On November 14th and 15th, the Modesto Symphony premiered a long lost symphony from Ukraine. It’s music born of exile and massacre, and a bit of history repeating itself.
Ukrainian-born composer Dmitri Klebanov wrote his Symphony No.1 to honor the mass murders of 30,000 Jews in Kiev during WWII, uniformly killed in the ravine of Babi Yar. This tribute promptly got him in terrible trouble with the ruling Soviet government, who immediately banned the symphony and exiled the composer.
This music was all but lost to history, as it was never heard outside of Ukraine and its premiere there in the 1940’s.
Until now!
Nicholas Hersh, Music Director of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra, has gotten his hands on the original manuscript and has brought it back to life for the first ever performance of the work outside of Ukrainian borders.
“I wish I could say I have a secret, you know, conductor telephone tree or something like that, but no, I stumbled onto it on Wikipedia, both the composer and the symphony, and it's a very short little blurb! I found someone who had access to a copy of the manuscript [and] he was able to send that to me, and so I immediately started to put together a new set of orchestral sheet music to the symphony so it could be played again.”
He also managed to find a living family member of the composer, his granddaughter Nina.
“That's right, Nina, who recently fled Ukraine because of the war. We had a great conversation about her grandfather, what he was like, what the world was like at this time. And the thing that really made it stick for me was the fact that yes, he dedicated the symphony to all the victims of this atrocity on paper, but really it was dedicated to one person, and that was his brother who died as a member of the Soviet army fighting the Nazis.”
It’s not lost on Hersh the historical significance and timing of this project, given the current tensions and fighting in Ukraine.
“And another sort of timeless thing about this right now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Klebanov's hometown is Kharkiv, which is on the eastern front and has suffered a lot of damage and continues to be sort of in the midst of things. The conservatory where he worked has been bombed. So there's a sort of possible repeat of history about to happen that could be another re-silencing of this composer who was unjustly silenced in the first place. It's really exciting to revive this piece of lost culture and history at a time when the culture in question is facing more difficulties than ever.”
