The Washington Group Cultural Fund concert features Volodymyr Vynnytsky (03/05/06)

The Washington Group Cultural Fund concert features Volodymyr Vynnytsky

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - The world of classical music is celebrating the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday this year, and The Washington Group (TWG) Cultural Fund joined in the celebration on February 12 thanks to pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky, the featured artist of the third concert in the fund's 2005-2006 music series.

The Ukrainian-born pianist honored the Austrian composer with the first two pieces of his concert, Mozart's Fantasia in D-minor and Sonata in B-flat major. The rest of the program included Peter Tchaikovsky's Original Theme and Variations in F-major, Frederic Chopin's Sonata No. 3 in B-minor, and, as is the custom of the fund music series, a composition by a Ukrainian composer. This time, the audience was treated to the contemporary Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk's "Burlesque."

As TWG Cultural Fund Director Marta Zielyk noted in her introduction, Mr. Vynnytsky is well known to the fund's concert series audiences. He has performed a number of times - as a soloist, accompanist and with chamber ensembles. Indeed, in 1998 he joined with Mr. Skoryk and the Leontovych String Quartet in a special concert marking the composer's 60th birthday. Then, as at the last concert, among the works he performed was Skoryk's "Burlesque."

That 1998 concert was held at the Dumbarton United Methodist Church, one of the historic churches in Washington's Georgetown area used as a venue for the cultural fund's concerts at that time. Over the past five years, these concerts, which are presented under the patronage of the Embassy of Ukraine, have been held at another historic venue, The Lyceum, in "Old Town" Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington.

Mr. Vynnytsky was born in Lviv, where he began his musical studies at the Lviv Music School for Gifted Children. He continued his music education at the Moscow Conservatory, where he received his doctorate in 1983. That same year he was a laureate of the Margueritte Long-Jacques Thibaud International Piano Competition in Paris.

Since then he has taught at the Kyiv Conservatory, played with orchestras in Ukraine, Europe and the United States, and performed in such leading concert halls as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Steinway Hall, the Phillips Gallery in Washington, the Great (Bolshoi) Hall at the Moscow Conservatory, the Theatre Champs d'Elysees and St. John's Smith Square in London.

He has resided in the United States since 1991. He is a visiting member of the piano faculty at the University of Connecticut and is the artistic director of the Music and Art Center of Greene County, N.Y.

Mozart's was not the only anniversary celebrated at the February 12 concert. During the reception following the performance, Ms. Zielyk and members of the audience, which included Ukraine's ambassador-designate in Washington, Oleh Shamshur, raised a toast to mark Mr. Vynnytsky's 50th birthday.

The cultural fund's 2005-2006 music series concludes on April 9 with a concert by the winners of the 6th International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, held in Kyiv in 2005.

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