Masterpieces for two harpsichords

The program of the concert, to be held at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine on September 16, comprises works by 18th-century European composers for two unaccompanied harpsichords, including those being performed in Ukraine for the first time.

Listeners will have an opportunity to hear the sounds of rare instruments for which German composers from Johann Sebastian Bach’s inner circle – Johann Mattheson, Bach’s famous elder sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach’s pupil Ludwig Krebs, and Christoph Schaffrath who participated in the music life of Frederick the Great’s court – as well as the Catalan composer Antonio Soler created some musical masterpieces.

The concert will feature a duet of Svitlana Shabaltina, a professor at the National Music Academy of Ukraine, and Natalia Sikorska, a winner of international contest diplomas, who will perform compositions in the styles of baroque, sentimentalism, and early classicism. The oeuvres will be played with unique master copies of the old two-manual Ruckers and Hemsch harpsichords (16th-18th centuries) made by the Ukrainian and Russian masters Dmytro Tytenko and Dmitry Belov.

“Among the genres and forms of 18th-century musical art, the harpsichord duet occupies a special place. By contrast with many four-handed play works, usually performed in the late baroque and pre-classical style at home, relatively few composition were created for two instruments that play solo,” Sikorska emphasizes. Combining two concert instruments in a refined musical dialogue of artistic individualities allows displaying vividly a virtuosic style in a piece of chamber music, which demands that performers show high mastery and, at the same time, considerable experience in the art of ensemble interaction.