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Spectators took their places among medicine boxes, first aid kits and intravenous tubes. The orchestra was abducting four men currently fighting on the front lines of the war. Fleeing bombs and bloodshed, a handful of guest singers took to the stage with the choir.
The war in Ukraine upset the meticulous planning of the Lviv Philharmonic’s annual summer music festival for forty years. But for the musicians and the audience, the show must go on.
A Baroque, pastel-colored room in western Ukraine, the space continued to host musicians and choirs, even as it became a coordinating site for humanitarian supplies during the war. This spring, the orchestra decided to open with Mozart’s Requiem instead of playing live music in the first performance of the festival.
The concert held on Friday night was a tribute to the Ukrainians lost in the three-month war.
“This is now a place for medicine – for body and soul,” said Liliia Svystovych, a teacher in the audience. “We understand that Requiem is about mourning, it’s sad music. But it is like a prayer. And a prayer is always a form of hope.”
About an hour before the start of the concert, the air raid sirens began to sound.
The director of the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra, Iolanta Pryshlyak, was preparing to postpone the concert until everything became clear. As she waited in a back room where doctors were collecting medical supplies, she received a call from volunteers delivering aid to Ukraine’s struggling east.
Ms. Pryshlyak, 59, is no longer just the conductor of the orchestra. Since the invasion began, she also directed the flow of supplies through the theater as she made her way to the forefront of the war. Its foundation for both businesses.
He had been up since 4 in the morning and was tired: “I’m just running on autopilot.”
Still, he was looking forward to a night full of music. “War makes your heart like stone,” he said. “But music can soften it again.”
Downstairs, conductor Volodymyr Syvokhip wore a suit in his office, while a baritone soloist sang arpeggios in a nearby room.
For weeks, artists rehearsed among the towers of humanitarian boxes, while volunteers and doctors organized the materials around them. Sometimes musicians would assist relief workers. And sometimes the paramedics would stop to listen to their play.
“Somehow we support each other in this,” said Mr. Syvokhip with a smile.
While on stage, Mr. Syvokhip told the audience that while air raid sirens sounded in Lviv, a bomb in the eastern Kharkiv region had destroyed a cultural center and with it the local theater.
When the lament ended, the members of the orchestra and the audience burst into tears.
“The sound of alarms and sirens converged in our minds with the words of the conductor and we understood why musicians should not remain silent,” said Natalia Dub, headmistress of a local academy.
With red lipstick and a string of pearls, she took as much care with her look this year as she had at previous summer festivals.
“We should come here,” he said. “This is where we most need to be.”
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