‘People often ask me about my work with Ukrainian musicians,” says the Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson. “They will say things like, ‘How are things out there? We don’t hear much about the war, I guess it’s all calmed down a bit.’ When I hear that I want to scream, ‘No, it really hasn’t calmed down!’.”
Wilson established the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in the weeks after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With her husband, Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she contacted leaders of the world’s top international orchestras and located dozens of elite Ukrainian musicians – some working in western Europe, some who had fled Russia, others performing in Kyiv, Lviv or Odesa – to establish a 75-piece “battalion of culture” who would assemble for a few weeks each year.
The UFO were stars of the 2022 Proms, earned rave reviews around the world, received a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and toured their titanic version of Beethoven’s Ninth in 2023 and 2024, translating Schiller’s lyric into Ukrainian and turning his “ode to joy” into a declaration of “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine). However, after three and a half years of relentless conflict, Wilson admits that the orchestra may be a victim of compassion fatigue. “There’s a danger that the world could lose interest, just as the Russian bombing gets ever more brutal, and as more and more Ukrainians are killed. I guess the only way we can get that story across is to keep on fighting through music.”
The orchestra members, many of whom are based in Kyiv, can attest to the relentless bombardment they face on a day-to-day basis. “I might be playing a small chamber concert one evening, which is suddenly interrupted by air raid sirens,” says Vladyslav Primakov, a cellist with the UFO as well as the Kyiv Philharmonic and the National House of Music. “You have to stop what you are doing, take cover for an hour, and then get back on stage, re-establish your rapport with the audience, and then try and enter a space of sensitivity all over again. Then I return home to my wife and five-year-old daughter, and I might get an hour of sleep, amid the drone attacks. It is exhausting.”
“It is very scary,” confirms UFO double bassist Nazarii Stets, who also plays with several other Kyiv ensembles. “We all have apps on our phones which give air raid warnings. Sometimes you see neighbours who sleep in the underground stations because it is safer. And then you have to go to rehearsals the next morning after zero sleep, and you are shattered. Of course, we are not on the frontline, about to kill or be killed. These people are the true heroes. But, as musicians, our instruments are our weapons.”
At the moment, orchestra members like Stets and Primakov are among an elite of men of fighting age – alongside sportsmen, academics, scientists and certain caregivers – who are given dispensation to avoid military service, something reviewed every two years. This is a cause of resentment for some drafted Ukrainians. One Belgium-based musician in the UFO was the object of his brother’s anger for not returning to Ukraine to volunteer. “There are some musicians who have remained in exile and avoided the draft,” says Stets. “I guess they, like footballers and boxers, are representing Ukraine on the world stage, fighting for us culturally. But I understand why some are uncomfortable with that.”
It may seem frivolous for Ukrainian musicians to be playing concerts at this moment, or for the Ukrainian government to maintain an arts programme as it fights for its very survival, but it recalls a famous wartime quote often attributed to Winston Churchill. When asked to cut the arts budget to aid the war effort, he is said to have responded: “So what are we fighting for?” It is a crucial point for Wilson. “Culture is our soul,” she says. “It’s what gives Ukrainians their identity. We have to maintain and expand that. I receive letters from soldiers on the frontline, saying thank you for your support, thank you for fighting for us. Soldiers come to our concerts, they watch us on YouTube and social media. We have performed for soldiers in rehab, some blinded in battle, and we were overwhelmed by their support.”
Wilson has strong ties to Ukraine – her ancestors emigrated from Chernivtsi a century ago to join thelarge Ukrainian community in Winnipeg, Canada – and she is close to two cousins from the Bukovina region who are now serving as military volunteers. She spends six weeks a year as music director of the Kyiv Camerata, Ukraine’s leading chamber orchestra, and is learning Ukrainian; she was already fluent in French, Italian, German and Russian when she launched the UFO. “I initially tried conversing with Ukrainian musicians in Russian. But you realise that this is now verboten, even for those in the Russian-speaking areas of the east.”
It is a sore subject. “From 24 February 2022, I decided that no Russian will be spoken from my lips,” says Stets. “And, likewise, no Russian music from my hand. We have a limited amount of time, and I would rather spend my time developing and championing the Ukrainian repertoire.”
“I, too, can no longer play Russian music,” says Primakov. “Same with Russian books, films, TV, art – anything Russian is cursed. It is terrible to think this way, but it has become instinctive.”
The repertoire for this tour features a new work by Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets. His opera, The Mothers of Kherson, with a libretto by American playwright George Brant, will be premiered at the New York Met next year, but here will be previewed as a 15-minute suite. “It is a remarkable piece, about the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped by Russia,” says Primakov. “There are parts that sound like a lullaby, but you quickly realise that the lullaby is being sung by someone who is trying to comfort the mother of an abducted child. It is rare to play such a devastating and resonant contemporary work.”
The programme also includes the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (“That moves me to tears every time,” says Primakov) as well as Beethoven’s Fifth: “I once saw the Fifth as something dark and tragic. But now I see an air of defiance. It embodies our fighting spirit. It reminds us that we are soldiers, too.”
“Our repertoire must send a strong message, and the Fifth was not a light choice,” says Wilson. “The opening four notes were famously used as a sign of resistance in occupied Europe during the second world war, and the BBC used it during blitzkrieg. It is about resilience. It reminds us that art is a political weapon. Every time I go to Ukraine, I realise that I am playing Russian roulette, I could be killed. But I would rather fight than not do anything. My baton is my weapon.”
• The Ukraine Freedom Orchestra is at Cadogan Hall, London, on 29 August
