Bozheiko Volodymyr Ivanovna (1897-1955) was a Ukrainian pianist who performed in Vienna, Graz, Prague, Lviv, Przemysl, and Stanislav in the 1920s and 1930s.
Biography.
Volodymyrna Bozheiko was born in the village of Stavchany, Pustomyty district, Lviv region, in 1897 to a priest. Father Bozheiko's family had 10 children. Despite his modest financial situation and the death of his wife, the father was able to educate all of his children. The boys studied at the Ukrainian Men's Gymnasium in Przemyśl. Volodymyr, like her sisters, studied at the Girls' Institute in Przemyśl.
There was a music school at the institute (a branch of the Mykola Lysenko VMI [Archived 17 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine]), headed by the outstanding pianist Olha Okuniewska. She was a graduate of the Vienna Conservatory and studied with Mykola Lysenko for four years. Thus, Volodymyr fell into "good hands". In five years (1910-1915), V. Bozheiko completed a full course at the music school. Stanislav Liudkevych watched her professional growth with interest. It was Stanislav who recommended that she continue her education in the Austrian capital. In 1915, Volodymyr became a student of one of the best professors at the Vienna Academy of Music, Georg Lialevych (she studied under his guidance for three years). After graduating from the Academy, she joined Angelo Cassisoglu's class at the New Vienna Conservatory.
In 1921, she made her debut in the Small Hall of the Konzerthaus in Vienna. This concert was the beginning of a twenty-year concert career. In 1923, she was the first Western Ukrainian pianist to give her first programme recital of piano music in the hall of the Lysenko Higher Music Institute (now the hall of the Luhansk State Medical University). After returning to her homeland, V. Bozheiko not only performed at concerts, but also devoted herself to pedagogy.
As a teacher, V. Bozheiko continued the work of Olga Okunevska. Until the beginning of the German occupation of Galicia, she taught at the Lysenko National Music University branch in Przemysl (1926-1940).
The war interrupted her active concert activity. She had to change both her place of residence and her place of permanent work - Volodymyr moved to Lviv. Here she was one of the leading teachers at the Lysenko Higher Music School (now the Luhansk State Medical University), and from 1946 she served as concertmaster of the Trembita Chapel for almost ten years. Volodymyr Bozheiko died on 13 August 60 years ago. She was buried in her native Stavchany, near the grave of her parents.
Creative work
Volodymyr Bozheiko was a virtuoso pianist with an energetic, temperamental, masculine manner of performance, and a brightly individual artistic face. His playing was characterised by fast tempos, active rhythms, powerful sound, and great physical endurance. Her brilliant technique and natural abilities allowed her to successfully play the most difficult works of romantic composers: "The pianist has a greater inclination to the bravura, brilliant genre of Liszt, to violent rhythms, changing accents, than to the concentrated, architectonic old style or to the dreamy moods of Chopin... Fresh, healthy, often explosive temperament dominates in her over the tricks of reflection."
Volodymyr Bozheiko breathed new life into piano performance in Galicia. She introduced "clavirabands" - solo concerts with serious programmes. The tradition of such concerts, which were very popular among European audiences, was later continued by Lyubka Kolessa, Halyna Levytska, and Roman Savytskyi. It is also worth emphasising the professionalism of the approach to the selection of the concert programme. The pianist was able to compensate for the timbral monotony of the recitative with the diversity of the programme. Volodymyr Bozheiko is known to have performed transcriptions of Bach's organ works, Beethoven's sonatas, Schumann and Chopin's works, Liszt and Lysenko's rhapsodies, Brahms and Tchaikovsky's variations. Volodymyr Bozheiko's repertoire also included opuses by Lysenko, Liudkevych, Barvinsky, and Kosenko. The pianist was a regular participant in Shevchenko celebrations.
