Volodymyr Mykolaiovych Zahortsev (October 27, 1944, Kyiv - November 30, 2010) was a Ukrainian composer, one of the representatives of the Kyiv avant-garde, and one of the last students of Borys Liatoshynsky. He was awarded the Borys Liatoshynsky Prize (1967).
He began his professional musical studies at the age of 15 (teachers: F. Kalikhman, piano and O. Huberman, music theory), and three years later entered the Kyiv Conservatory (1962; composition teachers: Borys Liatoshynskyi, later Andriy Shtogarenko). Since 1968 he has been a member of the Union of Composers. In 1968-1974, he was an editor at the Musical Ukraine publishing house.
In the 1970s and 1980s, his works were actively performed in the West. In particular, in January 1980, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed his Gradations (conducted by Zubin Mehta).
Creative work
A significant place in Zahortsev's oeuvre is occupied by chamber concertos - 9 in total, of which the first was written in 1981, the last - in 2004. All concertos except for No. 7 are written for string orchestra with different soloists and are one-movement. He is also the author of 5 symphonies, Violin Concerto (2007), Concerto for Orchestra "Creativity" (2010), opera "Dolores" (1980-1983), "Gradations" for orchestra (1966).
Since 1968, his music has been performed in many cities around the world: New York, Boston, Berlin, Las Vegas, London, Zagreb, Bratislava. He is a regular participant in such new music festivals as "Season Premieres", "Kyiv Music Fest" and others.
Zahortsev's piano works include, among others, two sonatas (1979-1981 and 1999-2000), Rhythms (1967/1969, where the composer uses the dodecaphonic technique), and Three Epitaphs (1998). He is also the author of a number of chamber works.
Two main periods are distinguished in Zahortsev's work: the early period, in which the composer interacted with the aesthetics of the first and second waves of the avant-garde, and the period after a several-year break in composition (which lasted from 1972 to 1976), where "the ensemble texture becomes more economical, the consonances are guided by a clear principle of chordalism, and the regular repetition of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures is not only not avoided but consistently exploited as a normative compositional element" (Oleksii Voitenko).
