The week of Myroslav Skoryk’s music is held in Lviv

We remind our readers that Den/The Day has already written about “The Days of Myroslav Skoryk’s Music,” dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the prominent Ukrainian composer, conductor and teacher, that were successfully held in Kyiv. Now maestro’s native town started a series of concerts of the modern classic’s compositions. On October 20 the “Week…” started with his evenings in Stanislav Liudkevych Concert Hall of the Lviv Philharmonic Society; the program presented the palette of Skoryk’s compositions: a concerto for a violin with orchestra, jazz plays, choral music, symphonic and vocal symphonic works, and works arranged by Skoryk. His music will be played by virtuoso violinists Yurii Mazurkevych, Oleh Kaskiv, Nazarii Pylatiuk; virtuoso pianists Jozsef Yermin, Oksana Rapita, and Myroslav Drahan who will play accompanied by the Academic Youth Symphony Orchestra INSO – Lviv; Halytsky Academic Chamber Choir conducted by Vasyl Yatsyniak, Chamber Orchestra “Academia,” Academic Symphonic Orchestra of the Lviv Philharmonic Society, and the State Honored Academic Choir Chapel “Trembita.” The “Week…” will finish on October 27 in Krushelnytska Lviv Opera House with the opera Moses.

“Myroslav Skoryk’s personality is extremely complicated,” they say in the Lviv Philharmonic Society. “That is why it is no wonder that the program of the jubilee concerts will be complicated as well.”

Myroslav Skoryk’s role is special because, paradoxical as it may sound, he was brave enough to be popular, accessible and create not the academic music, not for the elite, but for the wide public,” Liubov KYIANOVSKA, music expert, professor of Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy emphasized. “Skoryk occupied the niche which is difficult to occupy not only in Ukraine, but in the whole world. Andrew Lloyd Weber, Gian Carlo Menotti in the US… The English-speaking culture has made more progress on this way. The Slavonic and German cultures usually strictly divide the music into academic and popular one. Skoryk managed to create this popular culture, the national one, spiritually and formally national (not ethnographic, but deeply national). On the other hand, he is not afraid of picking up banal intonations (as if they were from the street) and raise and generalize them to the level on which they start revealing their prime nature, deep and artistic. He is not afraid of being extravagant and even insolent… This is Skoryk’s particular role. And also the fact that he created his Melody that became a hit! Not everyone is able to do it… (the music for the film The High Mountain Pass, directed by Volodymyr Denysenko). This is the popular instrumental manner of triple music, but Skoryk managed to give it a universal meaning. Finally, why did Parajanov feel the depth of his ideas in Skoryk (in the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors Skoryk wrote the music for)? I mean that his music is not ethnographic, but national, it is amusing, not sadly melodramatic, it has deep feelings. So, Skoryk is able to see something real in any music. This is his enormous advantage as a composer.”