Yesterday, August 9, the first event of the International Lviv Early Music Festival took place, as well as a press briefing on the occasion of the festival’s 19th edition. As the General Director of the Lviv National Philharmonic Volodymyr Syvokhip noted, the art institution “hosts three main international festivals: the Festival of musical art “Virtuosos”, Festival of the contemporary music “Contrasts” and the Festival of Ancient Music, which represent the three whales on which our culture stands. In Halychyna, we declare our respect for our past, because Ukrainian music has a long, strong tradition that needs to be preserved.”

The press conference held at 12:00 was also attended by Bohdan Sehin, commercial director of the Lviv National Philharmonic, artistic director of the XIX Lviv Early Music Festival, head of the project “Muses Are Not Silent”, Urszula Stawicka, a harpsichordist from Poland, and Pawel Osuchowski, a conductor from Poland. He emphasized: “We are in a special moment of our history. Once more our music, and concerts, have some special strength and power to live with our culture and tradition altogether in united Europe. We like to play ancient music because we don’t agree with contemporary times. We’d like to return to the special moment when music was so important in the lives of people in our cities, countries, in Europe”.

Urszula Stawicka’s pre-concert commentary is particularly noteworthy. Here in the video, she talks about her impressions of Lviv during the war, the meaning of her visit and her support for Ukrainian musicians.

At 19:00 in the evening, the concert of Urszula Stawicka started.  The program included compositions by composers of different nationalities and generations. The common factor for them is a successful performing will, which, having combined in the program the works from the moment of the formation of this genre to the emergence of a whole current of its development — the music of Podbielski, Scheidenmann, Duben, Froberger, as well as Forqueray, Couperin, Duphli and Schildt was heard.

Tomorrow the listeners online and offline will hear the Opening of the Festival. A famous performer, Taras Kompanichenko, who serves in the military, is our very special guest. He will be on leave from his unit to come here on August 11 to open the Festival.

You can find the detailed program of the Festival here.

Header photo: Danylo Bedriy