Sofia Dnistrianska (24 October 1882, Ternopil - 9 February 1956, Vejprty, Czech Republic, rep. 29 March 2001, in Uzhhorod) - pianist, teacher. Sister of the geographer, academician Stepan Rudnytskyi and writer Yulian Opilskyi, wife of the lawyer and politician Stanislav Dnistrianskyi.
Biography
Sofia Dnistrianska (Rudnytska) was born on 24 October 1882 in Ternopil in the family of a gymnasium professor. Since childhood, she was fond of music and at the age of 6 began to study piano at a private music school. In 1895, she entered the Ternopil Gymnasium and simultaneously studied at the private music school (conservatory) of Karlo Mikuli in Lviv from 1891.
After moving to Vienna with her husband (1908), she entered the Vienna Academy of Music and Performing Arts (class of Louis Tern), from which she graduated in 1913 with a diploma to teach music and open a private music school.
In 1913, S. Dnistrianska began her pedagogical career: at first she taught piano at the Vienna Conservatory, and in 1916 she opened her own music school in Vienna, where she taught until 1922.
At the same time, the pianist became actively involved in Ukrainian life in Vienna. She took part in the celebrations of the anniversaries of the births or deaths of Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Lysenko, and Mykhailo Shashkevych. She also organised independent concerts of piano music.
1922-1933 - works at the Drahomanov Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute in Prague. During this time, she actively cooperated with the Ukrainian Women's Union, which was admitted to the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom in March 1921. At the Second Ukrainian Scientific Congress in Prague (1926), the participants were interested in Dnistrianska's report "National Elements in the Piano Music of Recent Decades," which she illustrated with fragments of compositions by Brahms, Debussy, Liszt, Grieg, Smetana, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Lysenko, performed on the piano.
In 1934, the Dnistriansky family moved from Prague to Uzhhorod, where Sofia worked at a girls' teacher's gymnasium. In 1935, she opened a private music school and simultaneously taught music in Uzhhorod from 1935 to 1938. After the occupation of Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, she returned to Prague, where she again founded her own music school.
After the war, in 1946-1952, she taught at the music school in Trnava (Slovakia).
She died on 9 February 1956 in Weiport (Western Bohemia). Sofia Dnistrianska's remains were reburied in Uzhhorod on 29 March 2001 at the city cemetery Kalvaria.
In 2007, academician M. Mushynka transferred the pianist's archive to the Transcarpathian Museum of Local Lore.
Creative and pedagogical activity
Dnistrianska has valuable research on the history of Ukrainian and world music published in periodicals. She devoted most of her articles to the work of the founder of Ukrainian contemporary music, Mykola Lysenko. She wrote about O. Nosalevych, M. Mentsynskyi, O. Myshuga, and F. Kolessa. Among the world classics, her studies of Beethoven, Puccini, and Liszt are worthy of attention. She translated a lot of professional literature.
Although S. Dnistrianska devoted a lot of energy to her journalistic and social work, she considered her main area of expertise to be teaching. She trained a whole galaxy of pianists who later worked in musical ensembles, orchestras, and schools: Halyna Lahodynska-Zaleska, Melania Doskoch-Bailova, Halyna Tyminska-Vasylashko, Olha Dutko, Roman Vengrynovych-Savruk, Mykola Dolynai, and others.
Wherever the pianist lived, she sought to combine teaching with performing. During the 1900s and 1910s, she performed several times with an orchestra in Lviv, playing concertos by Beethoven (No. 3), Liszt (No. 1), Sauer, Tchaikovsky (No. 1), and Rubinstein. These were the first such performances by Ukrainian pianists. In his review, S. Liudkevych noted that the artist was characterised by "innate intelligence and intelligence, temperament and complete mastery of the technical and understanding of the instrument". In Vienna, she played in an ensemble with Austrian violinists. She gave concerts in Prague, Uzhhorod, Przemysl, and Chernivtsi. Dnistrianska's performances on the radio are also known. In the second half of the 1930s, she prepared a number of piano music programmes for Kosice and Uzhhorod radio. Until her later years, even in Slovakia, she maintained a high level of professionalism and artistic appeal in her performances.
