United States Various – ‘Ukrainian Tone Poems’: Ginevra Petrucci (flute), Forrest Eimhold, Pavlo Gintov, Margarita Rovenskaya (piano), NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble, PinkNoise / Jonathan Haas (conductor). Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, 15.3.2025. (RP)
Leonid Hrabovsky – ‘For Elissa’
Adrian Mocanu – ‘Les chevaux de feu’
Alla Zahaykevych – Tercet
Renata Sokachyk – ‘The Desert Breathes’
Alisa Zaika – ‘he only dreamed of places now. . .’
Lena Sierova – ‘The Last Leaf’
Alex Voytenko – ‘Homo Fugens’
Yurii Pikush – ‘Be a Cycle’
On 23 May 2024, a Russian S-300 missile struck Ukraine’s largest book publisher, Factor Druk in Kharkiv, destroying 50,000 books. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, over 200 libraries have been destroyed and about 400 damaged. This systematic effort of the Russians to destroy Ukrainian culture inspired the theme for the sixth Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, ‘Letters and Notes – An Exploration of Music and Literature’.
The strike at Factor Druk happened shortly before the annual International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv. Founded in 2011, the IBAF combines the literary, visual, musical and theatrical scenes. Musicologist Leah Batstone, UCMF’s founder and creative director, was at the 2024 IBAF where books damaged in the attack were displayed. She decided then that the 2025 UCMF would celebrate Ukraine’s rich literary tradition.
Over three days, the 2025 festival explored Ukrainian music inspired by literature in works by twenty Ukrainian and North American composers. It also celebrated the 90th birthday of Ukrainian composer Leonid Hrabovsky, who has lived in the US since 1990. Each of the three concerts featured a work by Hrabovsky. In ‘Ukrainian Tone Poems’, the last of the three concerts, Forrest Eimhold performed Hrabovsky’s ‘For Elissa’ for solo piano, composed in 1988.
In the late 1970s, Hrabovsky developed a composition technique that generates music using algorithms or sets of instructions. In the early years, he did the complex mathematical calculations by hand but later turned to computers to create his algorithmic system. The title references the work’s dedicatee, pianist Elissa Stutz, and Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, although Hrabovsky did not quote it in the piece.
‘For Elissa’ was the first piece in which Hrabovsky combined his rhythmic vocabulary and algorithmic compositional style at full scale. The result was a dreamlike, lyrical work with clear, transparent textures, which Eimhold played with precision and a sense of wonder. Eimhold was as skilled at transmitting emotion through the expressions on his face as with his fingers, for those fortunate enough to have the right vantage point.
The remaining seven pieces on the program had direct links to specific literary works by authors ranging from Ukrainian Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky to American Ernest Hemingway. Adrian Mocanu’s ‘Les chevaux de feu’ was inspired by Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Kotsiubynsky’s 1911 novel that dealt with Ukrainian village life. Scored for six instruments, the colorful piece has a wonderful array of special sound effects emanating from prepared piano and a myriad of percussion instruments. PinkNoise, a New York-based chamber ensemble dedicated to musical improvisation and compositions in acoustic and electronic mediums, was led by Jonathan Haas in a performance of the fascinating piece.
Alla Zahaykevych’s Tercet was inspired by Taras Prokhasko’s novella Necropolis. The author was affiliated with the Stanislav Phenomenon, an avant-garde group of artists active between 1989 and 1966 influenced by Western postmodernism. Clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich, violinist Johanna Wu and cellist Clare Monfredo engaged in agitated dialogues that reached an unexpected resolution in a series of ascending scales.
Renata Sokachyk’s ‘The Desert Breathes’ for solo flute was inspired by the poems of Lesya Ukrainka, whose writings are associated with her aspiration for Ukraine’s freedom and independence in the early twentieth century. In addition to a fascinating and mesmerizing display of flute techniques, Ginevra Petrucci used her breathing to create whooshing sounds to create a melody that reflected the vastness of the desert.
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea inspired Alisa Zaika’s ‘he only dreamed of places now…’ for seven instruments. In the one-movement work, Zaika depicted the stillness of a man who has abandoned the quest for adventure and is content to gaze at the sea. Haas led the NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble in an intense performance with fine playing from violinist Vanda Paszko and Natalie North, before the music evaporated into silence.
American author O. Henry’s ‘The Last Leaf’ is a story about hope, in which an ill patient finds the will to live by wanting to see the last leaf fall from the window outside her window in autumn. This performance of Lena Sierova’s work of the same name by Haas and members of the NYU Ensemble captured its pensive mood, which was suddenly brightened by a musical burst of happiness in a richly detailed, expressive performance.
Alex Voytenko’s ‘Homo Fugens’ is scored for two keyboards and metronome. It was named after Stephen King’s The Running Man, his 1982 novel set in 2025, which centers on a desperate man’s attempts to win a reality TV game where the only objective is to stay alive. There are no parallels between the book and Voytenko’s piece except for the explosion that ends both. Pianists Margarita Rovenskaya and Pavlo Gintov, members of the Ukrainian Music Initiative, kept pace with the metronome in this relentless, tension-filled piece, playing with mechanical precision and perfection.
The last work performed was the world premiere of Yurii Pikush’s ‘Be a Cycle’, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. Pikush used Eliot’s depiction of desolation as the springboard for a two-part musical depiction of modern society and an individual’s quest to find a place in it. Haas led PinkNoise in a performance that focused on sound more than structure. The pointillistic textures of the first section were precise and perfect, as were the more expansive sonorities of the second which captured Pikush’s depiction of the human quest for harmony.
Rick Perdian