For the third decade, the INSO-Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra has been an active popularizer of Ukrainian classical music. The result of the labor of the collective and the management team is now embodied in the series of online publication of little-known and premiere works of Ukrainian composers of the 20th-21st centuries, such as Mykola Kolessa, Stanislav Liudkevych, Yevhen Orkin, Oleksandr Rodin, and others. 

These recordings were also performed by conductors known in Europe: Oleksandr Gordon, Dalia Stasevska and Roman Kreslenko. In August 2024, the orchestra and Joshua Bell and Dalia Stasevska recorded a CD of music by Ukrainian artist Thomas de Hartmann, which became one of the best albums of 2024 according to The Times.

In this text, we present some of the latest releases of INSO-Lviv, which are now available for listening.

Oleksandr Rodin “Holy God”

The performance of Oleksandr Rodin’s work “Holy God” was recorded at the “Premonition” concert held at the “Virtuosos” festival. Oleksandr Gordon conducted the program. The work for the symphony orchestra was written in April 2022 in Kyiv under the sound of air raids and explosions of enemy rockets. Being in danger, the composer felt a special dedication to his small homeland, but he admits that he did not feel fear, only a thirst for the world. According to the author, “”Holy God” is also a work about light, because it becomes the only weapon against darkness in the hands of the master.”

Yevhen Orkin. Symphony No. 7 “High Castle”

At the beginning of June 2024, the orchestra also gave the premiere performance of Yevhen Orkin’s Symphony No. 7 “High Castle” – a piece commissioned by the collective, which is now also becoming a special practice in Ukraine. The composer invites listeners on a journey through his memories of Lviv, where he was born and spent his vacations. “The search for musical history, the search for echoes of the past and the present, as well as forebodings and futures were a reference point for me in my work on the Seventh Symphony, which I dedicate to my native city,” says the author.

Bohdana Frolyak. “Lux aeterna”

Another composition commissioned by the orchestra was “Lux Aeterna” for string quartet and string orchestra by Bohdana Frolyak. Her work is a search for new paths from its sacred beginnings, the echo of folk songs of her native Precarpathian Region to ultra-contemporary compositional experiments.

Stanislav Lyudkevich. Symphonic poem “Our mountains”

Together with conductor Roman Kreslenko, in February 2024, the orchestra performed and recorded a piece by Stanislav Liudkevych. The symphonic poem “Our Mountains” became part of the program titled “Support”, which was created by the orchestra to support listeners with a musical depiction of the Carpathians on the eve of the Second World War and to restore the original names of works of Ukrainian art and history.

INSO-Lviv Orchestra’s full biography attached