A “Yanko show”

“In our country a conductor is more than a conductor” – this paraphrase of Aleksandr Yevtushenko’s words about a poet who is more than a poet in our country came from the time of Khrushchev’s Thaw and, in a sense, has not lost its meaning now. Brought into our music space, it becomes immediately topical, when you meet director and chief conductor of Kharkiv Oblast Philharmonic Society Yurii Yanko. This musician has done his utmost to completely shatter the myth about philharmonic society as a conservative concert institution. For this person the most appropriate definition is the word “creator.” He is a constant generator of bright, unconventional ideas and unique projects, which excite the cultural life of Kharkiv and unite the residents of the city with absolutely different priorities and preferences. This is a real “headliner” of academic concert space who is not afraid of ruining stereotypes and establishing new criteria of fashion for visiting artistic events of the philharmonic society. Have you heard of the Yanko show by accident? Yes, I’m speaking namely about the loud mass music events founded by the maestro. The tickets for these events are sold out within several hours.

Recently the Kharkiv Philharmonic Society has held a concert, when instead of buying tickets, the audience left at the entrance the products and medicines needed now by our servicemen in the east. This is the second charity concert for the musicians, and the money raised during the previous soiree was taken to the wounded servicemen in the hospital.

Mr. Yanko, your personality unites such images as conductor, director of the philharmonic society, art director, top manager, and showman. What secret mechanisms do you apply to be successful and well known not only in your native town, Kharkiv, but far abroad?

“These days it is extremely hard to remain a conductor in the former understanding of this profession, because you have to solve at the same time a variety of problems: promotion of orchestra (as long as I am also a director of the philharmonic society, I have to promote the philharmonic society as well), attraction of new audience, monitoring of present-day audience. People often ask me whether it is not hard for me to pull this cart. I reply honestly that it is not, vice versa. All urgent questions are solved very quickly. Recently the General Consul of the Republic of Poland in Kharkiv Jan Granat (unfortunately, his cadency will end soon), with whom we have accomplished many successful projects; he has helped us very much. He brought with him the general consul of Germany and told his colleague: ‘We have gotten to the territory with no state officials, where all artistic, and not only artistic, problems are solved very quickly and professionally.’ I think Jan Granat’s words confirm the rationality of uniting the positions of administrator and actually artist in one person.”

What is your target audience, when you create original and versatile concert projects?

“I want the philharmonic society to meet the demands of successful and prosperous people who want to recreate in a nice way, enjoying wonderful music and contemplating over eternal values. Unfortunately, sometimes we hear that a philharmonic society is a place for old people. Categorically not. A philharmonic society is above all for youth.”

You started your activity of a reformer with a radical reformatting of the repertoire.

“Almost immediately I offered the idea of a symphony show. Incidentally, such shows have been held for over 10 years and have acquired the popular title of ‘Yanko-show.’ Usually they are held three times in a season: on Old New Year’s Day, March 8, and April 1. On New Year’s Day I appeared in a costume of Santa Claus, with a bag behind my shoulders, took out a bottle of Champaign, uncorked it. The cork jumped out into the crowd. The one who caught it won a glass of Champaign, and the mass show began. As a rule, we have various quizzes and contests. I had to arrange a show, because I wanted people who would come to the philharmonic society to understand that you can recreate in a joyful way with classical music, enjoying the music by Strauss and Dunaevsky, be fond of the passionate beat of the dances by Brahms and Dvorak. We have ordered the arrangement to Dmytro Savenko from Zaporizhia (he created original arrangements of popular songs, in particular, by Jo Dassin, The Beatles etc.). To reach the youth, you need to speak its language. For our plans the concert hall of the philharmonic society often turns out to be too small, all the more so that the construction of the main hall has not been finished yet. Therefore we take our concerts to unusual places. For example, we have played in a Metro. The night concert took place at a platform of the University subway station on the night next after Easter. We performed music pieces by Strauss, The Beatles, Babadzhanian, Paul Mauriat. The music lovers paid for this concert as much as 1.5 hryvnias (the then cost of a Metro token). We agreed about everything in advance with the director of the Kharkiv Metro: two trains came, the station was closed. We performed for two hours, gradually overcoming the barrier of skepticism in the present youth, but soon the young people started clapping. And the performance of our team at the Turboatom Plant is worth of a special mentioning; 60 orchestra members took places at a giant manufacturing machine Waldrich Coburg which has an area of 140 sq. m. and is 18 meters high and became an improvised stage, whereas a 200-ton crane was hanging above us. Six hundred workers and executives of the company appraised our performance. We have also performed on the firing range of the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, we performed on the parade-ground. Recently we have performed at military units, before the forced migrants, in a forest near the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.”

What is the attitude of your musicians to extreme concerts?

