The Spring Strings of the Soul

To Mark the 170th Anniversary of the Birth of Ivan Franko

Performers:

• Marianna Laba
• Vitalii Bilan
• Nataliia Hranovska
• Iryna Stefanko
• Oksana Savitska
• Nina Karpinets
• Vitalia Holubnycha
• Academic Instrumental Ensemble of Soloists “Vysokyi Zamok”
• Olena Vladyslavska, piano
• Olena Markevych, piano
• Director: Inna Pavliuk

Programme:

• Bohdana Filts. Spring Wind
• Fedir Nadenenko. Why Do You Appear to Me in a Dream?
• Bohdana Filts. Your Eyes Are Like the Sea
• Vasyl Verkhovynets. The Little Path
• Anatolii Kos-Anatolskyi. Oh, I’ll Take a Little Bucket
  • The Necklace
• Arrangement by Mykhailo Korchynskyi. Why, My Horse, Do You Not Drink Water?
• Bohdana Filts. Swan Song
• Anatolii Kos-Anatolskyi. When the Blue Mountains Fell Asleep (trio)
• Bohdana Filts. It Is Not You I Love
• Hryhorii Alchevskyi. The Soul Is a Tender Lily of the Valley
• Anatolii Kos-Anatolskyi. Oh, You Girl, a Kernel of a Hazelnut
• Bohdana Filts. The Sun Is Already Setting over the Sea
• Bohdan Yanivskyi. Red Viburnum, Why Do You Bend in the Meadow?
• Mykhailo Korchynskyi. Kolomyika
• Stanislav Liudkevych. An Old Song
• Roman Soviak. Kolomyiky

Most of these songs did not begin with music. First there were poems — by Franko, Oles and Shevchenko. Lines written without a concert stage in mind. But one day composers read them, and they began to sound. Thus were born romances that have long since taken on a life of their own: not as illustrations of poetry, but as its continuation.

In this programme, almost every work is a dialogue between two authors. Bohdana Filts discovers remarkable delicacy in Franko’s intimate lyric poetry; Anatolii Kos-Anatolskyi reveals the folk song with such freshness that it seems to have been born only yesterday; Stanislav Liudkevych and Hryhorii Alchevskyi allow the words to speak without a single unnecessary gesture. Here, music does not embellish poetry — it listens to it attentively.

The songs of Bohdana Filts occupy a special place. There is almost no outward drama in them, but there is a rare trust in the power of the musical phrase. One melodic turn, one change of harmony — and a familiar text reveals itself in an entirely different way. This is why her romances have remained in the repertoire of Ukrainian singers for many decades.

This evening brings together well-known and much-loved Lviv soloists — Marianna Laba, Vitalii Bilan, Nataliia Hranovska, Iryna Stefanko, Oksana Savitska, Nina Karpinets and Vitalia Holubnycha. Together with the Academic Instrumental Ensemble of Soloists “Vysokyi Zamok” and pianists Olena Vladyslavska and Olena Markevych, they create a coherent musical narrative in which each successive song continues the one before it. Director Inna Pavliuk underscores this dramaturgy, keeping the essential elements at the centre: the word, the voice and the music.