Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Yakovchuk (21 May 1952, Cherche village, Smotrytskyi district, Kamianets-Podilskyi region (now Chemerovets district, Khmelnytskyi region)) is a Ukrainian composer, Honoured Artist of Ukraine, winner of state and international awards, member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine and the League of Composers of Canada, member of the Canadian Music Centre, professor of the Department of Composition at the P. Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine.
He was born on 21 May 1952 in the village of Cherche, Smotrytskyi district, Kamianets-Podilskyi region (now Chemerovets district, Khmelnytskyi region) in a family of employees (his father Mykola Antonovych was a history teacher, his mother Hanna Ivanivna was a doctor). His acquaintance with music began with playing the trumpet in the school brass band.
At the age of 14, he began to study piano with private teachers in Kamianets-Podilskyi.
In 1968, he graduated from the piano department of the Kamianets-Podilskyi City Music School named after T. Hanitskyi and entered the theory department of the Khmelnytskyi Music School named after V. Zaremba. In his first year, under the influence of his senior students, he tried himself as a composer.
After graduating from the 3rd year of the music school, he went to audition at the Tchaikovsky Kyiv State Conservatory at the Department of Composition, where he received a recommendation to enter the conservatory before graduating from the music school.
In 1971, he entered the composition faculty of the Kyiv Conservatory and successfully graduated in 1976, having written the opera Unforgettable to his own libretto based on the story of the same name by O. Dovzhenko.
Later, in 1977, this opera was accepted for production at the Opera Studio of the Kyiv Conservatory.
From 1976 to 1979, he worked as an editor in the Ukrainian music department at the Republican Radio.
From 1979 to 1983, he was the head of the music department at the newly created Kyiv Youth Theatre.
Since 1983, he has been working as an artist. In 1990, together with his family, he moved to Yugoslavia, where in Novi Sad he worked as a concertmaster at the local opera house and as a choirmaster in the famous Serbian choir Svetozar Marković. He revives the Barvinok choir at the Ukrainian Art Society. Two years later, Barvinok became the winner of the All-Serbian Festival in Ruma.
In 1992, due to the military events in Yugoslavia, he returned to Ukraine.
From 1992 to 1994, he worked as an artist. In fact, due to the difficult economic situation in Ukraine, he became unemployed. With three young children, he decides to move to Canada in search of work.
From 1994 to 2009, he worked in various positions in musical institutions in Toronto. He has been a member of the League of Composers of Canada and the Canadian Music Centre since 1996. Chairman of the jury in the nomination "Composition" at the Kiwanis Music Festival, honorary president of the Etobicoke Music Festival.
In 2009, he returned to Kyiv and started working at the Department of Composition of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, where he is currently a professor.
He is the author of an opera, a ballet, two oratorios, thirty-two cantatas, eight symphonies, three symphonic poems, seven instrumental concertos, works for pop-symphony orchestra and orchestra of Ukrainian folk instruments, a large number of original choral works of spiritual and secular orientation, three hundred arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs for various a cappella choirs, seven string quartets, three sonatas, a piano trio, a large number of various chamber works, among which a prominent place is occupied by a cycle of concert preludes and fugues for piano, and he also composed music for theatre performances and films. More than 160 of his works have been published in Ukraine, Russia and Canada. He has also released eleven audio CDs and two videos. More than two hundred compositions were recorded in the fund of the National Radio Company of Ukraine with the stamp "to be kept for life". The composer's music, without exaggeration, is performed today on almost all continents of the globe.
Full biography
Childhood and youth
The music of the contemporary Ukrainian composer Oleksandr Yakovchuk opens new worlds to listeners, captivates with vivid images and emotional content, reproducing the peculiarly national gene of the romantic worldview of Ukrainians. Deeply reflecting the inner world of a person, it calls not only for emotional empathy, but also for significant intellectual efforts of the audience, touches the spiritual strings of reflection, comprehension of eternal Christian values, inner search and cognition of the person himself. Oleksandr Yakovchuk entered the artistic space of Ukraine in the early 1970s, when a new generation of composers replaced the Sixties, picking up the traditions they had established and bringing many of their discoveries to the creation of musical works. Along with Yakovchuk, the names of Yaroslav Vereshchahin, Oleh Kyva, Volodymyr Zubytskyi, Viktor Stepurko, Hanna Havrylets, Mykola Lastovetskyi, Oleksii Skrypnyk, Yurii Alzhnev, Valentyna Drobyazhina, and Carmela Tsepkolenko became known. Oleksandr's childhood was spent on the picturesque banks of the Smotrych River in Podillia, where he was born on 21 May 1952 in the village of Cherche, Smotrytskyi district, Kamianets-Podilskyi region, into an intelligent singing family. His father, Mykola Antonovych, taught history at a secondary school, and his mother, Hanna Ivanovna, worked as a doctor at a local hospital. Fascinated by the playing of a brass band consisting of former front-line musicians, the twelve-year-old boy joined the school orchestra, where he learned to play the trumpet. Hanna Ivanivna, who used to play the piano, was his first teacher. Then, after two years of piano lessons with professional private teachers, he graduated from the Kamianets-Podilskyi City Music School at the age of 16 and entered the Khmelnytskyi Music School, theoretical department. Here, under the influence of other students who were trying their hand at composition, in particular Mykola Lastovetskyi, the young man got a taste for composing music. Then, as Oleksandr himself says, "...thanks to Fortune in the person of my mother, who advised me to go to Kyiv to show my works at the Department of Composition of the Kyiv Conservatory, I received an invitation to enter the conservatory after 3 years of music school, that is, without graduating from the school and receiving a diploma." This was a unique case in the history of the Kyiv Conservatory, as the young man was admitted to the university without any secondary education at all, not even having a high school diploma! Later, however, he had to take the matriculation exams as an external student, but that was a separate matter - the main thing was that since 1971 Oleksandr had already been a student of the Kyiv Conservatory's composition faculty.
