FULL REQUIEM for those who died of famine (Stankovych) Lviv 2014 Oleg Batov, Oksana Mukha, Vladimir Rybchuk
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: REQUIEM for those who died of famine
- Composer: Stankovych Yevhen
- Libretto: Dmytro Pavlychko
- Venue & Opera Company: Lviv, Ukraine
- Recorded: 2022
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Oleg Batov, Oksana Mukha, Vladimir Rybchuk
- Conductor: Volodymyr Syvokhip
- Orchestra: Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra
- Chorus: Lviv municipal choir "Gomin", Academic Chamber Choir "Gloria", Choir of the Lviv state Music School
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Date Published: 2014
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTUbe FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Quote from The Ukrainian Weekly
…in the very year after the Soviet Union dissolved and Ukraine declared itself – finally, after centuries of domination from others – an independent nation, the celebrated composer Yevhen Stankovych turned his attentions to composing a Requiem for those victims of the Holodomor. A Requiem with an unapologetic text from his contemporary colleague, poet Dmytro Pavlychko, which does not shirk from proclaiming the truth of what happened. A Requiem that somehow only now, at this performance, is receiving its North American premiere. It is as extraordinary an act of testament as it is a work of art.
Stankovych’s Requiem exists in several liminal spaces at once – it transitions between paroxysms of discordance, compositional techniques of the avant-garde that Stankovych knew and used in the first part of his career, while mostly relying on the plain-spoken vocabulary of his later work; it embodies the full human response to tragedy, moving from supplication to rage to lament to acceptance; it hovers between a spiritual world, invoking Orthodox chants and the profundity of belief, and the earthly suffering of starvation.
The first of 15 interconnected movements, all performed without pause, begins in complete stillness: a single note, intoned from all corners of the orchestra, provides an unwavering backdrop to a lamenting violin solo and statements of “Amen” from the two choruses. The next movement proclaims God’s strength and models it, too, in vigorous rising lines punctuated by percussion.
The first appearance of a narrator (Stefan Szkafarowsky) – declaiming Pavlychko’s text – calls for us to remember those years of starvation. A warm bass solo opens the third movement, as he recalls work on the land and what it meant to Ukrainians; but at the words “on Satan’s orders” a fearsome shout arises from the depths of the chorus and pushes the music to a dissonant fanfare. A final prayer for God’s intervention ends the movement.