My name is Volodymyr Romanenko, the short form of my name is Vova, and I am a Ukrainian violinist currently in PEPW. I have decided to write, to tell you a story that began on 24 February 2022.
I started to learn violin when I was eight at Vyshgorod musical school near Kyiv. I’ve loved music since my childhood, but because of peer pressure and people’s mistaken belief that being a musician is not a serious job, I never really thought that I would want to be a professional musician. That’s why my real musical journey started only 3 years ago, when I joined Glier Academy of Music in Kyiv. This was the time when I realised that music ought to be my vocation and I wanted to spend the rest of my life making it. And of course, I started to practice a lot.
24 February 2022 was the day that completely changed my life and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had been due to play at an audition that day, but instead I was woken at 4:40am by the sound of rockets exploding. At first, I wanted to believe that it was thunder in the distance, but in reality I knew that the explosions were rockets. Intuition is a strange thing, but sadly it was right. An hour later my parents came to my room and said: “It’s happened. Russia has started the war.” I can’t describe what I felt at that moment. I was absolutely devastated. I was scared, of course; it’s the worst feeling when you are unable to predict what will happen in the next few days, hours, or even minutes…
I packed all of my important things in my bag in case we needed to evacuate quickly. I then went to help my parents clear and arrange our basement to use as a shelter. Fortunately, we had a pretty big basement, so we had more space than we needed. My dad had always said that it was his big mistake to build such a big basement, but this “mistake” saved our lives. After cleaning out our basement, we moved inside all the necessary things we would need to survive – beds, food, and weapons, etc.
At around 11:00 am, my friends from Vyshgorod, the town where I had lived as a child, came to my house, with my god-mother joining us later too. I think having company and support is crucial in such moments because it was much easier to realise what was happening and think about what we should do. Of course, it was really difficult for us all; nobody knew the best thing to do in that scenario. We were not giving up, though, and that was the main thing.
It was pretty quiet that day, we heard a lot of rockets, but they were quite far away from our house. We, most especially my parents, read all the news that we could find to understand what was going on. At night, most of us went to the basement, but my father and the father of my family friend went outside with weapons to keep an eye on what was going on in our street.
For the next two weeks, we decided to stay at home. In retrospect, it wasn’t the best plan, but unfortunately, we didn’t have another one yet. This was the scariest time. We knew that Russian soldiers were getting nearer. We saw and heard a lot of military aviation, and rockets exploding. We saw destroyed houses, families, and lives. A few of my friends found themselves in occupied territories without electricity, communication, money, and food. It was terrifying. During this period, we spent most of our time in the basement without electricity and without effective means of communication. Everyone was exhausted, but we couldn’t do anything but wait, sleep and think.
I noticed some interesting things about a human’s response to stressful things like war. It seems that your body turns on “saving energy mode”. You do not feel the need to eat at all. I ate maybe once a day, something quite light and then I wouldn’t need anything else. You sleep much more and you don’t move at all. It’s as if your body goes into a trance, a state where you’re constantly in shock.
During this time, I read a few books and tried to practise my violin. These were the only two things available that could break me out of my dark mood. Neither was particularly easy because there was no electricity- sometimes I would practise with my practice mute, so as not to make any noise in the confined space of our basement. I used a tiny candle to see the music score; it wasn’t very helpful! I usually tried to memorise what the pieces sounded like and what notes they included to compensate for the bad light in the room. During that time I also saw a lot of my friends who were moving towards the border and stayed at our house for a couple of days.
The last few days were the most dangerous for my family, because the Russian Army was really close to our house and most of the roads were either blocked or bombed by Russian soldiers. This was when we finally took the difficult decision that we needed to leave our home and move on.
On the 7 March 2022 at 8:00am, we left our house and moved to my grandmother’s house in the Zhytomyr region to the West of Kyiv. It was the most dangerous journey I’ve ever been on because at that time the Russian army was just 7km from my house and was heading towards me. We (me, my sister, mother, father, godmother, her friend, and our dog) went in my father’s car. We took all of our most important things and started our trip. Our friends who lived 2km from our house also moved with us; their house had been damaged by Russian rockets, and they couldn’t stay there any longer.
We had only one way to leave our house; all the other roads had already been destroyed or occupied by the Russians. During that trip, I saw a lot of destroyed buildings, cars, bridges, etc. Our journey was accompanied by the sound of explosions and military aircraft. Fortunately, we came to Andrushivka, the town where my granny lived. Just one hour after we had completed our journey, the road that we had been travelling on was also bombed. Had we decided to move just an hour later, I may not have been here to tell you my story.