Studying at the Conservatoire
Oleksandr considers his studies at the Tchaikovsky Kyiv State Conservatory in 1971-1976 in the class of the outstanding Ukrainian composer, brilliant pianist Anatoliy Panasovych Kolomiets (1918-1997), a student of the famous Levko Revutsky, to be the most important component of his creative development. In addition to having a thorough knowledge of musical and theoretical subjects, Anatolii Panasovych demanded that young people take a responsible attitude to their studies, learn the basics of professionalism, and he was a hard worker himself, and did not tolerate negligence, frivolity, or laziness. Seeing a bright talent in his student, Kolomiets devoted all his efforts to polish it, sincerely and fatherly took care of his new student, worrying about the quality of Yakovchuk's professional development. Oleksandr recalls with warmth and sincere gratitude his other teachers who taught him harmony, analysis of musical forms, reading scores, instrumentation and orchestration. These were Vitalii Dmytrovych Kireiko, Mykola Vasylovych Dremliuha and Myroslav Mykhailovych Skoryk.
The results of such communication were not long in coming. While still a student, a number of original compositions appeared from under the pen of O. Yakovchuk, which testified to the innovative nature of his handwriting. "Folk Scene" (1972) for a quartet of woodwind instruments, "Sonata-Poem" (1974) for viola and piano, the original choral "Triptych" (1975) for mixed a cappella choir, "Autumn Cantata" (1975) to his own texts for soprano and chamber orchestra. A creative experiment of his student years, the interesting polyphonic variations for string quartet "Metamorphoses" (1974), based on the dodecaphonic technique, were inspired by his "underground" acquaintance (with the personal assistance of Valentyn Silvestrov) with the music of the New Viennese. The well-composed work, due to its unusual sound, gained notoriety in the conservatory environment, it was then performed at the All-Union Conference of Young Composers and Musicologists in Minsk, and the press gave it favourable reviews.
O. Yakovchuk completed his studies at the Conservatory with the opera Unforgettable, based on his own libretto for the story of the same name by O. Dovzhenko, convincingly proving his vocation to compose music. At that time, it was the first time in the history of the Kyiv Conservatory that a student presented an opera for the final composition exam. Later, the work was staged at the opera studio with the participation of soloists Ella Akrytova, Oleksandr Martynenko, Valentyna Strilets and Halyna Slukhovska. The conductor is Viktor Zdorenko.
Symphonic creativity
The subjective feeling of incomplete professional knowledge, especially in the field of orchestration, and the desire to learn new things in music led O. Yakovchuk to the All-Union Seminar of Young Composers at the Ivanovo House of Creativity. There, the young composer was fortunate enough to meet Yuri Fortunatov, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who helped him to learn the laws of the symphony orchestra's "living breath" and taught him the fundamental principles of writing a score for a large orchestra. They established warm friendships that lasted until Yurii Oleksandrovych's death in 1998. Visiting Ivanovo annually between 1981 and 1988, Yakovchuk got rid of his "pseudophobia" of orchestration forever and began to work confidently in the symphonic genre.
Symphony No. 1 "Biorhythms of Chernobyl"
The first symphony, "The Biorhythms of Chernobyl", was composed in 1986, immediately after the terrible catastrophe in the life of Ukraine - the explosion of the nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This apocalyptic event gave a powerful creative impetus to the composer, who witnessed this universal tragedy, to write a great symphonic work. The theme of the disaster brought by the peaceful atom, which split the lives of Ukrainians into "before" and "after" the catastrophe, is presented as a warning to humanity about its actions, the recklessness of which can have fatal, irreversible consequences for everything on the planet. Yakovchuk's symphony reflects the artist's personal experience of this event (he gave concerts for liquidators in the radioactive contamination zone) and his awareness of the significance of its global nature for the human planet.
