Turning the pages back... June 20, 1892 (06/20/99)

Turning the pages back...

June 20, 1892

Pavlo Pecheniha-Uhlytsky was a composer and conductor with flair who became one of the more colorful figures of New York City's musical world in the 1930s, but quickly and unfairly fading into obscurity.

He was born on June 20, 1892, on an estate near the village of Pechenihy about 50 miles southwest of Kharkiv. At the age of 7 his singing attracted the attention of a church choir conductor in Kharkiv. At merely 16, he wrote his first choral work, "Kheruvymskaia Pisn" (Song of the Cherubim), became the conductor's assistant and was accepted into the city's musical school, where he distinguished himself as a double bassist in the orchestra.

After enrolling at the Imperial Music School in Kharkiv, Pecheniha-Uhlytsky was accepted in 1912 to the St. Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Ukrainian composer and pedagogue, Fedir Yakymenko, as well as two others renowned composers: Aleksandr Glazunov and Aleksandr Cherepin.

After graduating in 1914, he continued his studies, receiving the Diploma of the Free Artist in 1918, and later teaching theory and composition. In 1919 he returned to Ukraine to teach and conduct in Rostov and Yalta.

As the civil war intensified, he left for Istanbul in 1920, where he conducted opera, including Georges Bizet's "Carmen," Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" and Piotr Tchaikovsky's "Evgenii Onegin."

Pecheniha-Uhlytsky then sailed for the U.S., settling in New York City, where he played with the Wagnerian Symphony Orchestra, the City Symphony Orchestra and the State Symphony Orchestra. By dint of his powerful personality, he secured the position of in-house composer, conductor and orchestrator at the National Broadcasting Corp. in the 1920s. In the 1930s, he emerged as an important organizer of Ukrainian musical life in the city. His most resounding success came on January 8, 1939, when the NBC Radio Chorus and the Philharmonic Symphony Society Orchestra performed his and other works at Carnegie Hall. It was the first Ukrainian symphonic concert in North America.

Among the works performed at Carnegie Hall was his "Heroic Cantata," based on the poem "Biut Porohy" (The Rapids Roar) by Taras Shevchenko, which the composer dedicated to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Also in the 1930s, he began working on his dream: the staging of "Vidma" (The Witch), a full-length opera rooted in Ukrainian themes, in the 1920s based on a story by Yevhen Hrebinka, with a libretto by Stepan Charnetsky. The score was published by The Metropolitan Opera in 1936 and for years he labored in vain to have it performed there.

He also composed the ballet "Legin" (The Youth, 1938); a tone poem "Ukraina" (based on Shevchenko's "Haidamaky"); a string quartet, "Shepherd's Dream," based on themes written by his teacher, Yakymenko; a film score to a projected feature based on Leo Tolstoy's "Resurrection"; a violin concerto; a fanfare; a "Melody" for cello and orchestra; arrangements of the "Arkan" and "Kolomyika" for string orchestra; and began sketching a symphonic jazz opera he titled "Brain Child." He also wrote compositions for solo violin, piano and voice.

In the mid-1940s, worn out by efforts to secure financial backing for his opera, and increasingly unable to secure conducting jobs, Pecheniha-Uhlytsky suffered a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed.

He turned to liturgical music, producing arrangements of works by Artem Vedel and Dmytro Bortniansky, as well as writing his own music to the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1946). Pavlo Pecheniha-Uhlytsky died in New York on July 2, 1948.

His opera "The Witch" was staged in 1969 at Carnegie Hall under the sponsorship of the Ukrainian National Association to mark the organization's 70th anniversary.

Sources: "Pecheniha-Uhlytsky, Pavlo," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Ihor Sonevytsky and Natalia Palidvor-Sonevytska, ed. Dictionary of Ukrainian Composers (Lviv: Union of Ukrainian Composers, 1997); "Pomer Pavlo Pecheniha-Uhlytskyi," Svoboda, July 7, 1948.

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