Stradivari violin premiere

“Paganini in a skirt” is what music critics call the Ukrainian female violinist Bohdana Pivnenko, a brilliant representative of a group of stars taught by the legendary Bohodar Kotorovych. The famous French director Bruno Monsaingeon dedicated a film, Un violon dans l’ame (Natural Born Fiddler), to the well-known Ukrainian-born musician Valerii Sokolov. What unites the two musicians is not only their belonging to the Kharkiv violin school, but also the fact that both of them support talented child musicians and actively represent our country and Ukrainian music in the world.

The flawless emotional restraint of Sokolov, his virtuosic handling of the instrument (Stradivari-made violin), and Pivnenko’s expressively refined violin performance, are going to feature together in the world premiere of a work by Arnold Malcolm, one of the 20th century’s best known British composers, in Kyiv. The program includes works by the classics Bach and Mozart and our well-known contemporary Yevhen Stankovych, as well as the rarely performed Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by the Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zubytsky who lives in Italy now.