The work on the symphony was simultaneously carried out in two versions - for a string orchestra with percussion and for a large symphony orchestra. The composer completed the first of these, a "chamber extract" of the symphony, in the same year. But its premiere took place only four years later - on 9 October 1990, as part of the First Music Festival (entitled "Biorhythms", performed by the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Arkady Vinokurov) at the House of Scientists of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Yakovchuk completed the second, complete version of the symphony until the end of 1987. It was first performed by the National Radio Company Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Volodymyr Sheik at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine in 2006, almost 20 years after the composition. The following year, a CD recording of the First Symphony was released (CSF Inc. Productions), which also included the composer's Second Symphony and the symphonic poem The Golden Gate.
Symphonic Poem No. 2 "Golden Gate" (1982)
His first work to be performed as an artistically accomplished phenomenon is Symphonic Poem No. 2 "Golden Gate" (1982), dedicated to the celebration of the 1500th anniversary of the founding of Kyiv. It was given its world premiere by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Canada) under the baton of Volodymyr Kolesnyk in 1996, 14 years after it was composed. (In Kyiv, the work was performed only 23 years after it was written. It was performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the National Radio Company of Ukraine conducted by Victoria Zhadko at the National Philharmonic Hall during the Kyiv Music Festival in 2005). Despite the long way to the audience, among the compositions written to mark the significant date in the life of the Ukrainian capital, it took one of the places of honour in the artists' comprehension of the ancient past of Rus - Ukraine. In addition, in Yakovchuk's personal creative biography, it became the driving force behind his work in the symphony genre, marked by a desire to find a new artistic quality in the embodiment of the author's ideas of this dimension. Subconsciously, O. Yakovchuk felt the potential of a symphony composer in himself since his student days. He was just waiting for the right time when his subconscious would clearly say: start writing a symphony. And that time finally came.
After his Second Symphony (1987), as they say, the composer "woke up famous", and in musical circles he was spoken of as a gifted man whose work is associated with the further development of Ukrainian musical culture. The premiere of the symphony took place in early December 1987 in Donetsk, where the Prokofiev Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of its chief conductor Valentyn Kurzhev performed the work at the Review of Young Composers of Ukraine, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution (an indispensable ideological attribute of artistic events in the Soviet era). The press called Yakovchuk's symphony the "artistic discovery" of this artistic event out of all the works presented (which included works by more than fifty participants). Immediately after the premiere, the symphony was performed in Kyiv by the State Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (conducted by I. Blazhkov) at the Plenary of the Kyiv City Organisation of the UWC, followed by the UWC Republican Plenary. And finally, in 1989, it opened the next Congress of the Union of Composers of Ukraine, the last Congress of the Soviet era, at the Kyiv Philharmonic. The symphony was also performed abroad: in the Cuban capital of Havana (1988, conducted by Jorge Lopez Marin) and the Yugoslav city of Novi Sad (1991, conducted by Zoran Mulic).
Critics unanimously noted the sincere emotionality and tragic pathos of Yakovchuk's warmly received symphony, the desire for his own worldview, and the establishment of his individual artistic style. The symphony made a great impression with its concept, which clearly did not fit into the general shaft of works glorifying Soviet reality by the so-called "leading" Ukrainian composers with bravura, optimistically affirming endings. The end of the programme was multifaceted, with the orchestra's sound gradually becoming quieter and dissolving into sound space. "Doctor of Arts, Professor Mykola Hordiychuk called the work "a kind of instrumental 3rd story" in the pages of the Music magazine, proclaiming the unusual talent of the young composer. The two-part version of cyclicity, this time united on the basis of modal technique by the principle of monothematicism, as well as the ambivalence of the drama, distinguish this original example of music of the 1980s, which, without exaggeration, opened up new horizons for Ukrainian symphonism in the era of Gorbachev's Perestroika. The above gives us an opportunity to understand the proportion of the symphonic genre in the composer's work: - O. Yakovchuk is, of course, a born symphonist.
Symphony No. 3 "Echo of Childhood"
The composer wrote the following two examples in this genre, guided by the programme principles and involving the vocal and choral principles. Coming closer to the cantata-oratorio type, the composer combined the means of symphonic development with developed choral writing. This is how the scores of the Third Symphony "Echoes of Childhood" based on poems by Yurii Serdiuk (1987, second orchestral edition - 2010) and the Symphony-Requiem "Thirty-third" based on poems by V. Yukhymovych for soloists, mixed choir and symphony orchestra (1990) were created. Performed for the first time at the Season Premieres in 2010, the Third Symphony is dedicated to the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War and reflects its events from the point of view of children's worldview. Interestingly, shortly after the premiere, the work was accompanied by a video sequence - footage from military newsreels of the time - and the symphony was broadcast on Ukrainian television, gaining a new, wider stage in its performance career.
