An Orchestra Brings Harmony to a Region of Discord

In February, Grigory Ambartsumyan, a 22-year-old Ukrainian violinist of Armenian descent, awoke in Kyiv to the sound of bombs. It was the beginning of Russia’s assault on his country, and the coming days and weeks were a blur of restless nights in bomb shelters.

Now, six months later and with war still raging, Ambartsumyan and dozens of his fellow musicians with the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra have reunited in Tsinandali, a bucolic village in Georgia for the fourth annual Tsinandali Festival of classical music. It’s been a difficult three years since the orchestra debuted in September 2019, given the coronavirus pandemic (which stopped it from performing at the festival for two years), as well as continuing tensions between Georgia’s neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia, and, of course, the lingering war in nearby Ukraine.

This year, there is an urgent sense of camaraderie and hope among these young musicians and the festival organizers in this historically volatile region. Some 80 performers from seven countries from the Caucasus region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and a few neighboring nations — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine — will play three of the 19 concerts at the festival, which runs Sept. 2-11.

“If we don’t establish a new relationship across borders with music, we are going to lose the opportunity to plant some seeds in the hearts of these young musicians,” said the Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of the Tsinandali Festival. “You have to start with the young people to solve problems through connections rather than divisions.”

The orchestra opens this year’s festival on Friday with “Adagio” by the Ukrainian modern composer Bohdana Frolyak (along with pieces by Brahms and Beethoven). The concert will be conducted by Oksana Lyniv, also Ukrainian, who in 2021 became the first woman to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival.