Valerii Teryentiiovych Posvaliuk (20 July 1947, Kyiv - 17 July 2018, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian trumpet player, Doctor of Arts, Professor.
His name is widely known among many domestic and foreign trumpet schools, and is included in international encyclopaedias as one of the best European instrumentalists of our time. He is the Head of the Department of Wind and Percussion Instruments at the Petro Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Kyiv.
His life and career began in Kyiv. In 1965, he graduated from the Mykola Lysenko Ten-Year Music School at the Tchaikovsky Kyiv Conservatory (class of O. Bilofastov). From 1965-1970, she studied at the Conservatory in the class of trumpet (class of V. Yablonsky). Since 1967, he has been an artist of the Honoured Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. In 1968, he became a laureate of the Ukrainian brass competition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Komsomol. For the past thirty years, Posvaliuk has been a soloist with the Kyiv Opera Orchestra.
A representative of the Ukrainian trumpet school, a follower of the traditions of outstanding performers and teachers V. M. Yablonsky and M. V. Berdiev, soloist of the symphony orchestra of the Taras Shevchenko National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine, Honoured Artist of Ukraine Valery Posvalyuk is very well known in the modern music world. His name occupies a significant place among foreign encyclopaedias and reference books, describing him as one of the best instrumental musicians, a man with a rather wide and bright field of creative activity. These include orchestral, chamber and solo performances, teaching, scientific, methodological and research work. But his main contribution to the development of the Kyiv trumpet school is the foundation of a unique creative association - the Ukrainian Trumpet Guild, of which he has been president for almost ten years. It should be noted that the initiative of its creation and further active creative work are the consequences of Valeriy Posvalyuk's bubbling energy and bright talent.
On 17 July 2018, Valerii Posvaliuk, Professor, Honoured Artist of Ukraine, Head of the Department of Copper Wind and Percussion Instruments of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy, passed away at the age of 71.
Creative work
To a greater extent, the trumpet, as a solo instrument, is perceived in the context of orchestral performance, which means that the role of the orchestra soloist is directly reduced to an element of collective musical reproduction, and even when the composer writes a large or small solo piece for a particular instrument. Is this attitude fair to the instrument, the performer, the trumpeter, the individual? With his creative achievements and mastery, Valery Posvalyuk proves that the trumpet, like every other solo wind instrument, rightfully belongs to the "elite" of the orchestra. His professional and artistic biography, oddly enough, began at the age of ten. He is sixty years old, but the poster should have stated "fifty years of creative activity". He started out as a musical "prodigy", surprising with his performance one of the most famous brass players of the twentieth century, Professor of the Kyiv Conservatory Vilhelm Marianovich Yablonsky, who personally managed not only to form a powerful technical apparatus of the future trumpeter of the symphony orchestra, but also instilled in him a subtle sense of the role, place and significance of the sound of the wind instrument in the palette of the symphony and chamber orchestra. During his studies at the Conservatoire, Valeriy Posvalyuk became intimately acquainted with the great heritage of the classical repertoire of works for trumpet and music of the 16th to 20th centuries, which later influenced his intensive concert activity. He raised his instrument to the heights of mastery, performing classical works, especially sonatas by Baroque composers D. Gabrieli, G. Viviani, G. Telemann and the representative of the so-called "golden age of the trumpet" G. Purcell, as well as concert compositions for solo trumpet by famous Ukrainian composers E. Zubtsov, R. Svirsky, and J. Kolodub. He became the most active promoter of contemporary foreign music for trumpet, performing a number of virtuoso concert programmes of works by A. Harutyunyan, G. Clarke, P. Eben, E. Porino, L. Andersen, E. Bozza, E. Howarth, and others.
Valeriy Posvalyuk participated as a trumpet soloist in the Kyiv premiere of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (conducted by I. Blazhkov) and Christmas Oratorio (conducted by G. Sorokopud), where his technical skills and virtuosity as a trumpeter were particularly powerful. With his performance, he revealed the true sound of the instrument, showed the strength and beauty of the trumpet timbre. As musicologist Marina Sutorykhina writes: "Valerii Posvaliuk was one of the first in Ukraine to perform sonatas and concertos written for the so-called 'clarino' trumpet, whose high register sound impresses with its full sound and virtuosity. His creative heritage includes a number of concertos for trumpet and orchestra by A. Vivaldi, G. Telemann, T. Albinoni, sonatas by G. Purcell, M. Cazzatti, P. Baldassare, which greatly enriched and expanded the imagination of Ukrainian music lovers about the work of these, unfortunately forgotten today, composers of the Baroque era."
