This year’s festival lasted 10 days and featured 14 contemporary music events. As in previous years, Contrasts not only introduced new world musical achievements, but also demonstrated the rich diversity of contemporary Ukrainian music by composers of all generations. The festival featured works by masters of Ukrainian music and student composers who are just discovering it, tireless seekers of new compositional solutions, and connoisseurs of traditions and the fluidity of teaching schools.

We invite you to summarize the results of the festival and recall how it was.

The festival started on September 29, traditionally at the Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic, where most of the festival events took place. The announced opening program aimed to immerse the audience in the whirlwind of Ukrainian music of our time “from Karabytsia to Almashi,” and was performed by the National Ensemble of Soloists “Kyiv Camerata.” It was also possible to demonstrate a tandem of Kyiv and Lviv performers on the same stage. The ensemble of soloists was conducted by Ivan Cherednichenko, the head of the music department and conductor of the Lviv National Opera and Ballet Theater named after S. Krushelnytska, and Oksana Rapita from Lviv soloed in the last work of the program.

The second event of the festival symbolically took place on the birthday of the brilliant Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov, on September 30. The Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv National Philharmonic and soloists of the Philharmonic, pianist Violina Petrychenko and mezzo-soprano Lilia Nikitchuk, performed chamber and symphonic works by the composer. The Lviv Philharmonic also witnessed the premiere of the composer’s piano cycle Five Songs for the New Year, which Valentyn Silvestrov dedicated to his friend and colleague Gia Kancheli.

October at the Philharmonic began with the most intriguing event of the Dialogue with Skoryk festival. As part of the Contrasts, which are already known to the public and which the festival premiered, the winners of the Second All-Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk Composition Competition were performed for the first time. The winners of the second edition are: Nikita Ivanchenko – III prize (Mariupol) and his work Pictures of War, Cello Concerto No. 1 (2023) in three parts Trauma, Madness, and Death. Renata Sokachyk – II prize (Vylok), “Antonych-fragments”, a poem for double bass and orchestra (2023) and Yurii Pikush – I prize (Dnipro) “Concellastra”, a concerto for cello and orchestra (2023).

Despite the fact that Lviv’s musical life continues to amaze the world with its richness, all its participants remember that all events are now possible only thanks to the titanic work of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The program on September 2, “Silenzio dal Dolore”/”Silence with Pain,” was dedicated to all the fallen defenders of Ukraine. The works by Petris Vasks, Yevhen Stankovych, Volodymyr Pasichnyk, Alla Sirenko, Myroslav Skoryk, Hanna Havrylets and Bohdana Frolyak selected for the program made everyone think once again about the value of every day, the pain we all live with to a greater or lesser extent, and the losses we mourn.

The next concert, held on October 3, immersed the audience in the mood of Lviv, with pianist Violina Petrychenko, violinist Natalia Hordeeva, and cellist Maksym Rymar performing works by Vasyl Barvinsky and Myroslav Skoryk. The program of the soloists was designed to remind us of the year that, unfortunately, both artists had to live through – 1948. The year when both composers were exiled by the Soviet authorities to Siberia. Vasyl Barvinsky miraculously returned from there and had to restore his destroyed works from memory. Myroslav Skoryk, on the other hand, began his studies at the conservatory to take a prominent place among the galaxy of Ukrainian composers over the decades. The musicians also performed the program at concerts in Germany as part of the Sounds of Music festival founded by Violina Petrychenko.

The next concert of the festival, Sisters. Muses” was dedicated to the Ukrainian composer Hanna Havrylets. Violinists Kateryna Boichuk and Maryna Hromadska, violist Veronika Pedorych, cellist Oksana Lytvynenko, and pianist Jozsef Ermin performed chamber music by Hanna Havrylets and Bohdana Frolyak. It is said that there is a higher mental connection between relatives, and the music of the composer sisters Hanna Havrylets and Bohdana Frolyak is a search for new paths in Ukrainian music, from its sacred origins, the echo of folk songs from their native Prykarpattia, to supernova compositional experiments.

On Thursday, October 5, at 17:00, the festival featured music by young Lviv composers. Most of the Contrasts audience is already familiar with the music of Lviv composers of the new generation, students of the Lviv National Music Academy named after M. Lysenko. The organizers of the festival are convinced that the sound of their own work in a professional performance on a big stage is the impetus for young composers to create.

This time, the composers will test the combination of a prepared piano and electronics. The initial initiative to create these works originated as part of a course on compositional techniques of the XX-XXI centuries and gradually grew into a full-fledged creative project. The author of the project idea was Ostap Manuliak, an associate professor of composition at the Academy. Despite the fact that the project had a clear condition regarding the instruments used, each of the composers passed this task through themselves and gave the music their own style and considerations. The concert hall of the House of Sound featured works by Marian Fil, Alisa Formaziuk, Ksenia Stetsenko, Ignatiy Moiseev, Andriy Kostiv, Zakhar Ozersky, Mykhailo Maksymchuk, Denys Kucher, Yana Hryhorieva, and Anna Gurina.

