Daniel Hope - Music for Ukraine (2022) [Hi-Res]

Daniel Hope recorded the EP "Music for Ukraine" together with Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov. The program includes works by Ukrainian composers Valentin Silvestrov, Myroslav Skoryk and Jan Freidlin that deserve to be heard. Especially now.

Every June for the past six years, I have been an artist in residence at the Odessa Classics Festival. Odessa is a mecca for violinists, thanks first to Ukrainian violin pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky. Stolyarsky's name stands for the special method of professional musical education of talented children. In 1933, he founded the legendary Stolyarsky Music School in Odessa, where teaching still takes place today. He taught some of the greatest violin legends, including David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, Samuil Furer, Mikhail Fichtenholz, and Boris Goldstein, who in turn taught my own teacher, Zakhar Bron.

Odessa Classics was founded by my friend, Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov. Through him I came to know and love Odessa, its rich cultural heritage and its music-loving people. Alexey and I planned to be in Kiev in March 2022 to work with composer Valentin Silvestrov and record an album of his music. A few days before the Russian attack, Alexey left Ukraine with part of his family: they cannot return now. Together, we quickly organized televised benefit concerts for Ukraine in the Frauenkirche in Dresden and in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. The piano manufacturer Bechstein donated more than 500,000 euros for Ukraine, and both the current and former German presidents supported us.

The Beethovenhaus Bonn, of which I am president, set up the emergency aid program "Hope for Peace" to support refugee musicians from Ukraine with benefit concerts and to offer them both accommodation and opportunities to record music and play concerts. In the meantime, 84-year-old Valentin Silvestrov managed to escape the bombing of Kiev and make his way on foot across the border to safety. After he attended our concert in Berlin on March 11, we were all the more determined to record his music as soon as possible.

All proceeds will be donated to "Aktion Deutschland Hilft". This is our next attempt to keep Ukrainian music alive. We recorded an EP with works by three composers: Silvestrov, Skoryk and Freidlin, giants of Ukrainian music. All proceeds from these digital tracks will be donated to "Aktion Deutschland Hilft", which supports Ukraine. We hope that this will also be the starting point for a digital collection that we - and perhaps others - can expand in the future. For example, the young violinist Illia Bondarenko, whom I taught last year and who filmed himself playing a Ukrainian folk song in a basement vault in Kiev, accompanied by 94 violinists from 29 countries, has just completed a new piece for us, though it arrived after this recording was completed.

There are many other works that deserve to be heard. Especially now. (Daniel Hope)

Daniel Hope, violin
Alexey Botvinov, piano