This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Français (French)
-
Leaf Music4
Unbroken: Music from Ukraine
Viktoria Grynenko, violin
Leaf Music, 2025
Unbroken is a CD containing an hour of music by living Ukrainian composers, played by violinist Viktoria Grynenko and various collaborators. There are five extremely varied pieces on the album.
Through Closed Doors is a 2014 Anna Pidgorna piece for two violins, inspired by a door smashed in with a hatchet and what may be on either side of it. Grynenko is joined by Guillaume Tardif for a piece that uses the violins in a sort of conversation where repeated figures play over drone-like elements and bits of folk tunes are worked in. Percussive effects suggesting knocking on a door. There are some excellent photos in the booklet of the score inscribed on a smashed antique door!
Zoltan Almashi’s Duo for Two Violins, No. 1 (2007, revised 2022) sees the same pair in a piece that’s quite lyrical with a touch of chromaticism. It starts at quite a slow tempo but gets faster and busier, with a very high section for one of the violins played against a “buzzy” background before coming together in a slower, lyrical finish.
A 2022 piece by Boris Loginov titled sleep during insomnia is a direct response to the invasion and escalation of the war in that year. It is the longest piece on the record at more than 16 minutes, and also much the darkest. Scored for string quartet and electronics, it’s pretty heavy on the latter.
There are ticking clocks (or maybe fuses), sirens, sinister bangs and children shouting. Mixed in with this are extracts taken from the “funeral song” in Sergei Taneyev’s cantata Ioann Damaskin. Some of this is very beautiful and lyrical and is played in dialogue with high, menacing music from the strings and processed recordings of various bells suggesting both Russian and Ukrainian liturgical traditions. After another interlude of explosions and sirens, it fades away in a sort of “march” played con legno. For this piece, Grynenko is joined by Vladimir Rufino on violin, Fabiola Amorim on viola and Amy Nicholson on cello. A stunning performance of a very disturbing piece—the highlight of the disk for me.
The remaining pieces on the album are scored for violin and piano and Grynenko is joined by Roger Admiral. Melodies of the Moment – Cycle 1, a 2004 piece by Valentin Silvestrov, is taken from a series of cycles by the same composer. It’s a bit odd in that Silvestrov was once the doyen of the Kyiv avant-garde but in recent years has been composing very simple, melodic, even naive music. The five short pieces here are pretty, tonal pieces that might be wordless song tunes. It’s a rather startling contrast to what has come before.
Finally, there’s Oleg Bezborodko’s 2004 Concert Fantasy on “Cossack Beyond the Don”. The source material is an opera by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky that I would guess is quite operetta-like. In any event, the piece takes the tonal folk-like melodic material of the opera and creates a highly virtuosic showpiece out of it. It’s the sort of thing I imagine violinists like to include in concert programs to show off their technique. It’s quite fun.
The recording was made at Edmonton Alberta Convocation Hall, at the University of Alberta in 2024 and is of good quality with plenty of detail and a solid 3D sound stage. It’s available as a physical CD, MP3 and standard resolution FLAC/ALAC/WAV. The booklet has excellent notes on the music plus composer bios.
All in all, a carefully curated and rather varied selection of music by contemporary Ukrainian composers.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Français (French)
