Music algorithms

Recently the concert hall of the Composers’ Union of Ukraine hosted a music soiree starring the noted contemporary composer Leonid Hrabovsky, pupil of the famous composers Levko Revutsky and Borys Liatoshynsky. He follows in the footsteps of Leos Janacek, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Alban Berg. Hrabovsky’s compositions are pastel strokes of the paintbrush. They make you experience a variety of emotions, reaching the summit – where music and light are one, then plummeting, plunging into something like a parallel world. The feeling is that you are creating music with the composer. It is an inexplicable invitation for a creative trip, when you can discover something in yourself, something in the innermost recesses of magic known as music. Hrabovsky describes his creative method as “algorithmic composition using random numbers.”

The soiree began with Bohdan Pivnenko’s virtuoso performance of Sonata for Solo Violin, Opus 8, masterfully conveying every intonation. Hrabovsky wrote it right after graduating from the conservatory. He says this composition illustrates his love for Prokofiev and borrows some of his approaches.

The Concerto Misterioso (in memory of the legendary artist Kateryna Bilokur) was performed for the first time in Ukraine. It combines modern melodies and Ukrainian folk songs, with a striking diversity of rhythms and quickly changing images. Critics say this composition “is highly original by concept, content, and means of expression, yet at the same time not too sophisticated for the listener.”

During the Kyiv soiree the atmosphere was permeated with warm admiration that radiated from the composer’s colleagues and current conservatory students. Everyone was happy to meet with the maestro who visited his homeland.

Yevhen Stankovych, chairman of the National Composers’ Union of Ukraine, and Co-chairman Myroslav Skoryk echoed each other, voicing their admiration for Hrabovsky’s talent. Stankovych said: “Leonid Hrabovsky has succeeded in creating new aesthetic values.” This composer is remembered and respected in all regions of Ukraine. His compositions are actively propagated by such pianists as Yurii Hlushchenko and Yevhen Hromov, composers Petro Tovstukha and Volodymyr Runchak, and the contemporary music ensemble Klaster (Lviv), to mention but a few.

One could often hear words like “Come again soon… why don’t you stay in Ukraine?” during the soiree. Everybody felt sorry that Hrabovsky doesn’t visit Kyiv more often (the composer has been living in the United States for the past twenty years). Too bad that all the Ukrainian state can offer Hra­bovsky is warm words. It cannot afford to provide adequate living and working conditions that would encourage such composers of world caliber to return home.