Contrasts 31. Marathon | Faust Celebration

Performers:

• Ensemble Senza Sforzando (Odesa):
  • Tetiana Muliar, soprano
  • Nazar Kravchenko, flute
  • Yurii Haiats, clarinet
  • Kateryna Korshomna, violin
  • Mykhailo Bezchastnov, cello
  • Irma Hotkova, piano
  • Oleksandr Perepelytsia, conductor, artistic director

Program:

• Ostap Manulyak (*1983, UA). Ramifications II on poetry by Ihor Kalynets for voice, flute, violin, cello and piano (2024)
• Yurii Pikush (*1998, UA). And a Strawberry in Hand on poetry by Yurii Izdryk for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2025)
• Karmella Tsepkolenko (*1955, UA). Reading History, cantata for soprano (with side drum), cello and piano (text by Oksana Zabuzhko) (2022)
• Volodymyr Runchak (*1960, UA). Time “X” or “Farewell” (non-symphony) for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello (1998)
• Bohdan Sehin (*1976, UA). Who are you really? And who am I..? on poetry by Anastasiia Lozova for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2025)
• Karmella Tsepkolenko (*1955, UA). Faust Celebration, cantata for soprano, voice and ensemble (text by Yurii Andrukhovych)
• Andrii Merkhel (*1986, UA). Temporary protection: unsentimental nocturnes for Alika, Episode in nine moments for ensemble
• Mykhailo Shved (*1978, UA). Inventions for chamber ensemble (2012)

Moderator: Polina Kordovska

Faust Celebration by one of the oldest contemporary music ensembles in Ukraine, Senza Sforzando, is an entrance into a carnival of signs, where music no longer mirrors reality but itself becomes reality. The simulacrum hidden in the poetic lines of Yurii Andrukhovych, reflected in the music of Karmella Tsepkolenko, emerges as the true master of the ritual: the star shines on a sky that does not exist, and the night extends beyond time. Faust’s search for truth unfolds in sounds that promise no answers, only reveal the boundlessness of play. This time Contrasts invites us into an art space where the ground vanishes beneath our feet, to feel freedom in a world long composed of nothing but doubts.

In the new program of Ensemble Senza Sforzando, which was heard on the stage of the Berlin Philharmonie, eight works written during the war form a polyphony of contemporary Ukraine. Russian aggression has profoundly influenced new music, giving rise to compositions ranging from deeply emotional to radically abstract. The composers do not reduce their creativity to the theme of war, yet it has become a powerful backdrop.

In Ramifications II by Ostap Manulyak, nature transforms into reflections on war. Karmella Tsepkolenko, in Reading History, written in the first months of the full-scale invasion, contemplates historical and present-day catastrophes. Alongside them will sound Bohdan Sehin’s premiere — about sensitivity and “all that is beyond the influence of time or life’s turbulence,” Volodymyr Runchak’s landmark late-1990s work on the philosophy of the compositional process itself, as well as music by Andrii Merkhel and Mykhailo Shved.

A special place in the ensemble’s mission is devoted to commissions for a new generation of composers. In particular, the program features the premiere of Yurii Pikush’s And a Strawberry in Hand, a piece about the warm memory of childhood and the fragility of human recollection.

Dzvenyslava Safian