Symphony-requiem "The Thirty-third"
In his Fourth Symphony-Requiem "Thirty-third" (January, 1990), O. Yakovchuk was the first in Ukrainian music to address the taboo topic of the Holodomor. Finding a rich, emotionally penetrating basis in the poetry of V. Yukhymovych, a poet who in early childhood personally experienced the terrible crime of the totalitarian Stalinist regime against the Ukrainian people, and as a mature person managed to comprehend it with his dramatic poetic stanzas, the composer arranges the idea into a six-part composition, taking into account the traditions of the memorial service. In particular, he arches the prayer "Lord, have mercy" into the score as the main thematic formation in the first movement, a secondary plan in the reprise of the second movement, and a summary of the final movement. This achieved a holistic vision of the plot with its idea of commemorating millions of lost human lives, and thus the idea of repentance derived from it. The signs of a requiem are primarily evident in the mournful nature of the work, the theme of the poetic programme with its idea of commemorating the victims of the famine, and the use of the canonical prayer of the Orthodox rite in the postmodern musical text, as well as the effect of spiritual purification of the audience achieved by the composer.
The symphony was first performed in Kyiv on 22 November 2003 - 13 years after its composition - at the National Opera of Ukraine by the Pochayna Choir of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (artistic director Oleksandr Zhyhun) and the State Variety and Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Viktor Zdorenko. Soon after, on 13 December 2003, under the baton of Oleksandr Zhyhun, the work was performed again at the National House of Organ and Chamber Music, and this concert was recorded and released on DVD. In a new version (2007), the symphony-requiem was first performed in Moscow, in the Ukrainian House, immediately after the well-known provocative events of Russian extremists on 24 November 2007. The second performance took place in the spring of 2008 in Poltava, and the third on 20 October 2008 at the National House of Organ and Chamber Music. The score was published in 2008 with the financial support of the Taras Shevchenko Foundation of Winnipeg and the Holodomor-33 Foundation of Toronto.
Symphony No. 5 "Nostalgia"
The next symphony, the Fifth Symphony (2007), is separated from the previous one by seventeen years of voluntary and forced silence by Yakovchuk, when he moved to Canada and almost stopped composing music systematically. Having named the symphony Nostalgia, the artist expressed in it his unquenchable longing for creativity, his unquenchable regret for his past life in Ukraine, and the disturbance of feelings from returning to his nature as a creator of musical works. That is why the score sometimes contains allusions to his own style from an earlier period of his work, which is noticeable at the level of micro-intonation, general drama and timbre drama, and at the level of genre in its purely instrumental sense. The one-movement symphony uses various techniques of modern compositional technique (specific aleatorics, dodecaphony, modality, sonority, complementary development of orchestral layers that develop simultaneously, etc.) For the first time, O. Yakovchuk has shown here an interesting work with intonational material based on the principle of "theme and its shadow". The work was first performed on 6 April 2011 at the "Season Premieres" by the Symphony Orchestra of the National Radio Company of Ukraine under the direction of V. Sheiko.
The genre of the instrumental concerto, which is related to the symphony, is presented in an original way in the works of Oleksandr Yakovchuk. Having addressed it for the first time in 1986 (First Viola Concerto), the composer left it out of his field of attention for almost two decades. Such a long silence was obviously a time of accumulation of creative ideas, which eventually broke through in an extravaganza of artistically interesting compositions. In fact, in four years, during 2005-2006, he wrote six concertos - one for viola, two for violin, two for cello, and one for bassoon. O. Yakovchuk subordinates the principle of concert competition, which is characteristic of this genre, to the weighty content of the work, as, for example, in the First Cello Concerto (2006), dedicated to the victims of political repression in Ukraine, and the First Violin Concerto (2005), dedicated to the Holocaust, whose five movements have programme titles: "Introduction", "Atonement", "Revival", "Lamentation", and "Remembrance".
Folklore activity and arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs
The spiritual guidelines of Oleksandr Yakovchuk were formed under the influence of his family environment and the aura of his small homeland - Podillia, according to Lesya Ukrainka - "The beauty of Ukraine, Podillia, spreads out sweetly, carelessly..." It was the magical Podillia, its numerous folk tales, legends, song folklore that shaped the composer's melodic and intonational world. Already during his years at the conservatory, his attitude to folklore acquired a conscious, professional approach, namely, an understanding of it as the source of intonation in music. In particular, communication with Anatoliy Kolomiets, who relied heavily on folk models in his work and saw the future of his gifted student in the same way, encouraged him to go deeper into the themes of his own compositions and search for intonation development options adequate to the idea. The composer's collecting practice under the guidance of Volodymyr Matvienko, then head of the Conservatory's Cabinet of Folk Art, had an equally significant impact on the formation of his worldview. In fact, the annual student folklore expeditions organised by him between 1962 and 1984 influenced the professional development of numerous generations of folklorists, musicologists, and composers. In their circle, Oleksandr Yakovchuk mastered the technique of deciphering folk samples recorded on tape and, accordingly, the norms of certification. It is here that one of the composer's human traits can be traced, namely, his desire for perfection, perseverance in learning the unknown, especially when it comes to acquiring the basics of professionalism. After graduating from the conservatory, working as a music editor for the Ukrainian Radio, during his holidays, Oleksandr repeatedly made independent folklore trips to the villages of western Podillia along the Zbruch River, recording folk gems firsthand. A small part (140 songs) of the collection was published by Musychna Ukraina in 1989 in a collection compiled by Yakovchuk - Songs from Podillia (9,000 copies) and Carols and Christmas Carols (1990), both published by the All-Ukrainian Association of Ukrainian Musicians. Nevertheless, in total, he collected and prepared for publication about one and a half thousand samples recorded not only in Ukraine, but also in the former Yugoslavia and in the Presov region (Slovakia). At the end of the 1980s, the composer intended to publish them in the Musical Ukraine publishing house, but the manuscripts were returned to him, citing the lack of funds for publication. Thus, to this day, several collections of folk song heritage are kept in Yakovchuk's private archive, awaiting publication, the result of approximately twenty-five years of collecting activity of the artist, a work that can shed light on the state of existence of folklore of the mentioned territories, the existence of its genres, migration processes of song invariants and other issues of ethnomusicology. Oleksandr is optimistic that better times will come when these collections of folk songs will be published.
