The consequences of the peaceful protests in Belarus are hardly present in the media due to the Ukraine war.

The suppression of civil society in Ukraine's northern neighbor prepared the deployment area for the Russian aggressor, and many Belarusians who have fled or are living in internal emigration are trying to preserve the solidarity experience of two years ago as a spiritual asset.

The Belarusian conductor Vitali Alekseenok, designated Kapellmeister of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, who also works a lot in the Ukraine, recalled this with a concert as part of the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival.

The evening called "The Unfinished Revolution" paid special tribute to the opposition leader and flautist Maria Kolesnikova, who has close ties to Stuttgart and is now being held in the Gomel prison camp.

Kerstin Holm

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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As the lyrical centerpiece, Guillermo González played the solo work "Air" by Toru Takemitsu on Kolesnikowa's flute, which remained in Germany, and through the gracefully constructed monologue also brought to mind the freedom of breath that one would like to wish the political prisoners in Belarus.

At the same time, Alekseenok read passages from Kolesnikowa's letters from prison.

In it she testifies that in detention there is indeed a lack of air, music and many other things, but also that art and especially the music that she carries inside inspires her and makes her stronger than fear or evil.

The main piece was the premiere of the new version of a triptych of orchestral songs called "History of the Present", which three Belarusian composers had written on behalf of Alekseenok last year.

The conductor, who returned to Minsk in the summer of 2020 and took part in the rallies, attaches importance to the collective authorship of the work - in analogy to the popular uprising at the time, which was supported by society as a whole.

Artists still living in Belarus must remain anonymous

At the beginning, the well-humoured Castle Festival Orchestra under Alekseenok will play the romantic, rhapsodic composition “Attempt in Genealogy” by the Belarusian Konstantin Yaskou, who emigrated to Poland.

The baritone Aeneas Humm sings verses in lyrical cantilenas by the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, who lives in the USA.

The second movement "Verse", which brings to mind nebulous states of anxiety in the shimmering layered sounds of the strings, is anonymous because the composer and lyricist continue to live in Belarus.

Dissonant trumpet calls and dull drumbeats make danger obvious, while Humm, with excellent diction, dimming his voice to a whisper, sings of the deepest darkness in which someone suddenly shakes your hand.

The finale is flat but eloquent minimal music by Olga Podgaiskaya, who has also moved to Poland from Minsk.

With brass sirens and drumbeats, the orchestral writing evokes the threat of the police during the mass protests of those August days, while the woodwinds simulate distant car horns, chauffeurs expressing their solidarity.

Lyrics by Alhierd Bacharevic,

Conclusively, Alekseenok let Franz Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in B minor speak the final word.

How, after the magically pale introduction, the lyrical theme first sounds almost like a folk tune, the second time as a motif of longing and finally - after various breakdowns - like a melancholic memory, that also seemed to invoke Alekseenok's hope that the suffering of his compatriots was not in vain and that a nation-building, first in spirit, had taken place.

As the audience, including several refugees from Ukraine, rose from their seats to celebrate the finale, Alekseenok had the darkly shimmering Nocturne for string orchestra played by the Ukrainian Fjodor Akimenko, with whom Igor Stravinsky once studied.

The concert can be heard on Arte until December 8th.