Petro Honcharov (* 18 October 1888, Kyiv - † 20 May 1970, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian choral conductor and composer.
He was born into a poor family of workers. From an early age he sang in church choirs. In 1907, he graduated from the Baltic Fleet Music School with a degree in clarinet, and later took lessons in conducting, reading orchestral scores, harmony, and composition from Reinhold Glier. Oleksandr Koshyts took Goncharov to his choir. Here the young man practiced conducting.
From 1907, he was the regent of the choirs of the leading Kyiv cathedrals, including St. Volodymyr's Cathedral, and from 1921 he led the choir of St. Sophia Cathedral for a decade.
Since 1906, he has been conducting the choirs of the Mykola Sadovskyi and Panas Saksahanskii theaters. He collaborated with Les Kurbas and Anatoliy Petrytskyi.
He was the organizer and for many years led the chapel of the Southwestern Railway, for which he was awarded the title of "Honorary Railwayman". He worked as the artistic director of the Dumka Chapel, the Kyiv Opera (1920-1924), and the Ukrainian Musical Drama in 1919.
In 1921, after a serious illness, he lost his sight, after which he learned all choral works by heart.
In the spring of 1940, Honcharov found himself in Lviv. Here, after the advent of Soviet rule, the Trembita chapel was created. Petro Honcharov became its conductor. At the same time, he also worked as a conductor for the orchestra and choir and at the Lviv Opera.
After the Nazis came to Ukraine, Goncharov returned to Kyiv and again became the regent of St. Volodymyr's Cathedral. Then the Nazis awarded him an iron cross for his talent and diligence (he had no other merits before the new government). "This is a cross for my grave," Petro Hryhorovych told his family. And he turned out to be a seer to a large extent. This event had an extremely negative impact on his future life.
In 1942, Honcharov organized a concert in Kyiv called "To spite the enemies". The program included Lysenko's cantata "Beating the Thresholds". For the performance of this revolutionary work, the German authorities did not pay the conductor the promised fee.
Until the end of his life, he lived in a house at 20 Volodymyrska Street. He was buried at the Baikove cemetery. The monument on the grave was erected at her own expense by Honcharova's former chorister, who emigrated to Switzerland.
Goncharov's family learned long after his death, in the 1990s, that he was a conductor. "No one ever told us that my grandfather wrote church music. Somewhere in the early 90s of the last century, on Christmas Day, my husband Bohdan, an artist of the Dumka chapel who sang in the choir of St. Volodymyr's Cathedral, came across the sheet music of Goncharov, my own grandfather. Later, we learned that a Canadian magazine had published a large article by Pavlo Matsenko on Goncharov's work," said Nina Dun, the conductor's granddaughter.
His work
"To Your Cross".
"Liberation Service".
He is the author of the "Liturgy" for mixed choir with several variants of several of its parts. All parts are written in different keys.
He proclaims the message (for mixed choir).