“It is okay. For example, the London Orchestra can perform on a raft, and the Vienna Orchestra till April will be taking part in the balls that are famous all over the world. Today our show is well known in Kharkiv. People buy tickets in advance, often 20 tickets at a time - for relatives, children, and friends.

“This year we purposefully made the period of July and August the season of hits, when the music from cinema, soundtracks from the Star Wars, etc. were performed. You shouldn’t think that I am fond of appearing before the audience, for example, in Dart Wader’s costume with a light baton. Believe me: this is not the dream of my career as a conductor. I have conducted the Vienna, Munich, Sofia, Berlin, and Madrid philharmonic societies. And at home I had to be involved in these half-circus numbers in order to draw the young people to the philharmonic society. We regularly monitor the attendance of our institution, and I won’t agree when someone says that the audience today is not like it used to be and that nobody wants to visit the concerts at the philharmonic society. We simply lack a normal preparation work which will bring young people from night clubs to the philharmonic society.

“Today we need to filter the repertoire and look for versatile, non-standard approaches to the young audience, and think well on the titles of the concert programs.”

The programs of your philharmonic society are unconventional, and the titles of the concerts are always inviting.

“Our program ‘Music with Candles’ enjoys great popularity. In fact we perform the well-known chamber music. But if we simply wrote, ‘Concert of chamber music by Schumann and Schubert,’ not even one-third of the hall was filled. And in our version everything is different. There are candles lit on the stage. Someone sits in a queen’s chair during the concert, someone recites a poem, we added some romantic entourage – and we have full-houses.”

Tell about your brand project, “Concert for mothers-to-be”?

“At first we discussed this idea with the director of the Genetics Institute, then we were joined by the Institute of Mother and Child, Sanatorium for Pregnant, shops of toys and clothes, medical institutions of the city. The project is based on scientific recommendations, and we have been successful performing these programs for over three years. I will say more: some women give birth to a second child after they visit our programs. But I recall that people were joking at my intention to create a program for future moms, and I gathered the headmasters of schools and painted an attractive image, ‘When a future mom comes and sees a child playing a flute or a violin on the stage, she will see her child the same. Soon this woman will bring her child to a music school.’ We give the child an opportunity to perform on our stage, and future children – to get positive vibrations, because the embryo perceives sounds from the eighth week. Moreover, the parents and relatives of a pregnant woman do not spare anything for her. And this mom needs a company to go to a concert: her husband, parents, friends, and relatives, who often find themselves in the philharmonic society for the first time. We have a chain effect. At the moment our idea has reached a large scale.”

When will your long-time construction be over and the super modern project of concert complex which has no analogues in Ukraine will be finally realized?

“This will probably happen when people will recall that Kharkiv is a huge city with long time European cultural traditions. The Kharkiv Philharmonic Society is one of the oldest in Ukraine, it was founded in 1929. At the turn of the 20th century, its bills featured the names of the world stars, such as Alchevsky, Caruso, Ruffo, Chaliapin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin.

“I believe that all the ideas will be realized. After the reconstruction in the Kharkiv Philharmonic Society three halls will be operating there (one of them will be a transformer), a museum of music culture, music library, and modern studio of sound recording. And in the new organ hall an organ of the renowned German firm Alexander Schuke will be placed. Notably, the philharmonic society has always been placed in the premises rearranged for its purposes. After all we have found ourselves at Rymarska Street, because the previous building was blasted for a planned construction. We have done the repairs on our own, but we still have no concert hall. We work at the Cathedral of the Assumption, and we are thankful to the eparchy who meets us half-way.”

The Day’s FACT FILE

Yurii Volodymyrovych Yanko is the director and chief conductor of the Kharkiv Philharmonic Society, Merited Worker of Art of Ukraine, a winner of the International Vakhtang Jordania Competition.

Yanko graduated from the Kharkiv Secondary Special Music School as a conductor-choirmaster in 1980, Kharkiv-based Kotliarevsky State University of Art in 1985, the Kyiv-based Tchaikovsky National Music Academy as opera-symphony conductor in 1991. He has been a conductor of the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Zaporizhia Philharmonic Society (1991-94), an art director and conductor of the chamber orchestra of the Kharkiv Secondary Specialized Music Boarding School (1999-2004). Since 1994 he has been the conductor of the Kharkiv-based Lysenko Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. He has conducted numerous productions.

Since 2001 Yanko has been working as an art director and chief conductor of the symphony orchestra of the Kharkiv Philharmonic Society. In 2004 he became the head of the institution. He has been leading pedagogical activity.

Yanko has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the National Symphony Orchestra of Moldova, as well as other orchestras of Russia and Ukraine. He has gone on tours to the Netherlands, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Russia, the US, France, and Switzerland.