Concert for peace | Helping Ukraine, one piece at a time

It was hot in the large nave of the Notre-Dame basilica on Tuesday evening. And for good reason: thousands of people were gathered for the concert for peace in Ukraine sponsored by the Korwin-Szymanowski Family Foundation, a representative of which declared towards the end of the concert having raised $80,000.

Two videos from the Folkowisko Association, which has been working at the Budomierz-Hruszów border post since the first days of the conflict, showed concretely where donations from the public would go. He was invited throughout the evening to donate using his phone or baskets passed by members of the Polish Scouts of Canada.

Sign of a non-liturgical use of the place of worship, the lamps of the sanctuary were extinguished, but the representative of the parish priest recalled the religious mission of the place by reciting the prayer for peace of Saint Francis of Assisi, which he recalled universality.

It is a different prayer, the Prayer for Ukraine by Mykola Lyssenko, which was then intoned by the frank voice of Ukrainian tenor Yuriy Konevych. The Hail Mary by Bach-Gounod and Mascagni were also appropriate, since the city of Mariupol, currently surrounded by the Russian army, is itself dedicated to Mary, as the pianist Serhiy Salov reminded us.

Bach-Gounod was sung from the organ gallery by the baritone Marc-Antoine d’Aragon after a short improvisation evoking the music of Tournemire by the local organist, Pierre Grandmaison. I’Hail Mary by Mascagni (an arrangement of the Intermezzo from his opera Cavalleria rusticana) was performed by a diminished but still invested Natalie Choquette.

She also offered the famous tenor aria “Nessun dorma” by Turandot by Puccini, ending with the fist in the air on the word “vincero” (I will conquer). The audience rose to their feet to applaud him.

The latter was accompanied by a string orchestra ad hoc led by chef Nicolas Ellis, whose host and organizer Claudia Ferri underlined the enthusiastic commitment from the beginning of the project.

Under his expert baton, the fifteen musicians played the Melody for strings by the Ukrainian Miroslav Skoryk, a short nostalgic piece played these days by orchestras all over the world, then Dona Nobis Pacem 2 by Max Richter. The artistic director of the evening, the violinist Nadia Monczak, also played, accompanied by her colleagues, the famous Meditation of Thais of Massenet with great emotion.

It was probably the pianist Serhiy Salov who touched the audience the most. Carrying the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine on his shoulders, he played the slow movement of Piano concerto no.^oh 2 by Shostakovich, a Russian composer who experienced numerous disputes with the Soviet authorities in the middle of the last century. His Nocturne in C minoropus 48 n^oh 1, by Chopin, interpreted with urgency and solidity, is another highlight.

His pianist colleague Steven Massicotte bravely measured himself against the Great Shiny Polonaise of the Polish composer with a pearl touch.

On the more popular side, we were able to hear the pianist Jean-Michel Blais, a colleague of M^me Monczak, to play two of his own compositions. Everyone cracked up, finally, when Marc-Antoine d’Aragon sang Edelweiss in the company of his little girl, of which it was the debut in public.

The deadline – the concert was still going on after more than two hours – unfortunately prevented us from hearing the last two pieces of Ukrainian and Polish folklore.

The concert is offered for two weeks on the pianomtl.ca page and it is always possible to make donations.