Borys Liatoshynsky (1895–1968) is considered the founder of Ukrainian contemporary music. Born in Zhytomyr, he studied law at Kyiv University while training in composition under Reinhold Glière, joined the Kyiv Conservatory in 1914, and spent most of his career there as a pedagogue, with a period teaching at the Moscow Conservatory from 1935–1944. His style moved from early symbolism and impressionism through modernist experimentation and a socialist-era simplification before returning to modernism late in life. As head of the Association for Contemporary Music in Ukraine he championed the music of Alban Berg and other contemporaries, and in the 1960s his Kyiv Conservatory composing class became home to the dissident Kyiv Avant-Garde. The 2023 Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival was dedicated to him, marking 55 years since his death.
Performed by Solomiya Ivakhiv (Violin), Steven Beck (Piano)
The Violin Sonata showcases some of Liatoshynsky’s most experimental music from the 1920s, the period in which he felt most free. Written in 1926, the harmonically adventurous sonata is in three movements: a passion-filled Allegro, a slow middle movement that juxtaposes the sharp dissonances of the opening with more impressionistic open harmonies, and a “risoluto” finale that eventually reprises the opening thematic material to give the whole sonata a quasi-recapitulation. In the 1960s Liatoshynsky looked back on this period: “It was, as is commonly believed, the period of my criminal, formalistic mistakes and offenses. One of them is this sonata. Obviously, I am still in the process of maturing, because even now, after 34 years, I like this sonata and I regret that I have strayed far from the harmonies that are there…” It was first performed in 1960 by Olha Parkhomenko.
Performed by Steven Hrycelak (Bass-baritone), Gleb Kanasevich (Clarinet), Laura Weiner (Horn), Johnna Wu (Violin), Marina Kifferstein (Violin), Jeremy Kienbaum (Viola), Valeriya Sholokhova (Cello), Nuiko Wadden (Harp), James Baker (Conductor)
Liatoshynsky’s Two Romances are his only songs not written with either orchestral or piano accompaniment. Their unusual instrumentation and harmonies strongly recall the music of the Second Viennese School, particularly Schoenberg’s early atonal melodrama Pierrot Lunaire. Long performed with a Russian text (the original language of the poetry by Konstantin Balmont), the work was recently found, in collaboration with the Liatoshynsky Foundation, in a manuscript setting a German translation that Liatoshynsky prepared for his Vienna-based publisher, Universal Editions; that German setting, presented here for the first time, mirrors the text’s descriptions of height and depth especially faithfully. The masterful translation is by the Ukrainian writer Oswald Burghardt (pen name Yuriy Klen). The Romances are a clear specimen of the influence of German expressionism on Liatoshynsky; the first performance of “Reeds” took place in 1923.
Performed by Colin Brookes (Viola), Daniel Anastasio (Piano)
In the 1960s, while teaching at the Kyiv Conservatory, Liatoshynsky’s composing class became home to the Kyiv Avant-Garde — a group of dissident composers, the musical branch of the Shistdesyatnyky (“the Sixties”) — and, inspired by these young composers, he returned to elements of his early avant-garde style. The Two Pieces for Viola and Piano show a vigorous restoration of that earlier, experimental aesthetic, pairing a slow and at times disquieting Nocturne with a short and spirited Scherzino. Both are filled with quotations from Reflections, a solo piano piece of the 1920s — as if, according to Dr. Tetiana Homon, the composer is looking back with sadness at his most distinctive compositional period near the end of his creative journey. The first performance took place in 1964.
Requiring a brilliant virtuosity, Liatoshynsky’s Concert Etude-Rondo was written in 1962 as a compulsory piece for the Lysenko piano competition in Kyiv. The short concert piece bursts forth with an intense energy that conceals a striving neo-Romantic melody beneath extreme chromaticism, and may well represent the defiant triumph of the composer’s return to his experimental tendencies.
Performed by Duo SAS (Bandura, flute & electronics)
Borys Liatoshynsky worked with Ukrainian folk songs for many years, creating unique arrangements for a cappella choir and for voice with piano — among them Kobzar and Chumak songs and settings of Taras Shevchenko. The melody of Ivan Kryzhanivsky’s “Roars and groans the wide Dnipro,” reinterpreted by Liatoshynsky, became a mandatory part of the bandura repertoire; after WWII, Ukrainian radio callsigns based on the song were played on the bandura. Bandurist Volodymyr Voyt Sr. translated several of Liatoshynsky’s arrangements for voice accompanied by bandura, published as sheet-music collections in the 1980s. Duo SAS presents these songs anew: the bandura is the main accompanying sound, the flute replaces the human voice itself, and electronics augment Liatoshynsky’s modern interpretation of the Ukrainian song.
Performed by Duo SAS (Bandura, flute & electronics)
One of Borys Liatoshynsky’s arrangements of a Ukrainian folk song, presented by Duo SAS in a contemporary reimagining for microtonal Kharkiv bandura, flute and electronics; here the flute replaces the human voice, resembling the Chumak pipe.
Performed by Duo SAS (Bandura, flute & electronics)
A 1941 Liatoshynsky arrangement of a Ukrainian folk song, presented by Duo SAS through microtonal Kharkiv bandura, flute and electronics as part of their set inspired by Liatoshynsky’s folk-song settings.
Both Liatoshynsky’s and Bartók’s Third String Quartets were written at the height of their experimental periods, requiring virtuosic vigor. Liatoshynsky’s String Quartet No. 3 (1928) contains five movements, each encompassing a single expressive moment through the composer’s diverse selection of textures and timbres; its moments of tonal expansion are indicative of the 1920s in which it was written. It was not performed until 1966, when the Lysenko Quartet premiered it in Kyiv.
Liatoshynsky’s String Quartet No. 4, “Suite on Ukrainian Themes,” presents five movements each based on Ukrainian folk themes. Written while the composer was evacuated from Kyiv during the Second World War, it is one of many works of this period that makes explicit reference to Ukrainian folk subjects and suggests the composer’s yearning for home. In addition to the string-quartet score, Liatoshynsky composed a version with an added bass part so that the work could also be performed by chamber orchestra.
