Night Prayers

I really want us, both Ukrainians and Georgians,
to be released from the care of our “older brother”

Giya Kancheli, 2015

As our project, “Ukraine-2022. Muses Are Not Silent”, continues, we suggest our listeners coming to the concert “Night Prayers”. The program combines chamber works by Yevhen Stankovych, Giya Kancheli and Petro Titiaiev, a member of the Phoenix String Quartet of the Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic.

Petro Titiaiev speaks about the concert program and his composition:

“This concert is a difficult story. A story about the struggles, the iron will and the unkillable human spirit; about the long journey of wanderings, doubts, victories, dark shadow abysses, and searching for the essence.

It is an attempt at immersion into the very core of ethnogenesis; the immersion into the holy that knows no boundaries of the visible world. It can just gurgle wildly in the vortex of our souls, in the flames of our hearts, like the guelder-rose’s blood flowing in our veins.

The concert will begin with my composition. There are six short pieces from a cycle of more than 20 bagatelles for various ensembles (some of them were written between 2002 and 2017). They represent especially colourful, but sometimes contrasting images. This evening you will hear “Madness” and Lento, Intermezzo and “Reflection”, “Shchedrivka” and a piece called “Only by you” after Vasyl Stus”.

The music of the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli offers the listener to travel to a unique world where intangible spirituality holds a significant place. His art is deeply personal, nostalgic, it is not characterized by demonstrative virtuosity. The composer’s music requires the performer’s mastery to “paint” fragile melodies and soft dynamic changes.

The cycle “Life Without Christmas” in four movements was written by the composer between 1990 and 1995. It includes such parts as “Morning Prayers”, “Noon Prayers”, “Evening Prayers” and “Night Prayers”. Each of it is written for the different instruments. The program of the evening will include the last movement of the cycle.

The Quartet for Strings (1973), written soon after graduating from the Kyiv Conservatory, belongs to the early period of Yevhen Stankovych‘s work. The novelty of the work is determined by the organic combination of Ukrainian folk melos and contemporary composition techniques. The influence of folk songs and dances is clearly felt in the dramaturgy of the Stankovych’s Quartet.

The Quartet’s neofolkloristic style uncovers numerous associations and creative parallels with the works of other composers, forerunners, and contemporaries of the composer. So we can hear the association with the previous piece in the concert program.

Chamber compositions will be performed by the Phoenix String Quartet of the Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic.