Maestro

Lviv, Ukraine, May 23, 2015, 10 AM

Yesterday was a welcome change from all the sunny days as I hoped to catch up with my blog, email, and other stuff.

I hunkered down in my hotel room and kept glancing at the window and was glad to see the sun did not come out as I knew I could not resist going out into this beautiful city if it did.

In the early afternoon, however, I could resist no longer and went to my favorite Lviv coffee house to continue my effort to catch up on my computer.  But first, I decided I had to check on the symphony and opera schedules so I wouldn't miss a perhaps fleeting opportunity to visit both or either while I am in town.

It was good that I did as I found out that very evening was the opening concert of a series of special concerts entitled "Classic For Peace".  Its scheduling conflicted with the opera that I would have chosen, Rigoletto, but the selection of music was so compelling (Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich) and the event so special,  I decided to go to the symphony, the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, that very night and see Mozart's Don Giovanni at the opera on Sunday evening . Wonderful indeed to have such difficult choices to make!

Had the composition not been entitled the overture to "Romeo and Juliet", and had Tchaikovsky not have long passed from this world except, of course, living on in his music, I would have believed he had written this piece specifically for this very special occasion.

From the opening deep, low mournful tones to succeeding, contrasting passages of violence, triumph, resignation and peace, the music seemed to me to perfectly evoke current life in Ukraine.

And whether it was due to the nature of the occasion or the quality of the music or its performance or my recent experiences or indeed all of these influences, I could not then, or now as I write, recall a more captivating or moving musical performance.

The succeeding pieces were as wonderful as the first and the conductor ....... but wait hold it here......  just as I am writing this now in the hotel restaurant, I notice a man, who just came in, sit down alone at a  table directly in front of mine and he looks very much like the Swedish conductor, Ilya Stupel, who conducted last night's performance. Just as I am about to write down my impressions of him.

Of course, this cannot be him. It would be too much of a coincidence. But, just to be sure, I look up images of him on Google and this man does indeed look like Maestro Stupel. So I go over and ask and it is indeed he.  He invites me to sit down and we talk interrupted only by brief phone calls from his wife in Sweden and his daughter in Los Angeles, for which he, certainly unnecessarily but graciously apologizes.

I tell him how much I enjoyed the performance last night.   Thinking he was a visiting conductor, I inquire as to his feelings about being the one to lead this special performance for Ukraine.  He tells me that he is, in fact, the Music Director (the main conductor and the artistic director) of the Lviv Philharmonic.

Lviv, Ukraine's third largest city, is its cultural capital.  Equivalent or superior, in my mind to Vienna and Prague considered by many  to be Europe's most small to medium sized beautiful cities. And hold it here.  A day later from writing the rest of this  post and just as I am adding this paragraph, a guy bumps my chair as he sits down at the next table and says he's sorry in perfect American English. So I ask him  where he is from.

It turns out he lives in Philadelphia, the next major city north of Baltimore where I live. He is of Ukrainian descent, has a business which brings him here and has a flat in Vienna. So I ask him how he would compare Vienna with Lviv.  And he mentions, of course, the high cost of  living in Vienna, so in contrast to the very  low cost in Lviv.

In further talking with him, I am pleased to find out that he too thinks things are moving, while slowly,  in the right direction here in Ukraine, as far as dealing with the corruption. He talks of a very significant new development: the far greater transparency today than existed with previous governments.

OK. Now back to my conversation with Maestro Stupel. He asks me where I am from, and I tell him I live in Baltimore, only a few blocks from the Symphony hall and attend all the concerts.  In answer to his question, I tell him, though certainly no expert, that I was very impressed with the quality of his orchestra and particularly the performance of the concert master (principal violinist) in the performance of Rimsky Korsakov's "Scheherazade".

He tells me the orchestra has many fine musicians and that prior to the war it was composed almost wholly of Jewish musicians, whose excellence inspires the current members of the orchestra and that the survivors of   the orchestra before the war went on to found the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

We talk about the fine performance of the cello soloist in the Prokofieff piece which he said is a very difficult to perform which confirmed my impression as I heard it. I mention how remarkable, to me, was the cellist's almost overwhelming and real  emotion in performing it.

During the intermission at the symphony,  I met a man from Albany, New York who told me had been visiting Ukraine for over 20 years.  We talked only briefly as we had met just moments before the end of the intermission when we had to return to our seats.

After the concert, I rushed out hoping to catch him and get his email address which I was able to do. I believed, given his extensive experience with Ukraine and his American English, he could be an invaluable resource with regard to any questions I met have in the future.

I was pleased to see that he had not left the hall before me and we exchanged email addresses.  He introduced his wife who suggested we go where we could sit down and talk.

The three of us then talked for 2 hours or so.  Of Ukrainian ancestry, they are Canadians now living in the U.S. where their children and grandchildren live. Both of them taught English to Ukrainians in small villages for a number of years then at the leading University here in Lviv.

in our conversation, I was able to ask and get answers to many of my questions about Ukraine, including the fact that they believe the government has taken real steps toward dealing with corruption unlike in the past and there is indeed hope with the present government that this time is really different. All of this was good to hear especially at it was in contrast to a recent article in the N.Y. Times, and my very limited and purely anecdotal evidence to the contrary from recent discussions in my travels. But it was consistent with what I believed before coming here by closely following the situation in the news online.

Before I could ask what was on my mind, possibly teaching English here, she suggested I consider doing just that and he wrote down who to see at the University which tomorrow (actually later today) I plan to set out to do.

I have just enough experience as a teacher having taught one day of math at a student teachers' day in high school and one day of finance to non-finance managers at the last company I worked for, to know this could be fun and that I may even have some talent for it.

I see all kinds of pluses here though financial reward is certainly not one of them as this has to be a volunteer endeavor.  But it would be a chance to be further involved and spend time in Ukraine and make a real, however, small contribution and to possibly learn to speak Ukrainian which I believe I could do with this kind of involvement.

A totally new "career" and experience at a point in life when I believe such opportunities are to be particularly valued for consideration.

In my conversation with Maestro StupeI we talked about what a marvelous city of culture Lviv is.  I mentioned this was my second time in Ukraine and he asked me if I would be coming here again. I told him I might be coming back in the fall to teach English at the university and he was most encouraging, indicating it could take, I think he said, 50 years off my age, exactly what I had been thinking. Well perhaps not quite 50 years.

As we parted Maestro Stupel told me that when he is in Lviv, he stays at the hotel and when I return here to mention him and there will always be tickets for me at the desk.

How nice. And amazing! As this great conductor stood on the podium last night it did not, nor could it  possibly have entered my mind that I would be having a personal conversation with him the very next morning and receiving career and life advice from him as well !

And what an incredible coincidence.  Just as I am starting to write a sentence describing his conducting style he appears at the table directly in front of me in a room filled with many other tables  at which he could have sat, where I most likely would have never seen him.

One of the many reasons I to travel is the wonderful and totally unforeseen experiences that can occur.

And this was, certainly, one of the best.