String Quartet No. 1
performed by The Rhythm Method
Performed by The Rhythm Method (String quartet)
Stefania Turkevych
1898–1977 · Ukraine
Stefania Turkevych (1898–1977), widely recognized as Ukraine’s first woman composer, was born into a family of musicians in Lviv. She studied under Vasyl Barvinsky in Lviv before continuing in Vienna with Guido Adler and Joseph Marx, then moved to Berlin in 1925 to study with Franz Schreker and attend Arnold Schoenberg’s lectures, and earned a doctorate in musicology from the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1934) with a dissertation on Ukrainian musical elements in operas by Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Lysenko. She taught at the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music in Lviv (1935–39) and the Lviv State Conservatory (1940–44) before emigrating to England in 1946, where she continued to teach and compose until her death in Cambridge. Her music walks a fine line between melodic folklorism and expressionist dissonance.
Performed at UCMF
Selected Songs
Emigration Elegy / A Mountain Lass / Silver Song / The Assumption / Evening Dance
Performed by Jennifer Gliere (Soprano), Alexander Chaplinskiy (Piano)
Stefania Turkevych — known as Ukraine’s first woman composer and the first woman from Galicia to earn a doctorate — studied in Vienna with Guido Adler and in Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schreker; forced to flee the Soviets in 1939, she eventually settled in England in 1946. UCMF 2024 presents five of her songs, beginning with Emigration Elegy, which evokes the composer’s hopelessness in the face of the career struggles she experienced abroad; the others — A Mountain Lass, Silver Song, The Assumption and Evening Dance — set texts by poet and fellow émigré Vira Vovk and allude to the rich culture of distant Ukraine, for which both women longed. (Descriptions and translations provided by the Ukrainian Art Song Project.)
Time Passes
Words by Taras Shevchenko
Performed by Hans Tashjian (Bass-baritone), Jason Wirth (Piano)
Time Passes is an expressionistic adaptation of some poetic lines from Taras Shevchenko’s epic poem “Haidamaky.” After the rebellion, the villages are deserted save for the crying children, dead bodies, and scavenging wolves; the horrors of war are reflected in the dramatic bass line of the piano. (Courtesy of the Ukrainian Art Song Project.)