Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra

Odessa, one of the most beautiful cities on the Black Sea Coast, can look back upon a remarkable cultural history. The home of a large port and a bustling city of 1.3 million people today, Odessa is multinational to the core, with one of the broadest ethnic make-ups in the entire region. From Georgian to Greek, from Armenian to Jewish, from Russian to Bulgarian, these communities and many more form an integral part of this cosmopolitan city whose heritage spreads as far west as France and Italy. At the end of the nineteenth century, Odessa was a major cultural center, visited by many outstanding musical personalities. Violin pedagogue Piotr Stoliarsky and his pupils David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein are among Odessa’s best known musical “children”. The pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter also grew up in Odessa, as did Shura Cherkassky, who was born on Pushkin Street, one of the city’s most colorful avenues.

From this proud musical tradition comes the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, the vast majority of whom are graduates of the Odessa Conservatory and almost half of whom entered the Conservatory from the Stoliarsky School. The orchestra was founded in 1937 and throughout the Soviet era performed regularly at home under such conductors as Aleksandr Gauk, Kirill Kondrashin, Nathan Rachlin, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Sanderling, Fuat Mansurov, Saulius Sondeckis, Arvid Jansons, Mariss Jansons, and with such eminent soloists as David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Viktor Tretiakov, Nikolai Petrov, Maxim Vengerov and Evgeny Kissin. During the Soviet years, Odessa, a major center before the revolution, was relegated to the ranks of “regional” city. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Odessa the orchestra was not allowed to travel outside the borders of the USSR.

With the independence of Ukraine, the orchestra’s status rose; in January of 1993 the Government of Ukraine formally awarded the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra federal status. The new status was acknowledgment of the orchestra’s dynamic progress during the preceding two years under new music director Hobart Earle. The orchestra became the first from Ukraine to cross both the Atlantic Ocean and the Equator. In the years since 1992, the orchestra and Hobart Earle have made a total of twenty one trips abroad to fifteen different countries, performing in such major concert halls as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, the Barbican Hall in London, the National Auditorium in Madrid, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Davies Hall in San Francisco and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

In addition to their regular concerts at home in Odessa, the orchestra and Hobart Earle have travelled to numerous Ukrainian cities and made a total of fourteen trips to perform in Kyiv. The local audience in Odessa takes pride in the orchestra’s achievements and fill the concert hall regularly. The orchestra’s series of CD recordings “Music of Ukraine” under Hobart Earle for British record label ASV features previously unrecorded works by Ukrainian composers. The performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth symphony in Vienna’s Musikverein in 2001 was recorded by the Austrian Radio live in concert, and awarded “Best Classical Album 2002” at the “JP Folks Music Awards” in Hollywood, California, and the recording of music by Myroslav Skoryk for Naxos was chosen in the “Chairman’s Choice 2014 – Klaus Heymann’s Favorite Naxos Releases” .

In June 2002, the orchestra’s status was raised again, when the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, signed a decree granting National status to the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra. The orchestra thus became the first organization in the performing arts in Ukraine outside of the nation’s capital, Kyiv, to acquire national status. It was also the first performing arts organization in the entire country to go from regional status to national status since the independence of Ukraine in 1991.