Charity concert at the Slovene National Theatre Maribor: mature, passionate youthful music-making

The charity concert was first held in the Gallus Hall of Cankarjev dom, and the members of Soroptimist Maribor have now brought it to Maribor as well. The soul of the project was the Soroptimist and tireless champion of culture, supporter of young talent and former radio presenter Ivanka Mulec Ploj. When bombs began falling on their homes, the management of the Ukrainian Youth Orchestra sought help, and the response came from the management of SMO from Ljubljana. The first evacuations of the young people took place at the Hungarian–Ukrainian border. It was not only dangerous but also lengthy. Transport from Budapest followed, while some came by train. It was hard to see and receive children without their parents – frightened, hungry, poorly dressed. They had their instruments with them, though some did not even have those, says Ivanka Mulec Ploj. Among them are also a few mothers who came with several children; some are very young and are not members of the Youth Orchestra but came with an older brother or sister. Today, every single member of the youth orchestra is provided with individual instrumental lessons, chamber music, orchestral rehearsals and general education. They are housed in rented flats, shared housing and some even in hotels. The adults have also taken on guardianship of other people’s children, as all of them are minors. The conductor and director SMO Živa Ploj Peršuh and her husband Tomo Peršuh have enlarged their family by fourteen children. Tomo drives a van to collect food from various donor warehouses and buys toiletries and school supplies, while Živa looks after timetables, education and medical care and deals with the children’s psychological distress. Things are looking up; progress is slow but steady, and the conductor hopes that by the end of July they will all have their status, health insurance and be more independent – at least the older teenagers. Although they took refuge in Slovenia at the beginning of March, the first on 6 March, they still depend today on the help of others, on donations, including from abroad, and on the goodwill of Slovenians. All the children are exceptionally talented, as both concerts showed; they are products of a rigorous music education in Ukraine. They often talk to their relatives in Ukraine – whether their houses are still standing, whether it is possible to live in their block of flats again, whether their little brothers and sisters are all right… What they all have in common, of course, is that they would like to go home as soon as possible. With the concert in Maribor, the young musicians from Ukraine also wished to thank the people of Slovenia, who welcomed them warmly and enabled them to dream of professional music careers, which is their goal. All the funds raised will go directly to them. The concert of the Ukrainian-Slovenian symphony orchestra Musič for the Future was conducted by Olga Homa, who conducted the Ukrainian music and is assistant to the chief conductor of the Ukrainian Youth Orchestra, Oksana Liniv, and Živa Ploj Peršuh. They performed the Taras Bulba Overture by Mykola Lysenko, the Symphony in D major by Mykhailo Verbytsky and Stanislav Lyudkevych, Religioso by Slavko Osterc (from the Suite for Orchestra) and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88. As an encore they added Melody by the Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk. Within the Music for the Future project, a national initiative of both countries, the two partners have committed to organising concerts, festivals, masterclasses and get-togethers, and to seeking scholarship opportunities at various music academies around the world. What deserves the greatest respect, alongside the commitment to the highest artistic standards, is above all the extraordinary humanitarian effort, the like of which – on this scale and with such complex organisation – we have never witnessed here before. And on top of that, all these children and teenagers make music at such a superb level. Listening to the mature performance of Dvořák’s 8th Symphony, it was almost hard to believe that these were such young musicians. How they followed the conductor Živa, with discipline, in every gesture. The brilliant interpretation, superb technique, musicality and dedication of the 64 performers could stand comparison with any professional orchestra. And it was particularly hard to concentrate and give their all, as on the very day of the concert they had learned that they had lost a young musician friend at the front. Those of us in the hall felt a little ashamed; we could hardly wait for the lights to go down so that the empty seats in the stalls would not be seen. Maribor enjoys a reputation as a humanitarian city, but sadly, on Saturday evening, that was the one thing we did not see to the extent we would have expected.

They even wrote to the Prime Minister
What is currently most pressing at national level regarding the young Ukrainian musicians here is the absence of legislation. The Musič for the Future project is, of course, funded from European sources and does not burden the national budget. In desperation, representatives of the youth orchestra even wrote to Prime Minister Robert Golob and met with understanding, but the proposed law in the package is still awaiting the legislative procedure. Because the rent on the flats where the young musicians from Ukraine live has not been paid, they face eviction shortly. It is disastrous that bureaucratic obstacles here are so insurmountable and that European funds cannot be released because there is no engaged partner on our side. The former Minister of the Interior, Aleš Hojs, spoke of 200,000 refugees from Ukraine for whom space could be provided, yet the state does not come to the aid of even these few dozen young Ukrainian musicians.