National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine
Encyclopedia
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
.
The historic building founded in the end of the 19th century, standing at the end of Khreschatyk
Khreschatyk
Khreshchatyk is the main street of Kiev, Ukraine. The street has a length of 1.2 km. It stretches from the European Square through the Maidan and to Bessarabska Square where the Besarabsky Market is located....
street in the European Square, has been a pride of the city ever since its creation. Throughout the centuries it has hosted numerous Russian composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
and famous opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singers like Leonid Sobinov
Leonid Sobinov
Leonid Vitalyevich Sobinov , was an acclaimed Imperial Russian operatic tenor. His fame continued unabated into the Soviet era, and he was made a People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1923...
and Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
.
History
At the end of the nineteenth century, KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, at the time the leading commercial center in the south-west of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, flourished in its cultural development. In 1881, the Council of Elders of the Kiev Merchants Assembly acquired permission to establish a recreational area in the Tsarskaya (Tsar’s) Square (now the European Square) where a year later a brick building decorated with towers and metal eaves was erected by the famous Kiev architect Vladimir Nikolayev and named the Merchants' House (Merchants' Assembly). The building rapidly gained recognition among Kiev residents and became the center for cultural gatherings where society held masquerade ball
Masquerade ball
A masquerade ball is an event which the participants attend in costume wearing a mask. - History :...
s, science and political conferences, charitable lotteries, and literary evenings. But due to the building's amazing acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
the Merchants' House was famous for its musical performances.
The history of the Merchants' House has been greatly affected by the Ukrainian composer, pianist and conductor Mykola Lysenko
Mykola Lysenko
Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.- Biography :Lysenko was born in Hrynky, Kremenchuk Povit, Poltava Governorate, the son of Vitaliy Romanovich Lysenko . From childhood he became very interested in the folksongs of Ukrainian peasants and...
. As one of the founders of the Philharmonic Society, Ukrainian Club
Ukrainian Club Building
Building of Pedagogical Museum is a historical building located at 57 Volodymyr Street, in Kyiv, Ukraine and constructed in the times of Russian Empire in 1909-1911 by Pavlo Alyoshyn...
, and Ukrainian School of Music, Lysenko was elected to the directorate board of the Merchants' House and brought the music of many Russian and European composers to the citizens of Kiev.
After the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
the building underwent a big change in its purpose and accommodated the Proletarian House of Arts, converted to the House of Political Education, and later to the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
Club and Republican Palace of Pioneers. The Merchant's Assembly ceased to exist in 1919. In 1927, the Philharmonic Society moved to Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
when it became the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
. But in 1934 it returned to Kiev when the city regained its status.
After the 1941 Nazi invasion
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, the Philharmonic Society stopped its work, and most of its priceless archives were destroyed. During the German occupation of Kiev, the building was converted to a German Officer's Club. This was one of the important reasons why the building was not destroyed remaining one of the very few surviving pre-war buildings on the Khreshchatyk street. Upon the liberation of Kiev
Battle of Kiev (1943)
The 1943 Battle of Kiev describes three strategic operations by the Soviet Red Army, and one operational counterattack by the Wehrmacht which took place in the wake of the failed German offensive at Kursk during World War II...
, the Philharmonic Society resumed its operation in 1944 as soon as hostilities moved away from Kiev.
In 1962, the building was renamed to Mykola Lysenko Kiev State Philharmonic in honor of the composer's 120th birthday anniversary and the 50th anniversary of his death. It was also awarded the status of architectural monument. In the 1980s, the building suffered a flood, during which many of its music libraries and archives perished. The conditions demanded restoration, which began in 1995. A year later, the restored building opened its doors to the public.
In October 1994, the newly elected President of Ukraine
President of Ukraine
Prior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...
, Leonid Kuchma
Leonid Kuchma
Leonid Danylovych Kuchma was the second President of independent Ukraine from 19 July 1994, to 23 January 2005. Kuchma took office after winning the 1994 presidential election against his rival, incumbent Leonid Kravchuk...
, granted the building the status of National Philharmonic of Ukraine. In 2000, the National Philharmonic received a cultural grant
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
from the Government of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
with which it was able to acquire a new concert grand piano and additional musical instruments for its symphony orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
, the Symphony Orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine.
Today, the Lysenko Collonaded Hall of the Philharmonic remains one of the two most prestigious classical music stages in the city (along with the Kiev Opera
Kiev Opera
The Kiev Opera group was formally established in the summer of 1867, and is the third oldest in Ukraine, after Odessa Opera and Lviv Opera. Today, the Kiev Opera Company performs at the National Opera House of Ukraine named after Taras Shevchenko in Kiev....
.)