After a two-day bus trip from Ukraine to Stockholm, the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra plays at the Concert Hall in Stockholm. It will be the first time a Ukrainian symphony orchestra plays in Sweden and rising star Jaroslav Shemet holds the conductor's stick.
– I feel that the orchestra wants to play and wants to tell about what they feel, through the music and in this important context. Music is really like a weapon," says Jaroslav Shemet.
The Sherem was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and with his 26 years he has already occupied some of Europe's foremost concert and opera houses.
Passing on Ukrainian cultural heritage
The initiators of the festival are concert pianist Nataliya Pasichnyk and Peter Eriksson. According to Pasichnyk, the festival aims to highlight and make visible Ukrainian culture. The concert performed by the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra is called "Unbreakable".
"The musicians in the orchestra have wintered without light and practiced in shelters without heat throughout the winter. They still stand up and live on. It's really unbreakable," says Nataliya Pasichnyk.
The pieces that will be performed during the concert are written by Ukrainian composers whose music was previously banned in the former Soviet Union.
"The programme is also 'unbreakable', because the composers have had enormously difficult fates. Either they were sent to Siberia, expelled, banished, or killed. It is important to pass on this amazing cultural heritage that was previously banned," says Nataliya Pasichnyk.
"Peace will conquer war"
The last piece on the programme is composer Borys Lyatoshynskyi's Third Symphony, entitled "Peace Will Conquer War".
"We play the first version of the symphony, which was banned after the premiere because in the last movement it is dominated by Ukrainian folk music. But now we have to play the original, says Jaroslav SJemet.