DSO, LPO, And ACO Partner With Ukrainian Composer Victoria Poleva In Concert Video Supporting Direct Relief

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and American Composers Orchestra partnered to share the world premiere performance of Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Polevá (b. 1962)'s The Bell: Symphony No. 4 for cello and orchestra. Performed in November 2023 by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Israeli cellist Inbal Segev, the full video is available to stream for free via DSO's YouTube channel and on a dedicated giving page hosted on humanitarian organization Direct Relief's website, encouraging donations to the nonprofit to support its efforts to provide emergency medical supplies to people in Ukraine.

Watch the Performance and Donate Now.

The daughter of composer Valery Polevoy (1927-1986), composer Victoria Vita Polevá was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and her work has been performed all over the world. Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Polevá has been displaced from her home and living abroad with friends.

Polevá was moved to create The Bell by the urgency of the present moment. She says, "For me, the idea of this music comes from the Latin bellum, which means 'war.'" A work written during the war and by the war. A bell announcing war, a funeral bell, a victory bell...It is also associated with the name of the cellist who will be the first performer (the name Inbal Segev means "tongue of the bell").

"But the most important thing I wanted was to reflect what happens in space after the most powerful bell chime. This is the phenomenon of the subtlest echo, an angelic choir that sounds either in the air or in the subconscious when the bell sound ends. The sound space that I wanted to recreate was the area of operation of Bat-Kol (Hebrew Bath-Kol, which literally means "daughter of the voice"). 'Some argue that the bat-kol is an echo, others that it is a hum echoing in the air from the movement of the universe. Bat-kol absorbs human voices and all other sounds of the world, even those that our ears are not able to hear...'

"This most tender sound carries meanings that everyone needs in the most difficult times. The only thing a person can do is trust them. The symphony is dedicated to musicologist and LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets, thanks to whom I felt real creative support over the last terrible year."

Cellist Inbal Segev shares, "I was moved to commission this new work from Victoria Polevá when I first encountered her music and her fortitude in facing the conflict in Ukraine. These are troubled times for so many of us. I hope that our performance will help bring relief to some of those who need it most in Ukraine."

About Direct Relief

Non-governmental, nonsectarian, and not-for-profit Direct Relief relies entirely on private contributions to advance its mission and perform a wide range of functions.

Included among them are identifying key local providers of health services; working to identify the unmet needs of people in the low-resource areas; mobilizing essential medicines, supplies, and equipment that are requested and appropriate for the circumstances; and managing the many details inherent in storing, transporting, and distributing such resources to organizations in the most efficient manner possible.

About Victoria Vita Polevá

The daughter of composer Valery Polevoy (1927-1986), Victoria Vita Polevá was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She studied composition with Ivan Karabits at the Kyiv Conservatory; after graduating in 1989, she remained at the conservatory another six years to complete her postgraduate degrees, under the direction of Levko Kolodub. She taught composition at her alma mater from 1995 to 2005. Her work has been performed all over the world, and she has received many major awards and prizes in her native Ukraine and internationally.

From the beginning of her career, Polevá has remained firmly committed to radically inclusive forms of avant-garde expression. Her voluminous and wide-ranging catalogue covers most, if not all, of the major musical categories - symphonic, choral, chamber, opera, ballet, sacred, secular. Starting in the late '90s, her compositions have been loosely associated with the so-called Holy Minimalism style, whose most famous proponents include the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and the Polish composer Henryk Górecki. Although the genre tag is too hotly contested to be called a school and most artists (understandably) resist being pigeonholed, "Holy Minimalism" is helpful shorthand for music that references medieval and Renaissance modes and forms, especially the liturgical melodies of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which are often sung a cappella. Indeed, much of Polevá's output reflects a deep and scholarly passion for divine texts and their multivalent interpretations.

But her work is too wide-ranging and topical for any single concept or category. In 2009 her Ode to Joy (for soloists, mixed choir, and orchestra) was featured at an international concert marking the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her 1994 ballet Gagaku was performed in 2012 by the Japanese butoh dancer Tadashi Endo. She has collaborated with the Latvian violinist and artistic director Gidon Kremer, as well as chamber-music mainstays the Kronos Quartet. Along with devotional texts, she has found inspiration in folk songs and John Donne poems, in William Blake and William Shakespeare. But as she reveals in The Bell, her new Symphony No. 4 for cello and orchestra, Polevá is also moved to create by the urgency of the present moment.

About Inbal Segev

Inbal Segev is "a cellist with something to say" (Gramophone). Combining rich tone and technical mastery with rare dedication and intelligence, she has appeared with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Bamberg Symphony and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice (NOSPR), collaborating with such prominent conductors as Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Lorin Maazel, Cristian Măcelaru, Zubin Mehta and Edward Gardner. Committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire, she has commissioned and premiered new cello concertos from Timo Andres, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, Fernando Otero, Dan Visconti and Victoria Poleva, whose concerto Segev looks forward to premiering with the Dallas Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras in the 2023-24 season.

Recorded with Alsop and the London Philharmonic for Avie Records, Segev's 2020 premiere recording of Clyne's new cello concerto, DANCE, was an instant success, topping the Amazon Classical Concertos chart; its opening movement was chosen as one of NPR Music's "Favorite Songs of 2020," receiving nine million listens on Spotify, and Segev has continued to tour extensively with the piece. At the start of the pandemic, she launched "20 for 2020," a commissioning, recording and video project for 20 cutting-edge composers, including John Luther Adams, Viet Cuong, Angélica Negrón and others who she asked to create works in response to the unprecedented worldwide crisis and encourage creative recovery. Her previous discography includes acclaimed recordings of the Elgar Cello Concerto, Romantic cello works and Bach's Cello Suites, while her popular YouTube masterclass series, Musings with Inbal Segev, has inspired a generation of cellists.

A native of Israel, at 16 Segev was invited by Isaac Stern to continue her cello studies in the U.S., where she earned degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School, before co-founding the Amerigo Trio with former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus. Segev started composing during the pandemic: her cello quartet, Behold, can be heard on her album 20 for 2020; her cello octet, B Natural, premiered at Yale in 2023; and her forthcoming string trio is scheduled to premiere in the 2025-26 season. Her cello was made by Francesco Ruggieri in 1673.

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