Ukrainian classical musicians perform concerts in Washington, D.C., area (05/07/06)

Ukrainian classical musicians perform concerts in Washington, D.C., area

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - It was a "first" for the Washington area: Ukrainian American classical music lovers had to choose between two conflicting concerts featuring Ukrainian artists.

It happened on Sunday afternoon, April 9, when two silver medalists of the last year's Kyiv International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz - Antoniy Baryshevskiy of Ukraine and Alexey Kurbatov of Russia were performing at the Lyceum in Old Town Alexandria, Va., and pianist and conductor Paul Stetsenko was the featured artist in a program at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, in a newer part of Alexandria less than two miles away.

The Horowitz Competition concert concluded the 2005-2006 Music Series of The Washington Group Cultural Fund, which is conducted under the patronage of the Embassy of Ukraine. Mr. Stetsenko's appearance was part of the Presbyterian church's Palm Sunday "Service of Passion" centered around Mozart's "Requiem" for choir and orchestra.

Mr. Baryshevskiy, 17, is a student at the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Secondary Special Music School. In the 2005 Horowitz Competition he won second prize in the intermediate group. Performing first at the Lyceum concert, he played Mykola Lysenko's "Elegy," a ballad and mazurka by Frederic Chopin, the "Feux Follets" Étude and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 by Franz Liszt, and Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Liebesfreud" and "Liebesleid."

The second-prize winner of the senior group, Mr. Kurbatov, 23, is a student of the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow. He performed J.S. Bach's Toccata in D-minor, selections from Igor Stravinsky's ballet "Petrouchka" and Alexander Skriabin's "Vers la Flame," and concluded the concert with a rousing rendition of Horowitz's arrangement of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."

"What wonderful times we live in," TWG Cultural Fund Director Marta Zielyk commented as The Ukrainian Embassy's cultural attaché, Natalya Holub, presented the performers with flowers. "A Russian, winning an international competition taking place in Kyiv, the capital of an independent Ukraine, ends his debut performance in the United States with a Horowitz-arranged rendition of 'Stars and Stripes Forever' in a venue within sight of the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument."

In the audience were Volodymyr Ionov, who handles cultural affairs at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Horowitz Competition General Director Yuri Zilberman and Executive Director Iryna Polstyankina, and Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, Oleh Shamshur.

Messrs. Baryshevskiy and Kurbatov were among the winners of the sixth International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, established in Kyiv in 1994. Since then, the competition has tested the skills of 473 young pianists from 25 countries.

Following the debut here, their U.S. tour schedule includes performances in New York City, Cleveland and New Jersey.

Pianist and conductor Paul Stetsenko's performance that same afternoon was part of "The Service of Passion - with the Music of Mozart's Requiem" at Westminster Presbyterian Church, a large parish in the suburban part of Alexandria where he has served as music director since 2003.

He launched the program at the piano in Mozart's Concerto No. 20 in D-minor for piano and orchestra, and then ascended the conductor's podium to direct the orchestra and combined choirs of the Westminster Presbyterian Church and the Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ in Mozart's Requiem.

The program was a blending of sections of Mozart's composition with calls to prayer, confession, offering, thanksgiving and benediction, and a short excerpt from Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" and Leon Wieseltier's "Kadish."

Mr. Stetsenko was born in Kyiv, where he began his formal studies in choral conducting and piano and received a master of music degree at the Kyiv Conservatory. In 1990 he came to the United States to study church music and organ at the Juilliard School in New York, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts in 2000.

Since coming to the United States he has performed as a recitalist and soloist at Alice Tully Hall and Paul Hall in Lincoln Center, the Organ Concert Series at Columbia University, the Keyboard Series at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and at other recital venues and churches in the New York-New Jersey area. He also composes choral works.

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