although not an unvoiced setting of the poem, the musical material derives from the rhythms of the poetic text, and its succession of “mirror-symmetric blocks… are graphically defined baroque rhetorical figures” flow into each other seamlessly, designed to produce “psychedelic emotional effects.” An example of Poleva’s later “sacred minimalist” style, I am not convinced entirely of the work’s symphonic credentials. If one accepts Hans Keller’s definition of a symphony as the “large-scale integration of contrasts”, there is a degree of musical integration in White Interment [see YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUuZWJuU1xg for a performance in Kyiv conducted by Ponomarchuk] and an undoubted cumulative impact, (especially in this captivating account from Daniel and the orchestra) but is lighter on contrast. This intense, focused work strikes me as a movement from rather than a whole symphony, but the intensity of the performance convinced the audience.
Roman Mints shows his defiance as the soloists take their final bow, (c) Anastasia Tikhonova
The final main work, setting to one side Shevchenko’s titular coda, was Arnold’s Concerto for 2 violins and strings, Op 77 (1962), the only work with a tenuous Ukrainian link (it was composed for Menuhin and his Argentinian-born student, Alberto Lysy, whose parents had immigrated from Ukraine). This is to my mind Arnold’s finest concerto (the Second for clarinet, notwithstanding) and drew a performance of power, passion and nuance from Mints and Udovychenko whose mutual understanding on the night was total. Curiously, they opted to stand between the front desk of the second violins and conductor Ponomarchuk rather than to her side or back, but this did not impair the balance or clarity of their playing, whether the climactic closing duet of the central Andantino or the electrifying final Vivace-Presto, the conclusion of which brought the house down. Quite an occasion.