DATELINE NEW YORK: An opera star, and a bandurist (11/30/97)

DATELINE NEW YORK: An opera star, and a bandurist

by Helen Smindak

Stefiuk at the UIA

Opera lovers at the Kyiv Opera House have thrilled to the light, agile voice of coloratura soprano Maria Stefiuk for 25 years. Audiences in foreign countries have been charmed by her voice and her gracious manner. Last month it was the turn of a capacity audience at the Ukrainian Institute of America to see and hear this exciting Ukrainian diva in person.

With pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky providing his usual splendid accompaniment, Ms. Stefiuk offered a varied program that ranged through operatic arias, sacred hymns, lilting folk songs and compositions by such Ukrainian composers as Mykola Lysenko and Anatol Kos-Anatolsky and the Ukrainian American composer Ihor Sonevytsky.

Ms. Stefiuk has a strong, beautiful coloratura that enables her to produce trills effortlessly, as she demonstrated so well in Kos-Anatolsky's "Nightingale's Romance," a work replete with alternating musical tones a diatonic second apart. She showed that skill in other selections as well, for example, in Mozart's "Alleluia," Cherubini's "Ave Maria" and Kropyvnytsky's "Soloveyko." In addition to marvelous voice control and an excellent stage presence, Ms. Stefiuk has a talent for conveying the mood of her songs. She was by turns pious, as in Caccini's "Ave Maria"; introspective in a work set to Shevchenko's poem "Three Wide Roads"; coquettish in Rossi's "Tyrolean Song" (where she mimicked Tyrolean yodeling beautifully); and rhapsodic in the famous "Caro Nome" aria from Verdi's "Rigoletto."

That aptitude for expressing deep feeling was also evident in her rendering of Sonevytsky's sentimental "Stabat Mater," Lysenko's dramatic work "Asters" and the Hutsul-like folk song "Zakuvala Zozulia," arranged by Borys Liatoshynsky. On the other hand, she demonstrated equal proficiency in frolicsome folk songs such as "Spaty Meni ne Khochetsia." For encores, after prolonged applause, she offered a humorous folk song with tongue-tripping lyrics, "Ty Do Mene Ne Khody," that called for clear articulation, and Natalka's sprightly aria from the opera "Natalka Poltavka."

Some listeners said they noted a certain stridency in the soprano's high notes when sung fortissimo (a few put that down to the natural decline in vocal power that comes with advancing years, while others blamed it on the "Soviet" style of singing to which Ms. Stefiuk was exposed in her training). If there were any shortcomings they did not prevent the audience from cheering the soprano exuberantly for a brilliant performance.

A tall, attractive woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, Ms. Stefiuk impressed concertgoers with her voice, her poise and her elegant fashion sense. She opened her program attired in a black beaded gown with low-cut bodice. For the second half of the evening, devoted solely to Ukrainian music, she appeared in a two-piece off-white outfit - a floor-length coat over a matching strapless gown, both accented with bright blue embroidery.

Born in Kosiv into a family of singers in 1948, Ms. Stefiuk studied at the Kyiv Conservatory and began her singing career with the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1972, a year before her graduation. She has sung roles in Lysenko's "Taras Bulba," Maiboroda's "Yaroslav the Wise," Glinka's "A Life for the Tsar," Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Tsar's Bride" and Verdi's "La Traviata." She has appeared at the La Scala Opera in Milan, and has concertized in Canada and the U.S.

A bandurist on the move

Julian Kytasty and his bandura have been rambling around the world like the wandering minstrels of old Ukraine, who roamed the steppes singing ballads of glorious Kozak deeds and fabled historic events. A third-generation bandurist, he has been concertizing and teaching courses and workshops in North and South America, Western Europe, Australia and Ukraine - all with the goal of developing an audience for the national musical instrument of Ukraine.

Now, after a 10-year absence, he has returned to New York to direct the New York School of Bandura and has released a CD featuring songs and music by his great-uncle. Hryhoriy Kytasty, the longtime musical director of the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus.