Of course, such a careful approach to the study of primary sources, comprehension of their harmonic and intonational paradigm naturally affected O. Yakovchuk's own compositional work. In particular, the artist's portfolio includes more than two hundred and fifty arrangements of folk songs for various choirs, where he introduces his own original principles of folk song arrangement, which are radically different from those established in Ukrainian classical music, namely: Oleksandr Yakovchuk uses some symphonic principles of development of musical material in his arrangements of folk songs, gradually "symphonising" their choral texture. Such an innovative symbiosis of two different compositional techniques yields a completely unexpected positive result in this genre. The composer's arrangements are deservedly popular. A considerable part of the master's manuscripts is passed from hand to hand by choirmasters, performed at numerous choral festivals and competitions in Ukraine and abroad, helping domestic choirs to win prizes. Oleksandr's invaluable personal experience as a choral singer in the Kyiv Conservatoire Opera Studio during his student years played an important role in his work in the choral genre. This allowed him to feel the specifics of the choir "from the inside", to penetrate the requests of the performers, to understand the capabilities of individual singers and the choir as a whole. Turning to choral music, being in love with the phonism of the vocal vertical, and knowing the secrets of its harmony are characteristic features of the artist's authorial style. According to the composer Myroslav Korchynskyi, "...Yakovchuk's ability to align the sound of the choir by registers and always carry the main musical theme with the voices that sound best in a given tessitura is a feature that is quite rare among contemporary composers, but also one that appeals to performers. That is why his arrangements of folk songs are very popular and can be found in the repertoire of many choirs in the capital and in the regions.
For example, the Khreshchatyk Choir under the direction of Larysa Bukhonska recorded two CDs of arrangements of the composer's folk songs, his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (2005) and Triptych (1975); the women's choir of the Kyiv Music School under the direction of Halyna Horbatenko recorded cantatas on folk songs, Oi v bory (1993) and Seasons of the Year, based on poems by O. Dovhyi, Psalm 22 "The Lord is my Shepherd" (2006); the L. Revutsky Men's Choir (directed by Bohdan Antkiv) - a cantata on the words of I. Malkovych "Kalynonka" (1987). In the choice of repertoire, O. Yakovchuk's works are not ignored by bright solo singers. Thus, the arrangement of the folk song "O Zironka Vechorna" recorded by Maria Stefiuk together with the Bandura Choir sounds uniquely sublime, with transparency of the spiritual core, conducted by Mykola Hvozd. A real highlight of one of the composer's recitals last year was the performance of the folk cantata Podilski Spivanky (1990) by soloist of the Taras Shevchenko National Opera Zoya Rozhok and the National Orchestra of Ukrainian Folk Instruments under the direction of Viktor Hutsal.
Oratorio "Scythian Pectoral"
The composer's commitment to monumental genres, especially those related to words, can be seen in the example of the oratorio "Scythian Pectoral" (1990) for soloists, mixed choir and symphony orchestra based on the poems of Oleksandr Yakovchuk's friend, poet Borys Mozolevskyi (who was also a famous archaeologist who found this priceless treasure, the golden royal pectoral). The work embodies the freedom-loving spirit of the ancestors of the Ukrainian people, the Scythians, the ploughmen, and their unbreakable ability to defend their native land from enemy encroachment. The music is characterised by a fresco style of presentation, with a predominantly tutti type of orchestral texture. The bright individual manner of the author's expression and monumentality make this work one of the best examples of the genre not only in Ukrainian but also in world music.
