Romance and…

This is the program created by the composer and cellist Zoltan Almashi. Let’s see what he says.

The word “romance” means a difficult story in my life.

First, this word was synonymous with something very old-fashioned to me.
Especially since very often, the word “romance” was paired with the adjective “Russian”, and it triggered me from early childhood, starting with the kindergarten teachers who consistently taught me this language and made fun of my accent, to a tragic family story related to with that curse adjective.
So, I disliked the word “romance” and this genre.
Once, in my teenage years, I played something of my own on the piano for a girl I liked, and she said, “oh, it’s a romance!”
I don’t think I liked her anymore…

What’s next?

I remember how the professor of ethnomusicology at the conservatory arranged an interrogation for me on the subject, “what Ukrainian folk songs do I know”
Well, I told him everything I knew, and he looked at me and contemptuously said that these were not songs, but romances.
But then I began to understand that all the most intimate things that I heard from Beethoven, for example, carried the genre definition of “romance”.
Gradually, I began to love this genre, realizing that the adjective “Russian” is completely optional.

And so I decided to make a concert where romances are a certain refrain (everyone knows that I try to make a concert as one macro or meta composition)
This macro piece, a concert called “Romance and…” will have the rondo form.

The idea of ​​a macro work is also embodied within the structure of the concert.

For example, the work of Oleksandr Levkovych, which is at the climax of the concert, is called “Romance and Canzonetta”, that is, romance and non-romance in one piece.

And the concert ends with a macro, or a meta piece, which I compiled from three works, namely, a fragment of the first movement of Beethoven’s so-called “Moonlight” sonata, a Ukrainian folk s… oh, sorry… “romance”, “The Moon in the Sky”, and Arvo Pärt’s piece “Spiegel im Spiegel”.
I called this compilation “Dedication to Albertі”.
Because, they say, the popular accompanying formula (“picking” keys or strings according to chord sounds) was invented by a man named Alberti.
The three works (although they are from different epochs!) are characterized by the same accompanying “Albertian” formula, which, however, outgrew its role as a purely accompanying figure, and turned into a certain symbol, a hieroglyph.

Well, and bingo! This (and similar) rhythmic formula is the basis of the accompaniment of any romance.

Zoltan Almashi

Artists:

• Zoltan Almashi, cello
• Myroslav Dragan, piano

Program:

• Borys Liatoshynskyi (1895–1968). «Romance» (1913)
• Liubava Sydorenko (1979). «Quazi sonata» (2003)
• Serhiy Bortkevych (1877–1952). Romance op. 25
• Zoltan Almashi (1975). «Suprun-rhapsody» (2016)
• Oleksandr Levkovych (1952). “Romance and Canzonetta” 

Meta composition “Dedication to Alberti” in three parts:

• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). A fragment of Piano Sonata No. 14, “Moonlight” (1800–1801)
• Ukrainian romance “The Moon in the Sky”, version for cello and piano by Zoltan Almashi (2021)
• Arvo Pärt (1935). “Spiegel im Spiegel” (1978)

Live broadcast provided by:
Andrij Zelenyj, camera
Mykola Khshanovskyi, live broadcast director
Marian Lesiuk, sound director
Bohdan Sehin, producer

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“Ukraine – 2022. Muses Are Not Silent” is a concert series in support of Ukrainian musicians during the russian armed aggression. Online concerts will become a platform for the uniting of the Ukrainian music community, as many musicians participating in these concert programs have become internally displaced people and have found shelter in Lviv.

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