Vinokur Oleksandr Hryhorovych (*8 March 1938, Vapnyarka - †20 August 2016, Cherkasy) was a Ukrainian composer of the Sixties, a teacher, member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine (1968).
Oleksandr Hryhorovych was born on March 8, 1938, in Vapnyarka, now an urban-type settlement of Tomashpillia district, Vinnytsia region. At the age of three, little Sashko and his mother were taken prisoner by the Germans, where they remained until the end of the war in a labor camp in Bialystok, Poland. He finished school in his native village, and in 1961 graduated from the Kyiv Conservatory, composition class of Andrii Shtoharenko. It was there that he met his wife, Mariana Markotenko. In 1960-1961, he worked as a senior methodologist at the Central House of Folk Art of Ukraine in Kyiv. Since 1961, he worked at the Cherkasy Music School as a teacher of music-theoretical disciplines, and part-time at the Cherkasy House of Folk Art. Since 1968, he has been the head of the Cherkasy Regional Association of Amateur Composers, where he wrote more than 2000 reviews to support and summarize the results of the work of the union's members.
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Oleksandr Vynokur and Mykola Nehoda
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Oleksandr Vinokur and Mykola Nehoda
He was acquainted and maintained friendly relations with many prominent Ukrainian cultural and scientific figures, such as Vasyl Symonenko, Dmytro Pavlychko, Mykola Nehoda, Oleksandr Levada, Danylo Narbut, world-famous physicist Andriy Sakharov, and many others.
Creative work
Vynokur's work reflects the leading trends of the time, he drew inspiration from contemporary national literature, created music for modern films and historical events, and told about himself and the present with philosophical irony. The composer's music is not radically avant-garde, but reflects the stylistic searches and innovations of the time[1].
Oleksandr Vynokur was engaged in arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs, works for piano, vocal and symphonic compositions, chamber vocal and instrumental works. Ukrainian themes became the leading ones in his work: the life of the people, history and modernity, pictures of native nature, national life, the image of Taras Shevchenko, and the widespread use of Ukrainian folk songs and folklore quotations. In the last years of his life, the musician turned to lyrical images of an autobiographical nature, to comedic and satirical themes based on the novels by Oleh Chornohuz "An Aristocrat from Vapnyarka" and "Contenders for the Papacy". He is also mastering modern composition techniques with the help of computers and electronic means ("Night Piano", "Calendars"). Among his works:
opera Kholodnyi Yar (1970, libretto by Mykola Nehoda);
opera Faust and the Moment (1983-1987, a tragedy based on the drama Faust and Death by Oleksandr Levada);
ballet "They Remained Young" (1975, based on Vasyl Symonenko's ballad "Topolya", libretto by him)
oratorio-performance, vocal symphony "A Wreath for Kobzar" (1964, based on the poem by Mykola Nehoda)
symphony-cantata "Sense of the Motherland" (lyrics by V. Firsov);
Symphony-cantata "The Heroic City" (lyrics by M. Nehoda);
music for symphony orchestra "Poem in Memory of Taras Shevchenko" (1961), "Romantic Ballad", "Diptych for Strings" (1965);
a concerto and 3 chamber symphonies.