The compositions featured on the new disc "Hryhoriy Kytasty: Music for Solo Bandura and Songs" were introduced by Julian Kytasty to a rapt audience at the Mayana Gallery earlier their month. Apart from one composition - a piece titled "Lviv Fragments," based on improvisations created by Hryhoriy Kytasty in 1944 in his last days on Ukrainian soil - all of the CD music was created outside Ukraine, most of it comprising poignant words and melodies echoing an exile's nostalgia for his homeland.

Mr. Kytasty, who polished his art under the direction of his uncle in the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, which he joined in 1978, is one of the finest bandura players in North America. His voice is mellow and well-suited to the narrative style characteristic of many bandura lyrics. Combining youthful energy with intelligence and maturity, he communicated the longing, the yearning for beloved scenes of Poltava's steppes and the sense of loss and isolation expressed in his uncle's compositions. Prepare to be genuinely moved when you listen to this CD.

Among the compositions are the story of Hetman Sahaidachny's victory over the Turks in 1620 in the duma "Sahaidachny" (the duma is an epic genre favored by the blind bards of Ukraine who were the forerunners of today's bandurists). "Foreign Land" articulates an exile's determination to remember his native land, while "The Poet's Grave" is a folk song about Ukraine's hero, Taras Shevchenko, in an arrangement by Hryhoriy Kytasty.

Instrumental works include the enjoyable "Moment Musicale" and two short pieces written for instructional purposes, titled "Prelude" and "Spring Game." The instrumental fantasy "Echo of the Steppes" is a dramatic composition with Oriental overtones that brings to mind images of Tatar hordes, Kozaks on horseback and winds rippling through tall steppe grasses.

Between CD selections and a few of his own compositions and arrangements, Mr. Kytasty gave insight into his uncle's life - a boyhood spent in the Poltava region, where he grew up hearing "the old bandurists," his training as a bandurist, then harrowing wartime years that brought conscription into the army, capture, escape from behind barbed wire, flight to the West, a stay in a displaced persons' camp and, finally, freedom in America.

He said his uncle seemed to be taken with the idea of using the bandura as it is, without embellishments. "He refused to play the modern Ukrainian bandura with chromatics and tuning. His concern was to create beautiful music."

Mr. Kytasty is carrying on the family's bandura tradition through his teaching and performing, albeit with modern bandura and chromatics (although he can play the old-style bandura, as well as the flute). He has combined that bandura tradition with formal musical training, earning a degree in music (theory and composition) from Concordia University in Montreal. Furthermore, he is collaborating with other artists in fresh and contemporary musical combinations. He worked with singer/producer Alexis Kochan to weave together ancient pre-Christian ritual songs and harmonies inspired by folk polyphony with fragments of medieval chant and contemporary music. The results can be heard in the "Paris to Kyiv Variances" CD released last year on the Olesia label.

Mr. Kytasty recently appeared at the Ukrainian Institute of America in an evening of poetry and music celebrating the publication of a volume of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in award-winning translations by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Sometime toward the end of January he will join Ms. Kochan and jazz pianist John Stetch at the institute to present an evening of new striking music. Meanwhile, he will appear as a guest artist with the University of California Chamber Choir, conducted by Marika Kuzma, and take part around Christmastime in a weeklong bandura workshop in Toronto.

Taking into account the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus's recent tour (its first in six years), new CD releases and Mr. Kytasty's prolific bandura activities. I would venture to say that this could be the start of something big - perhaps a bandura renaissance, spurred by such youthful bandura enthusiasts as Oleh Mahlay, the new director of the Bandurist Chorus, Mr. Kytasty and his associate at the Bandura School, Alla Kutsevych of Lviv, and the students and graduates of bandura workshops in Emlenton, Pa., and London, Ontario. Add to that the dedicated work of Nick Czorny-Dosinchuk, the Bandura School's administrator and editor of the quarterly magazine Bandura, who has been traveling to many countries for years, compiling interviews, photographs and information about bandura ensembles and bandurists of yesterday and today.

Who knows, this renaissance could surpass the excitement of the 1950s, when the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus gave its first concerts on this side of the Atlantic, when Maestro Zinovii Shtokalko gave recitals and taught special classes in New York, writer Morris Diakowsky researched and published essays about the bandura, Guitar magazine devoted an entire issue to the history and development of the bandura, and a group of young businesspeople and professionals constructed their own banduras at a weekly workshop in Elizabeth, N.J. Time will tell.

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