We stayed in my grandmother’s house for two days. The atmosphere there was much calmer. We still heard the sounds of war, but they sounded much further away. During that time my parents contacted their friends who were already staying in Poland. They found sponsors for us in Poland, so we decided to leave Ukraine and go there. On the 8 March my family moved to Poland. It was a long and dangerous trip, taking nearly seven hours to get to the border, and a further seven hours to cross it. Unfortunately, my father couldn’t cross with us. Because of Ukrainian law, he had to stay and fight. He left us at the border and returned to my grandma’s house. During that time, we were really exhausted, but finally, we were safe. Our friends picked us up at 3:00 am and we spent another seven hours making our way to our sponsor’s house in the tiny city of Lubliniec.
I was really surprised by how sensitive, supportive, and friendly Polish people were. Everyone tried as much as they could to help us, especially our sponsors, Andrzej and Gosha. We owe practically everything to these two people. They helped us with everything – accommodation, food, money, and job searching. Everything someone needs to start from scratch, they provided us with. My mother and Godmother quickly got a job in a factory to earn money for some basic things. We finally sighed with relief.
However, I had one very important thing that unfortunately I still had not yet been able to solve – my education. For me, music is an inalienable part of my life, but at that time I couldn’t continue with my lessons. The closest conservatory in our town was nearly 150km away. So, I started practising by myself, and I began searching for opportunities to study. I contacted a person in a group chat for Ukrainian musicians who said they could help me. We had a quick chat about my music and language skills, and she said that she would get in touch with a few places in the UK. That’s how I contacted Eton for the first time. After a couple of interviews, I had been offered a place to study at Eton until the end of that academic year. However, due to delays with visa applications, we couldn’t make it. At the same time, I received an offer from a Denmark conservatory to study music in Denmark. So I continued to look for a possible solution to attend Eton and I asked the admissions department whether they could offer me a place for the following year.
I actually very nearly turned down Eton’s offer in favour of the conservatory in Denmark. Can you imagine? I literally nearly rejected an offer to study at Eton with a fully-funded scholarship. Why? To be honest, I had no idea what exactly Eton was, and I assumed that my music tuition would be far better in a conservatory. I soon learned that there would be opportunities to apply to London conservatories like the RCM, the RAM, and the Guildhall after Eton, and that had been my dream since I started to learn to play seriously. I can’t describe how happy I was. Finally, after such a long time, I had a real opportunity to study in the UK and what is more important – a chance to apply to the world’s most prestigious music academies. It was an offer I could not turn down. A few days later, I received a kind offer from Eton about free online violin and viola lessons until I could get myself to Eton. Finally, I had an opportunity to have regular lessons. That’s how I met my teachers, Ms. Smart (violin) and Mr. Sleigh (viola). Before them, I never had such helpful and productive lessons in my entire life; I was so impressed.
This offer, certainly, came with a few difficulties. The first one was to get a passport extension and a study visa – which took a surprising amount of time and energy. Fortunately, however, we solved this in time. The second difficulty was the need to buy a violin, as I didn’t have my own at the time and I loaned a violin from the Ukrainian National Collection. With this, I gave 2 concerts in Poland to raise some money, with my relatives also helping me to raise a lot of money to buy my violin and two bows.
I was then introduced to another important person in my life, Nicole Wilson, my UK guardian. I think that I’m extremely lucky to have such a wonderful and generous guardian in Nicole. I can’t describe how much time, energy, help, and financial support she gives me. I’m so grateful for all that she has done for me. During my time in Poland, she helped to arrange an audition at NYO, prepare orchestral excerpts required by NYO, and arrange free strings.
The last few weeks in Poland were quite intense, as I needed to buy and pack everything that I potentially needed in the UK, but I did my best and was ready to fly to England.
On the 22nd of August, I arrived in London. I was really excited. I spent the first few days walking down the streets of London and discovering British culture. A few days later, I went on a trip to Scotland with Nicole’s family, which was a fantastic week. I really enjoyed Scotland’s nature and architecture. Straight after that, I returned to London. On 6 September, I finally got to Eton. I was massively impressed by everything in this school, I had never seen anything remotely like it. Two days later, on 8 September, I had the final round of my NYO audition in London. That was quite stressful, but I enjoyed it.
In general, I have really enjoyed my time at Eton, not only because of the number of performance opportunities, great music lessons, orchestras, and chamber music, but also because of great academic lessons in Maths, English, and Italian. Everyone here is so friendly and I have felt really welcomed in this school.
During my time at Eton, I achieved a place in the National Youth Orchestra as First Violin. After that, I passed my auditions to the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, Guildhall, the Royal Welsh College of Music, and the Trinity Conservatoire of Music. I was ecstatic; I couldn’t believe that my dream had come true.
Right now, I’m trying to solve problems with accommodation in London for the next four years, continuing to practice my violin and viola and enjoying my life.
In spite of everything that has happened, I have been determined to succeed and seek out opportunities. Some things I got through sheer luck, but I feel that I have tried my best to make everything that I have possible. I also want to take the opportunity to give thanks to Eton and everyone that has supported me with everything that I have done. All that I have would not have been possible without your help. 24 February 2022 will be a date I remember forever, but the last year will be one that I remember as one of the very best years of my life.
