Performers:

• Maciej Frąckiewicz, accordion (PL)
• Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra
• Antonii Kedrovskyi, conductor (UA)

Programme:

• Yurii Pikush (*1998, UA). Summa Rerum for symphony orchestra and electronics (2025), world premiere
• Karmella Tsepkolenko (*1955, UA). Symphony No. 7 (2023), 5 movements, world premiere
• Zygmunt Krauze (*1938, PL). Concerto for Accordion and Symphony Orchestra (2016)

Moderator: Polina Kordovska

The concert is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Respublic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund

The opening programme of the 31st Contrasts Festival of Contemporary Music will surprise the audience with premieres that resonate with the present time.

In Summa Rerum, young Ukrainian composer Yurii Pikush seeks to comprehend current events through the prism of hyperreality, where time and space turn into models of experience. The title of the piece, rather abstract in translation, means “The Sum of Things,” though one of its interpretations is also “A General Battle.” The Russian-Ukrainian war here appears not only as a historical fact but as a matrix of feelings: accelerated, compressed, or stretched in moments of anxiety and uncertainty.

Karmella Tsepkolenko’s Seventh Symphony was written in 2022–2023. She began working on the piece at the onset of the full-scale war, when two and a half movements had already been completed. The composer admits that she put aside the score for several weeks due to deep shock and a sense of helplessness. Gradually, however, she returned to her work, and the final movement — with its quiet, transparent harmonics — became a reflection of the wartime experience: the feeling of vulnerability, tense anticipation, and adaptation to a new reality.

The Concerto for Accordion and Symphony Orchestra by Polish composer Zygmunt Krauze will be performed in Ukraine for the first time. “The concerto is a work about the human being. The first movement is a persistent cry expressing disagreement with what surrounds us, and the lyrical fragments show a past that is idealised, probably unrealistic. The second movement, in turn, is joy, a calm, successful flight,” the composer describes his piece. The soloist will be Maciej Frąckiewicz, who performs on the PIGINI NOVA instrument, considered the most exclusive accordion in the world.

Dzvenyslava Safian