Sonevytsky concert opens institute season (10/13/96)

Sonevytsky concert opens institute season

NEW YORK - The "Music at the Institute" season at the Ukrainian Institute of America opens with "An Evening of Works by Ihor Sonevytsky" in celebration of the composer's 70th birthday, on Saturday, October 19.

The concert program of Mr. Sonevytsky's work will feature: Seven Miniatures for Piano, performed by Maria Sonevytsky, the composer's 15-year-old niece; "Triptych '88" and "Lullaby" (world premiere), pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky; "Withered Leaves" (song cycle to poems by Ivan Franko), baritone Oleh Chmyr and Mr. Vynnytsky; "The Green Gospel" (song cycle to poems by Bohdan Antonych), soprano Lyudmyla Djoi and Mr. Vynnytsky; and Piano Concerto in G Minor, Mr. Vynnytsky and members of the Leontovych String Quartet (Yuri Kharenko, violin; Borys Deviatov, viola; Volodymyr Panteleyev, cello and guest artist Alex Kyrylov, violin, replacing Yuri Mazurkevich). Introductory remarks about the composer will be by Oleksander Kuzyszyn.

A composer, musicologist, conductor and teacher, Mr. Sonevytsky belongs to that generation of Ukrainian artists in diaspora, whose works, only today, are beginning to be heard and published in their native land. As recently noted by Viktor Kozlov in the newspaper Za Vilnu Ukrayinu, the composer "has succeeded in creating interesting and original works in precisely those genres that were banned in Soviet Ukraine. His 'Liturgy' and satiric opera 'Zoria' (The Star), written in distant America, fill in the gaps in Ukrainian culture and serve as a model for coming generations - a model of how to combine national traditions with universal currents in world culture."

Mr. Sonevytsky was born in 1926 in Hadynkivtsi near Chortkiv, now Ternopil Oblast. He began his music studies at the Lysenko Music Institute in Lviv and then went on to study at Vienna's Music Academy with J. Marx. In 1950 he received his diploma from the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and in 1961 a doctoral degree in musicology from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.

The composer settled in the United States in 1950, where he was one of the founders, directors and lecturers of the Ukrainian Music Institute of America (1952-1967). He has also taught at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome (1970-1982). Mr. Sonevytsky conducted the Ukrainian Opera Ensemble in Germany (1949-1950) and several choruses in the United States, including the Dumka Chorus in New York, Trembita in Newark, and the Taras Shevchenko Chorus in Cleveland.

Since 1983, he has been the artistic director of the Music and Art Center of Greene County, which holds yearly summer music festivals featuring internationally acclaimed artists.

Mr. Sonevytsky is a member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the American Musicological Association. He is the author of several musicological studies, including "Artem Vedel and His Musical Heritage" (1966).

A monograph on Mr. Sonevytsky by Stefania Pavlyshyn was published by the Lviv Composers' Union in 1995.

Mr. Sonevytsky is the author of a large body of works in various genres: opera, ballet, music for some 35 stage productions, symphonic and vocal-symphonic works, chamber and instrumental works, vocal works and church music.

Composer Myroslav Skoryk describes Mr. Sonevytsky's songs, rooted in the traditions of Ukrainian song, particularly western Ukrainian popular art songs, as "among the best examples of the genre in Ukrainian music..."

Musicologist Maria Zahaykevych, in a review in Kultura i Zhyttia of a recent concert of Mr. Sonevytsky's works in Lviv, wrote "[Sonevytsky] does not strive for risky experiments in searching for new means of expression. The composer remains faithful to the traditional manner of music writing, imbued with the spirit of Romanticism. Sonevytsky is an undeniably talented lyrical composer, generously endowed with a gift for melody."

The celebratory concert will be held at UIA, 2 E. 79th St., starting at 8 p.m.