A season of seasons: Kyiv to host the 16th International Festival

From March 21 to 28 the program of the Musical Premieres of the Season festival will feature 27 symphony, chamber, and choral music concerts. According to the organizers, this year’s event promises to be a real treat, as music buffs will be able to attend the first-ever performance of about 100 works by 65 contemporary Ukrainian composers.

Audiences will have a chance to hear Yevhen Stankovych’s Finnish Lullaby for two violins and string orchestra; Levko Kolodub’s musical poem, based on Taras Shevchenko’s poem, called Quiet World, a work for a dramatic tenor, men’s choir, and symphony orchestra (the original notes of Mykola Lysenko); and Lesia Dychko’s Alcazar, the Bells of Aragon, a balletic illustration of frescoes for piano and percussion.

Also not to be missed is the folk song concert “Krokoveye Koleso” staged by A. Havrylets, and I. Panova’s hopak opera Spivomovky. The festival will also include concerts featuring original works by students of the Peter Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine’s Faculty of Composition.

Among the festival’s guests will be young composers and musicians, such as violinists K. Lason (Poland) and M. Palia (Slovakia), the 16-year-old pianist M. Mdoyants (Russia), composers from Lviv, Uzhhorod, Donetsk and Odesa, the Arkata Chamber Orchestra (Vinnytsia), the Neodance ensemble of modern choreography, and others.

Audiences will also hear such interesting compositions as “Mozart and his Esthetics” by the pianist Yevhen Hromov and “Only Yusypei: the Music of Gender Paradoxes” by bayanist Roman Yusypei. The Kyiv Soloists will perform Chamber Symphony No. 3 by Stankovych, who wrote a violin version especially for Myroslava Kotorovych. Students of Kyiv’s Reinhold Gliere Higher Musical School have prepared a program entitled “Young Performers to the Composers of Ukraine.”

Also on the festival’s program are a celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the Pavana Women’s Choir of Mykhailo Drahomanov National Pedagogical University (conducted by Liudmyla Baida), the launch of the first Sokolovsky Classical Guitar International Competition, a charity soiree in memory of the famous tenor Ivan Kozlovsky, which will include a presentation of his CDs. Festival concerts will be held at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, Scholars’ House, and the cathedrals of St. Volodymyr and St. Basil the Great.