Over the past decade, O. Yakovchuk turned to sacred music for the first time in his career, becoming interested in the genres of canonical liturgy and psalm. In 2005, he composed the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, which simply and enlightened praises the Word of God, full of faith in the mercy and grace of the Almighty. Its happy performance fate (which includes more than twenty performances by various ensembles) suggests that the work was written successfully, that it continues and multiplies the glorious traditions of Ukrainian choral music and partes concerto, established in the Baroque period. Thus, the world premiere of the Liturgy in the first edition took place on 26 April 2006 in St. Alexander's Cathedral (Kyiv), performed by the Khreshchatyk Chamber Choir under the direction of L. Bukhonska. The work was performed for the second time at the composer's recital on 9 June 2006 at the National Philharmonic as part of the Golden-Domed Kyiv Choral Festival. This work also opened the new concert season of the National Philharmonic in 2006-2007. Subsequently, parts of the Liturgy were performed in Canada (the Renaissance Choir, conducted by O. Synychak) and the United Kingdom (the Bulava Choir, conducted by P. Gunka). After the completion of the second edition (2009), the Liturgy was performed in Lviv by the Galician Chamber Choir (conducted by V. Yatsyniak) and in Kyiv by the Khreshchatyk Choir (conducted by P. Struts).
Chamber cantatas
Oleksandr Yakovchuk's contribution to the genre of chamber cantata, which he loved, is important, as he turned to it in different periods of his career and which includes ten works, representing a kind of laboratory for combining high poetic words with music. This genre emerged in Ukrainian music in the early 1970s, being one of the first to demonstrate the mobile possibility of experimentation at various levels (in drama, form, expressive means, and performing cast). The process of branching off from the large cantata with its symphony orchestra, chorus, and several soloists led to a reduction in the number of performers: a chamber cantata is usually performed by one or two soloists and a chamber orchestra (or chamber ensemble). Composers Valentyn Silvestrov, Oleh Kyva, Valentyn Bibik, and the then student of the Kyiv State Conservatory Oleksandr Yakovchuk were at the origins of the genre. His first attempt, Autumn Cantata (1975), based on his own texts for soprano and chamber orchestra, is perceived as youthfully frank, where the theme of love is presented through the prism of the author's reflection on the poetics of M. Kotsiubynskyi's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and the feelings of Marichka and Ivan depicted in the story. However, the work demonstrates an independent vision of the chosen theme. The poetic lines strike us with the harmony of the perception of the universe, where the description of human feeling, its birth, formation, reaching the top and death-forgetting is associated with nature, its autumn season is a generous harvest of what has been done, felt, experienced, but at the same time it is a premonition of winter sleep, oblivion, departure. Through the folklore images of Kalyna and Sycamore, which represent female and male destiny, the loneliness of man is indirectly reproduced. The premiere was performed by singer Ella Akrytova and the student chamber orchestra conducted by Oleksandr Kravchuk in the Small Hall of the Conservatory in 1975. Later, the cantata was performed and recorded by Natalia Kravtsova-Vorobyova with the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ihor Blazhkov for the Radio Foundation.
An important event in the composer's life was a concert of five premieres of new chamber cantatas, which took place on 3 December 2012 at the House of Architects. The cantata "I Was Coming to You" based on poems by Borys Oliynyk for bass (soloist Oleksandr Boyko) and instrumental ensemble (2 flutes, bassoon, cello, piano) is dedicated to a love that did not come true, was lost on the paths of life, remaining a vague memory of the hero's youth. The artist put his idea into a three-part composition, consistently reproducing the plot twists: meeting - farewell - memories. The cantata is characterised by bright melody, song-like intonations, and a lyrical inclination to the concept. The cantata "At the Crossroads of the Heart" (2011) based on the poem by Petro Perebyinos and performed by Tamara Khodakova (mezzo-soprano) picked up the high "degree" of excitement of the author's expression. This is a work about the eternal son's love for his mother ("Mother, somewhere you are behind the fog... I am looking longingly into the distance", Part I), the hero's reflections on his place on earth ("And I am crossing the orbits of the star, I am drawing the star in anxiety", Part II), the transience of life ("Over the anxious soul, over the years lived, the cherry blossom flies", Part III), and human memory ("And on the sonorous Milky Way with the earthly song of wormwood", Part IV). In this work, the composer also relied on the song-like intonations of the lyrical expression, and the contrasting material was the introduced elements of illustration in the piano and cello parts. The energy clot of the evening was the cantata based on the poems by Vasyl Stus "God's Good Hand" (2011) for bass and chamber orchestra. The lines of the poet-martyr chosen by O. Yakovchuk are unusual: written two weeks before the poet died in a Soviet prison, they cast an indictment on human sin and a lulled conscience, the Soviet system and totalitarianism. Thus, the musical solution, based on a four-part structure, radiates the energy of a philosophical order, reaching the sharply dissonant sounds of the score, which is rich in expressiveness, and which was deeply conveyed by O. Boyko and the Kyiv Camerata Chamber Orchestra (artistic director and conductor Valeriy Matyukhin), a landmark in the popularisation of contemporary Ukrainian music. The cantata "Turning over the life lived" (2012) for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra is characterised by a vitalistic riot of emotions of the young love of the hero of the poems by Petro Osadchuk. Thus, the work's textured background is marked by transparency of presentation to emphasise the soloist's part, which was performed by T. Khodakova with surprising virtuosity in the inspired accompaniment of the Camerata. The cantata "You" (2011) based on a poem by Pavlo Movchan for tenor and chamber orchestra (soloist Serhiy Bortnyk) triumphantly concluded the evening of world premieres. Its highly poetic idea reveals the theme of the motherland - Ukraine - through the internal effective attitude of each individual to his or her native land, its history, and its future.
