Under the lofty dome of the Grand Palais on Monday night, Ukraine had its first triumph at the Paris Olympics: Olha Kharlan dedicated her bronze fencing medal to her embattled homeland. The same evening, under a different soaring dome, that of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra and 180 singers of the UK-based Songs for Ukraine Chorus united to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in the year of the work’s 200th anniversary. The choral finale was sung not in Schiller’s original German but in Ukrainian. “Freude” (joy) was replaced with “slava” (glory). Flags were waved, “Slava Ukraini” cried on both sides of the Channel. The two soft powers of sports and culture united in obliging synchronicity.
At St Paul’s, filled to capacity, the atmosphere was heady, familial, talkative. Many, on stage and off, wore traditional embroidered white shirts. When the Ukrainian ambassador gave a welcome address from the pulpit, the noisy cheers were a reminder of his national hero status: General Valerii Zaluzhnyi was commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces until February 2024. The chorus’s first Ode to Joy utterance, Slavic vowel sounds adding a rich and unfamiliar aural filter, provoked applause mid-movement, together with a light show of phones held high: potent memories to send home. The concert opened with Bucha. Lacrimosa, a short, affecting work by the Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá (b.1962), written in response to the massacre there in April 2022. A solo violin (Marko Komonko) releases curls of notes into the cavernous space, until thuds of war, percussive and chilling, ambush the peace.
The impact of such cultural occasions, elusive and personal, cannot be measured. Gainsayers snub them as feelgood activities, funded by rich patrons and therefore, never mind the lack of logic, ineffectual. You had to be there to know otherwise. Made up of Ukrainian musicians from home and abroad, the orchestra was formed in 2022 by the Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson in collaboration with, among others, the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has given her support to the enterprise. Last month, as part of their summer tour, orchestra and choir performed in a Gdansk shipyard, in the presence of Lech Wałęsa, the former Polish president and a key figure in the Solidarity movement. (Wilson and the orchestra also recorded Beethoven’s Ninth there last year, for Deutsche Grammophon). The orchestra is constant. Each city provides its own chorus. The UK-based Songs for Ukraine Chorus was formed in spring 2023 as part of the Royal Opera House’s creative exchange programme.
Given the symbolism we heap on the Ninth, we risk, somewhat carelessly, neglecting its genius: as mould-breaker, trendsetter; grand in scale, revolutionary in style, risky, complex, virtuosic and taxing to play. St Paul’s is not the place to show off intricacy or counterpoint, only magnitude. Some moments were inaudible, some giddying, others deafening. Depending who you believe and whether full or empty, the building’s reverberation can be up to 13 seconds. Wilson handled the acoustic delay with aplomb, letting grand chords hang in the air as if waiting for each straggling note to reach a particular landmark before striding on.
The playing sounded well drilled. To add “in the circumstances” is not damning with faint praise. The bass baritone Andrii Kymach (BBC Cardiff Singer of the World winner in 2019) delivered his opening acclamation with might and elegance, leading a strong lineup of soloists (Olga Bezszmertna, Nataliia Kukhar and Valentyn Dytiuk) and a chorus that uttered its slavas with collective breath and heart. The concert ended with a hymn-like paraphrase, for violin and strings, of Ukraine’s national anthem called We Do Exist, by Yuri Shevchenko (1953-2022). At that moment of stillness, we were all Ukrainians.
Ideas of home have also featured in the Three Choirs festival, this year based in Worcester, alongside its broader theme, celebrating nature. In the short time I was able to be there, I heard the BBC Singers, conducted by Sofi Jeannin, give a formidable performance of Francis Poulenc’s cantata Figure Humaine (1943), a febrile cry, in several vocal lines, against the Nazi occupation of France. It ends with a solo soprano quietly singing “Liberté” on a high E (think of the very highest sound a human can make and you may be spot on). This was part of a concert that also featured Anna Lapwood playing her own arrangement, for organ, of Britten’s Sea Interludes, with radiant choral settings by Kristina Arakelyan (b.1994) interspersed (though each work could have stood alone, perhaps better), and In the Land of Uz, first heard at the Proms in 2017, by Judith Weir, a featured composer.
An exemplary afternoon song recital, Songs from My Homeland, was given by the rising-star Nigerian American soprano Francesca Chiejina and the British pianist Jocelyn Freeman. The repertoire choice was ambitious as well as varied, from Benjamin Britten’s On This Island to Samuel Barber’s wistful Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and companion songs by Gerald Finzi, Francis Poulenc, Madeleine Dring, Florence Price and more. Chiejina and Freeman ended their engaging collaboration with three jubilant Yoruba songs (arranged by Ayo Bankole).
Referring to his Fourth Symphony, Dmitri Shostakovich said that if the Stalinist regime cut off his hands, he would compose “holding my pen in my teeth”. Alienation and terror burnt their way into the BBC Philharmonic’s scorching account at Wednesday’s Prom 16, conducted by John Storgårds. Listen to all 65 minutes of it, if you dare, on BBC Sounds, but be sure to hear the strange, unearthly end. The performance followed Cassandra Miller’s Viola Concerto (2023), a reticent but powerful lament that takes its title, I cannot love without trembling, from the French philosopher Simone Weil. It was written for the dazzling Lawrence Power, no virtuosic puppet but, as Miller demands, a soulful poet of sound.
Star ratings (out of five)
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra ★★★★
Three Choirs festival ★★★★
Prom 16 ★★★★
All Proms are available on BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 14 September