At 19:00, the Contrasts audience moved to the Stanislav Liudkevych Concert Hall of the Lviv National Philharmonic to hear students of the Lviv National Music Academy perform under the direction of Yuriy Bervetsky and Bohdan Dashak, who presented a new program by the Lviv Chamber Orchestra “Academy”. Along with the well-known orchestra and reputable conductors, soloists and students of the Academy, saxophonist Stanislav Parashchuk and pianist Pavlo Yanushevsky, demonstrated a high level of performance skills. The evening also featured the Ukrainian premiere of Józef Kofler’s virtuoso work 15 Variations on a Dodecaphonic Theme and two world premieres – Reflexion nach Beethoven for strings by Viktor Kaminsky and Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra No. 3 by Usain Bekirov, which once again confirmed the orchestra’s great potential and professionalism.

One of the most emotional events of the festival was the “Concerto grosso with a positive”. According to the composer and author of the project, Yevhen Petrychenko: “Concerto grosso with a positive” is a cycle of instrumental and vocal works written to texts by Volodymyr Vakulenko, Victoria Amelina, Roman Melish, Oleksandr Kozynets, and Nadiia Kosarevych, which is combined into a twelve-part concert. Each of them is additionally illustrated with drawings by graphic designer Ruslan Motko, in which one can easily recognize Maria Prymachenko’s fantastic animals, Polina Raiko’s heroes, Kateryna Bilokur’s flowers, and Banksy’s graffiti.” In the evening of October 6, “Concerto grosso with a positive” was performed by Liatoshynskyi Capella: Early Music Ensemble of the National House of Music, the guests of the Contrasts festival were treated to a unique combination of a baroque concert with augmented reality, ancient music and rare instruments with contemporary Ukrainian poetry, performances that made the audience cry and soap bubbles that lit up the entire hall with smiles for a moment.

On October 7, one of the most anticipated events of the festival, the Pulse Marathon, started, when contemporary music was performed from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the Philharmonic. The marathon began with the largest concert of this year’s Contrasts. The Lviv Chamber Choir “Gloria” and the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv National Philharmonic performed the work of French composer Arnaud Filion “Kune” for the first time in Ukraine. The unique collection of 11 songs was conceived by the composer as a work that would unite musicians of all cultures who would sing about eternal human values, peace, and unity in 50 languages. The title of the work means “together” in Esperanto.

The next concert, although it did not contain the word unity in its title, also united through music. At 18:00, the Lviv Philharmonic performed Kharkiv music. Kharkiv resident Maksym Shadko performed piano pieces by Valentyn Bibik, the most famous Kharkiv composer of the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that Kharkiv is mostly portrayed in a very urban way, Bibik’s music is quiet and intimate, sincere and light. It is said that the best way to get to know a new city is to be introduced to it by a person who really loves it, and Maksym Shadko’s interpretation of Bibik’s music is the best introduction to musical Kharkiv.

The penultimate concert of the festival’s marathon featured the largest number of world premieres: Circle of Life for viola and piano and Breakthrough for flute and accordion by Chinese composer Man-Ching Donald Yu, and “Transgression 6” for flute, accordion, piano, and fixed recording by Ostap Manuliak, performed by Yevhen Kruk, Ustym Zhuk, Myroslav Dragan, Natalia Kozhushko-Maksymiv, and Bohdan Kozhushko. The title of the concert “Interludes” emphasized the genre of miniatures, the diversity of which was demonstrated by the soloists in their program.

Pulse-Marathon ended with a program by the famous Kyiv duo Duo Sonoro. This time, violinist Andriy Pavlov and pianist Valeria Shulga performed a program that covered five countries at once: Ukraine, Hungary, Japan, Estonia, and Poland. The duo performed little-known works by Vladimir Zagorchev, György Kutrag, Valentyn Silvestrov, Yuriy Ishchenko, Toru Takemitsu, Erkki Sven Tüür, and Witold Lutosławski. The last night of the festival impressed the audience with the virtuosity of the soloists and various facets of late twentieth-century music.

On October 8, the final concert of the 29th Contrasts International Contemporary Music Festival took place. Symbolically, on the last night, the audience was treated to a performance by the Academic Symphony Orchestra INSO-Lviv of the Lviv National Philharmonic, which has been a constant participant in Contrasts since its first years. The orchestra was conducted by Vincent Kozlovsky, without whom it is hard to imagine the festival, and the soloist was Kateryna Suprun, a well-known interpreter of contemporary viola music. They performed a challenging and exciting program of works by Svitlana Azarova, Oleksandr Shchetynsky and Krzysztof Penderecki. The concert was opened with “Fanfares of Contrasts” by Vincent Kozlowski.