Having become interested in the genre of chamber cantata as a student, Oleksandr Yakovchuk was, in fact, at its origins. He has faithfully carried this genre throughout his life, returning to it from time to time. Today, when the above-mentioned type of music is going through hard times, let us turn to the optimistic words of the famous musicologist Anatoliy Kalenychenko: "At the moment, when there is a certain crisis of this genre in contemporary Ukrainian music, Oleksandr Yakovchuk has literally revived the chamber cantata in his new works."
Vocal and instrumental creativity
Continuing the story about Yakovchuk's vocal and instrumental works, it is impossible to ignore his unique cycle "12 Sonnets of W. Shakespeare" for bass and piano, written on the request of the famous, world-famous opera singer from England Paul Gunka for the "Anthology of Ukrainian Solo Singing", which he personally founded. This Anthology includes romances by twenty-three Ukrainian classical composers, starting with Mykola Lysenko and ending with Oleksandr Yakovchuk. Yakovchuk composed his vocal cycle "12 Sonnets of W. Shakespeare" in Ukrainian, translated by Ostap Tarnavsky, but in such a way that it is possible, without changing practically anything in the vocal part of the solos, to perform them adequately in English in the original, which is an absolutely unique phenomenon in our time.
The Anthology of Ukrainian Solo Singing is the first time that romances by Ukrainian composers are being presented on a wide international stage, alongside works of world classics. All of them will be performed and recorded on CD by famous opera singers (by the way, not Ukrainians), together with the initiator of this Anthology, a great patriot of Ukraine Pavlo Hunka. The recordings of the solos will be made available to anyone interested via the Internet, along with the sheet music. There has never been such a grand global project in the history of Ukrainian music.
Music for theatre performances
Oleksandr Yakovchuk's creative biography includes the years when he worked as the head of the musical department of the Kyiv Young Theatre (1979-1983). These were, in his own words, the happiest years of his life, when he could live fully immersed in the tumultuous theatrical life of the Young Theatre, freely experimenting with music based on stage action. This creative laboratory was extremely fruitful for the composer, which in the future gave him original ideas in music of other genres. Thus, in his oeuvre we can find music for theatre performances, such as O. Kazantsev's "I'll Come Back to You in the Spring", M. Staritsky's "Chasing Two Hares", V. Bykov's "To Leave and Not Return", L. Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Carroll - B. Zahoder, "Three Sisters" by A. Chekhov, "Matchmaking on Goncharivka" by G. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and others. (The performance "For Two Hares" with the composer's music has been performed a record number of times in the history of world theatre for 25 years!)
The experience of O. Yakovchuk's work in the opera studio of the Kyiv Conservatory and the Young Theatre was primarily reflected in the ballet "Adventures in the Emerald City" (1988, libretto by V. Lytvynov and O. Balaban based on the works of O. Volkov, where the images and plot of the fairy tale by the American writer L. F. Baum "The Wizard of Oz" were freely reworked). The ballet was staged at the Kyiv State Children's Music Theatre. As a repertoire piece, it was successfully performed there for six years. Maria Zahaykevych, a specialist in Ukrainian ballet music, reviewing the work, noted the warm lyricism, expressive melody of the music, clear delineation of conflicting images, and the sense of dance movement inherent in O. Yakovchuk's handwriting, which contribute to the clarity of the stage action and, consequently, to the contact with the young audience.
