APRIL 22, 2021 – Amidst our rancor and failures, we need to remind ourselves that we’ve also wrought wondrous works. Yesterday evening I stumbled upon an example of such works: a bayan played by Ukrainian super-star, Aleksandr Hrushevich. As an expert at being ignorant, I’d never before heard of the “bayan” (not to be confused with the accordion) or its virtuoso emissary, Pan (“Mr.”) Hrushevich.
The “stumble” was itself notable. Michael Meade, a FB friend, who is a professional musician (cellist) and was, in ancient times, a classmate of mine at Interlochen Arts Academy, “shared” on his newsfeed, a post by one Peter Gergov. This shared post featured a Youtube recording by said Aleksandr Hrushevich (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzA8O-aTOTQ). Peter Gergov, it turns out, writes for a publication based in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. To my surprise, among his FB friends is one Spas Spasov, a Bulgarian journalist living in Varna—and with whom my wife and I became good friends while Spas was a World Press institute fellow a number of years ago (https://worldpressinstitute.org/). (Internet and social media: you are hereby granted a temporary reprieve for good behavior.)
In any event, I clicked on the recording of this bayan player performing the third movement of Winter from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It knocked my socks off, landing one on a doorknob two rooms away and the other in a place I have yet to find.
One thing led to another. Soon I was learning all about Mr. Hrushevich and listening to his wildly improbable performances of Bach, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Sibelius, and Zibitsky. Not only is this 42-year old native of Kyiv (Kiev) a grand master, super-star technician. His phrasing and overall musicality are that of a sorcerer. In the case of Bach, what you hear is a cathedral organ. With the Tchaikovsky (last movement of the violin concerto), what you hear is not only the “soloist” but the entire orchestra! Then there’s “Hrushevich meets Bobby McFerrin.” In awe, I imagined that in less enlightened times (lest we forget), these recordings would’ve condemned performer and audience to stakes and bonfire in the center of town.
The bayan and accordion are actually wind instruments. Nothing happens without air—pushed when the player’s hands compress the bellows and pulled when the player draws them out. By these actions—highly nuanced and refined—the artist breathes grand music back into the very air that gives the instrument life.
Hrushevich the über instrumentalist transports the listener to another world—to be greeted, however, by an über violinist performing the Tchaikovsky violin concerto—on a violin . . . a resonant box crafted from spruce and maple equipped with four strings tightened over a birchwood bridge . . . aided by horsehair stretched between the two ends of a stick of hand-carved Brazilwood. How improbable is divine mastery of that human invention—and not in “another world,” it turns out, but on planet earth?
Mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, and in the process, our troubled world is made a beautiful place.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
