Concerts are planned up until the end of April, with stops planned in Hamburg, Stockholm, Amsterdam and elsewhere, said Oleksandr Lysiuk, tour manager of the Odessa Opera Orchestra.

“Of course our thoughts are with our home country, but as professional musicians we also focus on the concerts,” Lysiuk said while rehearsing in Berlin.

The fact that the concerts are possible at all is mainly due to the help of conductor and tour producer Wilhelm Keitel, along with his family and many people in the Bavarian town of Marktoberdorf.

Keitel fled the war by car with his wife and infant son on February 24, the day Russia invaded. He, together with his fellow musicians and their families, have received a lot of support there. “They have given us more than we need,” Lysiuk said.

While the musicians embark on the tour, which had been planned since last year and postponed because of the Covid pandemic, their relatives will stay in Marktoberdorf.

Lysiuk said he has been offered a flat for two months that was otherise empty. “Another family is now living in an old farmhouse near Marktoberdorf,” he added.

What happens after the tour ends is unclear. “We still don’t know what will happen tomorrow or the day after,” the 31-year-old musician told dpa. “The plan will presumably be to continue touring. But we simply hope that the war ends again.”

Until then, he wants to “bring joy and peace” to people together with the other artists.

Zimmer, an Oscar-winning film composer who has written the scores for dozens of Hollywood movies, also emphasised before the start of the tour “that art and artists are there to bring peace into this world.”

Nine members of the ensemble who were supposed to be on the tour are still in Ukraine, however, Lysiuk said. “They are protecting our homeland.”