In the course of his concert and orchestral activities, Valeriy Posvalyuk has developed his own special performing style. The chief conductor of the Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theatre, Volodymyr Kozhukhar, called him a "romantic virtuoso". He reveals himself especially vividly in chamber and ensemble performances, to which the instrumentalist pays special attention today. Together with like-minded people, he has created a number of brilliant and unique programmes that have enriched knowledge of the chamber and instrumental works of many European composers and eras. It is also worth noting that many of these works have been recorded on CD, receiving high praise from both domestic and foreign experts. While still a student of the Kyiv Conservatory, Valeriy Posvalyuk became a soloist of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Ukrainian SSR. He confirmed this right by becoming a laureate of the All-Ukrainian competition of wind instrument performers. (1968) Then there was a competition for the symphony orchestra of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theatre and the creative blessing of the outstanding Ukrainian conductor Stepan Turchak, who immediately noted not only the high technical potential of the young performer, but also his unique performing skills, virtuosity, and depth of feeling. For thirty years, Valeriy Posvalyuk has been the soloist-regulator of the Symphony Orchestra of the National Opera of Ukraine. He has made a great deal of effort to ensure that the orchestra's trumpet group develops and improves its skills in a truly profound and multifaceted way. It is difficult to list all the premieres of the National Opera of Ukraine in recent decades without Valery Posvalyuk's participation. He gave a part of his heart and the hot energy of creative inspiration to each of them. And no matter what was performed on stage: opera, ballet, symphony or oratorio, the famous Requiem by Verdi, Mozart, Britten or Stankovych, or a concert programme - he always enriched the sound of the orchestra with the solo trumpet part. Valeriy Posvalyuk's playing was always highly appreciated by conductors, and Yuri Simonov, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Kirill Kondrashin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Carlo Cecchi, Charles de Laconte, Louis de Forman, and Nathan Rachlin invited Valeriy Posvalyuk to perform their important programmes. An interesting fact is that after Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka, Yuriy Temirkanov brought trumpeter Valeriy Posvalyuk to the forefront, rather than the first violin.
The Guild of Trumpeters of Ukraine is a unifying factor of different schools and trends
The Trumpet Guild of Ukraine, whose president is V. Posvalyuk, is not a formal organisation, but a functioning and active one that has a great influence on the development and promotion of music written for the trumpet, this ancient and eternally young instrument. First and foremost, it organises concerts that reveal a little-known and somewhat forgotten layer of instrumental music. First of all, it is the Baroque era. It conducts educational activities to introduce young performers to modern trends and directions in the development of world trumpet schools. Secondly, the Guild is a direct organiser of special competitions for trumpet performers: The Kyiv Open Competition for Young Trumpeters (2002), the traditional international competition "Art of the XXI Century" (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006), the annual All-Ukrainian Competition for Young Trumpeters named after M. Starovetsky (2000), and the All-Ukrainian Competition for Wind Instrument Performers named after Viacheslav Starchenko (2005). A wonderful initiative of the Guild was the release of the Anthology of Ukrainian Trumpeters on CD. The concept of the publication and the selection of pieces belong to Valeriy Posvalyuk. At present, he is preparing the next disc volume, which will present the most prominent contemporary trumpeters of Ukraine.
Valeriy Posvalyuk's creative biography would be incomplete without mentioning his scientific and pedagogical activities. He combines instrumental performance with his work as the head of the wind instrument department at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy. Edward H. Tarr, professor at the Basel Conservatory and director of the Trumpet Museum in Bad Zeckingen (Germany), wrote in the preface to Valeriy Posvaliuk's book The Art of Trumpet Playing in Ukraine (2006): "I first heard about the rich Ukrainian heritage from his brilliant presentation, illustrated with historical audio, on 5 August 1997 in Gothenburg, Sweden, during the annual conference of the International Trumpet Guild (ITG). Subsequently, the results of the research were published in several articles, one of which appeared in the ITG Journal 22/4 (May 1998) and even in a two-volume book "Trumpeters of Kyiv: Past and Present" (Kyiv, 2000; in Russian and English), where I had the honour of editing the English text)... Valeriy Posvalyuk was the first to start the integration work of uniting Ukrainian trumpeters with trumpeters of other schools. This quote broadly covers the scientific activity of Valeriy Posvalyuk, who, however, is not limited to this aspect. He is also the author of a number of articles and methodological developments that examine pedagogical practice and analyse the performing traditions of not only Kyiv, but also Odesa, Lviv, Kharkiv and Donetsk schools. But he considers the most important thing in his life to be the training of the young artistic generation, which teaches not only the extremely complex technique of playing wind instruments, but also a deep understanding of music as an inexhaustible treasure trove of the cultural heritage of many peoples and civilisations.
