The high cost of conflict

With the war in Ukraine now in its third month, many musicians are still trapped in the country. Two string players who left in the nick of time reflect on their experiences – and how we can help

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Valeriy Sokolov

Aleksey Semenenko

SOKOLOV PHOTO IVAN BORYS. SEMENENKO PHOTO MARYNA CHORNA

On 25 March, Valeriy Sokolov got into his car and fled Ukraine. With him sat the cellist Alexei Shadrin and six young student musicians. In a few days they would reach the north-west German city of Hanover and safety –a return, effected through diplomatic channels, that Sokolov later describes as ‘a miracle’.

For over a month they had been living in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and the nearby village of Svaliava. Sokolov had returned to his homeland on 20 February from a concert in Iceland to perform Scheherazade with INSO, the Symphony Orchestra of Lviv National Philharmonic. The lyrical escapism of Rimsky-Korsakov’s lush score was soon to be set into stark contrast against the brutality of war. Less than a week after the concert, Ukraine was invaded by Russian troops. ‘By 25 February, transport from east to west had become virtually impossible,’ explains Sokolov. ‘Various bridges on a main connecting highway had been bombed, and panic and queues were huge.’ So, instead of returning to his home in the bombarded city of Kharkiv, Sokolov remained in and around Lviv, joined by a growing contingent of Ukrainians fleeing the east of the country that included a large cohort of musicians. ‘The whole musical community began coming to the area,’ recalls Sokolov, ‘and we began to see a musical Ukrainian exile in the west of the country. All these artists we knew from other towns: professors, musicians, orchestral leaders. They all ended up in one area.’

One of those musicians was the Ukrainian violinist Aleksey Semenenko, who had escaped the city of Kyiv aboard an evening train on 25 February.‘I arrived in Kyiv on the 20th, although my wife was absolutely encouraging me not to go,’ he explains.‘Air travel back to Germany had already been cancelled, so I knew I had a one-way ticket and would somehow need to get out of the country.But of course I did not count on what happened afterwards.’ Semenenko performed Mozart’s sublime Concerto K218 with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine on the 23rd, addressing the expectant and anxious listeners. ‘I greeted the audience, telling them that in those unstable times I wanted to support them. There was a special atmosphere in the hall and everybody was thankful.I was due to give masterclasses over the next three days. The organiser called me at 7.50am the following morning, saying that many airports were being bombarded and the masterclasses had Everybody’s intention, from that moment on, was to get out of the capital. However, the day passed so quickly that when it got dark I decided to stay. The next evening, I escaped by train to Lviv, miraculously buying a ticket online.’

Scenes from the ballet We Are Ukraine, which premiered in Lviv on 20 April 2022

BALLET PHOTOS NATALIA SHEVCHENKO been cancelled. I could not believe it was happening.

While Semenenko raced to Lviv under the cover of darkness, Valeriy Sokolov was already setting up camp. ‘A relative of the great Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych gave us a place to live, although hardly a square metre of space was available due to the millions fleeing to the west of the country,’ he says. ‘We were lucky with this place to stay but, if you are talking basics, we didn’t have washing machines and so on. But we were OK.

Much better than many others. We were receiving a lot of support. Among others, Jeremy Menuhin, Didier de Cottignies, Bruno Monsaingeon and Leonid Gorokhov, as well as close musical friends from Paris and Milan, were always in contact, and we managed to get some basics as well as a possibility through the French Embassy to get our situation under control.But, of course, things were not normal. You could feel things were happening. Shortages were beginning and you could sense the panic. And the sheer amount of money that people were having to spend on basics. Lots of people went from quite a high living standard to suddenly low overnight. In Kharkiv, for example, the queues for food at the supermarkets were unbelievable. My father couldn’t find petrol to leave. I had to organise a volunteer to bring petrol to his car and my parents finally left on 8 March under the bombing. The mother and sister of cellist Aleksey Shadrin had to pay twenty times the normal fee to get a place on a bus from one end of Ukraine to the other. An air bomb was dropped in the neighbourhood just as they drove away. We have not seen things like this in Ukraine for many years; it had become a healthy, open country.’

Yet somehow, within the unfolding tragedy, music making continued. ‘In Lviv I met an outstanding pianist, Antonii Baryshevskyi,’ says Semenenko, who has since returned to western Europe. ‘We played for a live audience in a music school. The concert started and ended with sirens,

‘We began to see a musical Ukrainian exile in the west of the country’ – Valeriy Sokolovgiving it an unforgettable and unique atmosphere. It was video-recorded and streamed at the French platform Vialma for the War Child charity, during which Antonii and I answered questions in a live-chat.’

This is not an isolated story. Remarkably, music has continued in Lviv throughout the war. The Lviv National Philharmonic even presented a world premiere, the ballet We Are Ukraine, in a programme alongside Ukrainian folk songs and works by Bach and Debussy. In spite of this, Sokolov has great concern for the damage that could be done to Ukrainian culture by the invasion. ‘In recent times, Ukraine had started to have this flair, this feeling of buzz about it in musical terms. For me, living there since the Covid outbreak, it has been this breathing space, a place to experiment, to educate young musicians. One of the things that has been lost through this war, and will not be regained very soon, is that kind of artistic flair, which is destroyed so quickly. My apartment as well as a house in Kharkiv were bombed on 5 and 6 March. I became homeless in 24 hours. And it was symbolic really of this dream; a dream that had not yet been born but that we believed in, and now has just been destroyed.’ Both artists have been involved in fundraising concerts for Ukrainian children displaced by the conflict. But both also advise caution regarding grandiose statements on the role of art in the pathway towards peace. ‘My personal opinion is that the music itself cannot stop the war or have influence on it in any way,’ Semenenko explains. ‘It can only give people a hope, take them away for the moment of listening to a better place.’

‘Music cannot stop the war; it can only give people hope, take them away to a better place’

Valeriy Sokolov took this photo of his destroyed apartment on 6 March

APARTMENT PHOTO VALERIY SOKOLOV

‘It is impossible to stop conflict,’ agrees Sokolov. ‘But what is possible is fundraising for those who are vulnerable: children, for example, who have this story of running away, who are unable to do things for themselves. These we are involved in. But the message has to be right. If it’s the right message, good. If it is involving artistic self-indulgence, also seen since the outbreak of war at places during benefit concerts, I won’t have anything to do with it.’

For now, for both men, there is also the immediate concern of how to recover from the trauma of recent events. ‘At the moment, even though I am doing very much, musically I am feeling numb,’ says Sokolov. ‘This is not a romanticised story. But when I played Bach just before I left Ukraine, I did not feel that connection –I was numb. Not because of myself, but for these true victims who have no choice. Who are dying because they have no choice, because they are unable to do anything else. This human suffering in our time is beyond my understanding.

At this moment, giving lessons to young people makes me feel better. And I am really happy to dive into even more work than I used to have. But playing is a bit more complicated. This emotion, this enjoying or having fun with music is not available to me right now.’