Valeriy Fedorovych Kvasnevsky (born November 4, 1953, Lviv) is a Ukrainian composer. He is a member of the National League of Ukrainian Composers.
He was born in Lviv on November 4, 1953. In 1977 he graduated from the Mykola Lysenko Lviv State Music Academy. He studied cello with Professor Khrystyna Kolessa and took composition lessons with Professor Anatoliy Kos-Anatolsky.
The composer's works are of various genres. His works include works for symphony orchestra, works for choir and soloists with orchestra, music for Lesya Ukrainka's drama "Forest Song", a ballet miniature based on Knut Hamsun's novel "Mysteries", a quintet for woodwinds with French horn, and instrumental works for various instruments.
Valeriy Kwasniewski is the author of more than 100 solo chants for voice and piano. In 1998, he published a collection of songs and romances based on the words of Petro Hots, "Why Didn't You Come Out". In the same year, he published a collection of vocal works based on the words of classical and contemporary poets and his own poems, "Yellow Leaves".
In 2002, he published a collection of solo chants to the words of Maria Hatala-Kwasniewska, the composer's wife, Echoes of Spring. In 2007, the collection "Romantic Pages" (works for piano) was published. Valeriy Kwasniewski's piano works are multifaceted, ranging from ballads to ragtime. However, his compositions are united by sophisticated lyricism, amazing images, melancholic sounds, and melodic patterns. In 2009, the Manuscript Publishing House released another collection of vocal works, In Love and Prayer, which, among the composer's songs and romances, included a choral arrangement of his famous Prayer to the Blessed Virgin (a kind of Ukrainian Hail Mary). Selected works by Valeriy Kwasniewski for violin, cello, and flute accompanied by piano were included in the collection "String Watercolors" published in 2014.
Back in 1993, the Lviv Regional Television and Radio Company filmed a movie in the "Young Muse" section entitled "Composer Valeriy Kwasniewski".
In 1996 and 1998, two television films, Hail Mary and I Wish I Could Be a Song, were produced based on the composer's script and featured his musical works. The films were included in the Lviv Telefilm Fund. In 2009, the TV movie "Musical Images of Valeriy Kwasniewski" was shown. On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the birth of the prominent Ukrainian poetess Lesya Ukrainka, the Lviv Regional TV and Radio Company created a musical and literary television film Lesya Ukrainka in the Music of Valeriy Kwasniewski. In 2012, two television films with music by Valeriy Kwasniewski were shown on Ukrainian television screens: "With Faith in Ukraine" and "The Sacred Music of Valery Kwasniewski".
Valeriy Kwasniewski is a contemporary composer, but he continues the melodic traditions of the composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the composer has his own creative face, which in the conditions of a modern technocratic society preserves the sincerity of romantic expression with the modern view of the creator into the past, from which he derives eternal values - love for God, life, nature, and man.
Works
Melodies of Dreams / V. Kwasniewski; Photo by H. Smirnov - Lviv, 1999.
Yellow Leaves: Solo Chants / V. Kwasniewski; Afterword by M. Lohoyda. - Lviv: Manuscript, 2008.
In love and prayer: vocal works / V. Kwasniewski. - Lviv: Manuscript, 2009.
Romantic pages: piano pieces / V. Kwasniewski; National League of Ukrainian Composers. - Lviv: Manuscript, 2011. 75 p.
String watercolors = Watercolor Bow strokes: instrumental pieces for violin, cello, flute accompanied by piano: clarinet / V. Kwasniewski.
Bow watercolors = Watercolor Bow strokes: instrumental pieces for violin, cello, flute accompanied by piano: solo parts / V. Kwasniewski.
Burn, burn, my candle: poetry by Oleh Vasyukov in songs and romances / V. Kwasniewski; author's notes by O. Vasyukov; author's preface by A. Mykytka - Lviv: Manuscript, 2014.
Romances: based on the poems of Vasyl Vyshivanyi / V. Kwasniewski; lyrics by V. Vyshivanyi; introduction by M. Simkin - Lviv: Rastr-7, 2020.