Polyphonic cycle "Twelve Concert Preludes and Fugues" (1983) for piano
As an artist of the postmodern era, O. Yakovchuk is acutely aware of the time in which he lives, marked by reflections on the polyphony of traditions, a kind of retrospectivism. This is reflected in the neoclassical tendency, which is somewhat noticeable in Yakovchuk's work, such as in the polyphonic cycle Twelve Concert Preludes and Fugues (1983) for piano (the first performer was the composer's wife Nadiya Yakovchuk) and several instrumental suites in the old style. "Twelve Concert Preludes and Fugues" is perceived conceptually as a whole, as a kind of two-part polyphonic symphony for piano, rather than as a scattered sequence of mini-cycles built on the principle of seven pairs on white keys and five on black keys. The modal technique used by Yakovchuk in this genre of Ukrainian music is original, as it was the first time it was applied in this genre. Taking the modes of folk music as a basis, the composer replaced some of their steps with modified ones, thus modelling a harmonic symbiosis that became a newly formed modal lexicon - the building block of the entire thematic space of each mini-cycle. As a result of such an invention of the author's view, the freshness of the background characteristics of the thematic space and the harmonic vertical was achieved. Yakovchuk's innovative approach can also be traced in his free attitude to the genre semantics of the preludes, sometimes outlined by a more precise designation, such as Prelude-ostinato (in F), Prelude-toccata (in A), Prelude-dialogue (in Es), Canon (in Cis). Or their representation in the form of a dance or polyphonic form - Burré (in Fis), Gigue (in B). A single example of the fugue's genre modification in the cycle is the Fugue-Toccata (in C). The cycle has received due recognition among specialists and respectful attitude of performers. For example, Professor Yuriy Fortunatov, professor at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory and head of the Ivanovo Creative Seminars, made a symptomatic comment about it: "If only Yakovchuk's preludes and fugues were written during our seminars, the existence of the Ivanovo meetings would have already justified itself." The international recognition of the opus can be traced in the positive words of Wolfgang Bottenberg, a professor at Concordia University (Canada), who noted that "...after Bach and Shostakovich, it is Yakovchuk's preludes and fugues that continue this polyphonic tradition with dignity at the contemporary world level." The cycle became widespread thanks to the famous pianist Mykhailo Voskresensky, who introduced them into his own repertoire and enthusiastically involved students of his class at the Moscow Conservatory in performing them. It should not be forgotten that the Preludes and Fugues have already been published twice - by Musical Ukraine (1988) and the Canadian publishing house Etobicoke Music Festival (Toronto, 2009), and recorded on a CD by Nadia Yakovchuk (CSF Inc. Production, Canada, 2007). While living in Canada for some time, the composer also created a number of works for piano with a didactic orientation - the cycles "Wild Animals of Canada" (24 pieces), "Twelve Polyphonic Pieces", "Miniatures" (55 pieces), "Ten Ensembles for Four Hands" and the Suite from the ballet "Adventures in the Emerald City".
Oleksandr Yakovchuk's chamber and instrumental works, which include the aforementioned piano compositions, occupy a more modest place in comparison with his symphonic and choral works, but only in terms of quantity. Nevertheless, here we will also encounter the depth of the composer's reflections, the intensity of his emotions, and the mastery of his writing. Six string quartets, a triad of neo-romantic sonatas, the piano trio "Moonlight" with certain allusions to impressionism, works for string orchestra, more than two dozen programme pieces for various, mostly solo wind instruments and piano, as well as exquisite instrumental ensembles for wind instruments are performed both in the student environment and by concert performers at concert venues in different countries.
Oleksandr Yakovchuk's music has gained international recognition. Most of it has been published by publishing houses in Ukraine, Russia, and Canada (over 180 pieces), recorded in the "Golden Fund" of the National Radio Company of Ukraine (over 200 pieces), and released on CD (12 CDs and 2 DVDs). This is a lot, given that the recorded works make up about one fifth of all his compositions.
The composer's arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs are widely performed in countries where there are Ukrainian choirs. Among them are the Dnipro Choir, the O. Koshyts Choir, the Vesnivka Choir from Canada, the Dumka Chapel and the G. Kitastyi Bandura Choir from the United States, the Bulava Choir from the United Kingdom, and others. It is safe to say that there is not a single professional group in Ukraine that does not perform O. Yakovchuk's choral music.
The composer was awarded the M. Ostrovsky Republican Prize in 1988 (for his Second Symphony, Viola Concerto, Preludes and Fugues for Piano, and the cycle Komsomol Songs), the I. Ohienko All-Ukrainian Prize in 2013 (for his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom), and the I. Ohienko National Prize in 2014. In 2013, he was awarded the I. Ohienko All-Ukrainian Prize (for his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, three Spiritual Concertos and ten Davidic Psalms, edited by I. Ohienko), as well as five All-Ukrainian composing competitions for the best work:
1. Cantata "The Sun and I are Friends" based on poems by Bulgarian poets N. Zidarov and L. Stanchev for a cappella children's choir - first prize (1979);
2. "The City of My Destiny", lyrics by D. Lutsenko - First Prize (1982);
3. "Song about Ukraine", lyrics by V. Dergach for bandura players' chapel - II prize, (1983);
4. "We live on the land of Stakhanov", lyrics by M. Syngaevsky - III prize, (1987);
5. "Pidorlyky", lyrics by L. Tatarenko - II prize, (1988);
In the 1990s, O. Yakovchuk won three international composing competitions in Switzerland (for the First String Quartet - II prize), Germany (for the String Trio with Clarinet - III prize), and Belgium (Grand Prix for the cantata "Wallnut Rain").
In 2012, the composer was awarded the Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Volodymyr, III Class, for his services to the revival of spirituality in Ukraine. In 2016, he was awarded the high title of Honoured Artist of Ukraine.
Today, Oleksandr Mykolaiovych teaches at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, he is an associate professor of composition.
Official personal website of the composer: ALEXANDERJACOBCHUK.CA [Archived 10 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine] and also on the website of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine, in the PERSONALITIES section. [Archived 4 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine].
Olha KUSHNIRUK, PhD in Art History, Senior Research Fellow at the Rylsky Institute of Music and Philology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
