In February, 22-year-old Ukrainian violinist Grigory Ambatsumyan of Armenian descent was awakened by the sound of bombs in Kyiv. It was the beginning of the Russian attack on his country, and the days and weeks that followed were a blur of restless nights in air-raid shelters.
Six months later, with the war still raging, Ambertsumyan and dozens of fellow musicians pan-white youth orchestra We met again in the idyllic Georgian village of Tsinandari for our 4th Annual General Meeting Tsinandari Festival of classical music. It’s been three years since the orchestra debuted in September 2019, but that’s due to the coronavirus pandemic (which stopped him from playing festivals for two years) and Georgia’s neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia. and, of course, the protracted war in nearby Ukraine.
This year, there is an urgent sense of camaraderie and hope between young musicians and festival organizers in this historically unstable region. About 80 performers from 7 countries from the Caucasus region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and some neighboring countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine were among the 19 concerts at the festival. play his three It will be held from September 2nd to 11th.
Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, music director of the Cinandari Festival, said: “If we do not cross borders and forge new relationships with music, we will miss the opportunity to plant seeds in the hearts of young musicians. let’s,” he said. “To solve problems through connection rather than division, we have to start with young people.”
The orchestra opens this year’s festival on Friday with “Adagio” (along with works by Brahms and Beethoven) by contemporary Ukrainian composer Bohdana Hroryak. The concert will be conducted by Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv, who will become the first woman to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival in 2021.
The Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra Martin Engström, director of the wealthy Verbier Festival in Switzerland. In 2018, he was hired by Georgian private equity investor George Ramishvili to launch a music festival in his home country, along with Avi Shoshani, Executive Director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The festival kicked off in September 2019 at an estate northeast of the Tbilisi capital once owned by a 19th-century Romantic poet. Prince Alexander Chavchavadze.
But Engstroem and Shoshani didn’t just want to host another summer festival for the elite. “We felt the need to create a festival with a humanitarian and geopolitical message in this part of the world,” said Engström.
Like many classical music festivals, the festival celebrates the works of major European composers, but it is not the case in regions where tensions have persisted for centuries, including the Caucasus and between Turkey and Armenia. Music from other neighboring countries is also included. More recently, so have Azerbaijan and Armenia, Russia and Georgia.
“This region of Georgia and Tsinandari is at the very center where nations have fought forever,” Engström said.
“More than ever, dialogue is very important. We have seen that classical music is a universal language,” he added. “It is relatively easy for children from different backgrounds to develop a common language through music.”
For violinist Ambertsumian, this year’s festival seems like a miracle. After withstanding airstrikes in Kyiv earlier this year, he remained in the city to study at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Conservatory this summer before traveling to Tsinandary for rehearsals. Speaking through an interpreter in his interview, Ambertsumian held back tears as he talked about his journey over the past six months and remembered several friends who died in the war.
“Since February, explosions have woken us up and people were running or hiding everywhere,” he said. “It was a very difficult time. I am both Armenian and Ukrainian, so those two years were tough for him.”
He was referring to the simmering clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. This is a conflict that many in the world seem to know little about or care about, he said.
“In 2019, I met an Azerbaijani girl in a youth orchestra and I remember her saying that despite the tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we can all communicate together,” he said. “It’s important for me and other musicians to understand that the most important thing in life is peace.”
The war also affected other members of the Panwhite Youth Orchestra.
“When the festival started in 2019, we were a little bit scared because there is always something going on or it could explode at any moment,” says Diana, 23, an Armenian violinist. Sargsyan said. “And Armenia and Azerbaijan, in 2020 she fought for 44 days. I have brothers in the war and I always thought of them.”
Although the orchestra did not reunite for 2020 and 2021 (the Tsinandari festival continued, but on a much smaller scale), many of the young musicians kept in touch and hoped to perform this year. I was hoping for
“You may wonder how we can sit next to each other, but that’s fine with us,” added Sargsyan. “Music is the language we speak. It doesn’t matter where we come from. We are all the same.”
Georgian oboist Ekaterin Zenteradze, 25, remembers a brief war between his country and Russia as a child.
“I was 12 in 2008. I remember seeing Russian soldiers in the streets,” Zenteradze said after Russian forces occupied Georgia in August 2008, 12 days after a ceasefire was brokered. I mentioned that “I’m having this fear again now. I have a feeling it’s going to be another country next. We’re playing music in peace now, but everything can change.” “
Ambartsumyan said that during the festival’s closing performance on September 11, he found a certain joy in the orchestra playing works by two composers repressed by the Soviet regime: Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
“Not only do their music contain small tragedies, but it’s emotional for me because at the root of a lot of their music is government satire,” he said. . Given that music written to criticize the Russian government is being played in a region where Russian aggression is once again making headlines decades later, Ambertsumyan is an ironic piece of 2022 programming. said that
“When I saw Prokofiev, shostakovich I thought, ‘Perfect!’ on the program,” he said. “I know a little bit about what these two composers went through.”