The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

COVER: Paul Stevenson Oles, Sketch ofthe East Building Exterior, 1971,

National Gallery ofArt Archives, Gift of I. M. Pei and Partners

The Seventieth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,862nd Concert

Thomas Hrynkiw, pianist

Presented in connection with the National Gallery ofArt

film series Yuri Ilyenko: Ballad of Ukraine

December 7, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

IosyfVytytsk’kyi (1813-1866)

Ukrainian Maiden

Lev Revuts’kyi (1889-1977)

Sonata in B Minor

Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)

Dream

Viktor Kosenko (1896-1938)

Poem

Revuts’kyi

Prelude

Canon

Vasyl’ Barvins’kyi (1888-1963)

Prelude in E Minor

Prelude in F-sharp Major

Stanislav Liudkevich (1879-1979)

Paraphrase on the Ukrainian Folksong “What Raven Caws over the Sea”

Humoresque

The Musician

Known for the dramatic power and poetry ofhis playing, pianist Thomas

Hrynkiw has been performing in recital since he was thirteen. As a first prize

winner in a competition at age nineteen, he performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano

Concerto no. 1 under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. In 1967 Hrynkiw

won the gold medal at the Geneva Competition, the Frank Huntington Beebe

Award, the Harold Bauer Award, and the National Music Teachers Association 

Award. As his career progressed, he also received grants from the International

Institute for Education. A veteran ofnumerous concerts in major venues in

Europe and the United States, he performed previously at the National Gallery

in 2005 and 2007, and has also been heard locally at Constitution Hall, the

Kennedy Center, and the Library ofCongress. Other performances include

New York’s Lincoln Center and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series

in Chicago. A former advisor to the director ofthe Newport Festival, Hrynkiw

has played frequently in that festival as well as in the Beethoven (New York),

Mount Gretna (Pennsylvania), Palm Beach (Florida), San Miguel de Allende 

(Mexico), Sitka (Alaska), and Virginia music festivals.

Hrynkiw’s chamber music partners have included Erick Friedman,

Bert Lucarelli, and Richard Stoltzman, as well as the Audubon, Da Porte, 

Muir, and Saint Lawrence string quartets. He has performed in concert

with singers John Aler, Inessa Galante, Paul Plishka, Zurab Sotkilava, and

Gabriella Tucci. A member ofthe music faculty at Marywood University

in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Hrynkiw is a champion ofmusic by composers

from Ukraine. He extends special thanks to pianist Michael Borthwick and

to biographers Natalie and Ihor Sonevitsky, authors ofthe Dictionary of

Ukrainian Composers, for their assistance in researching today’s program.

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Program Notes

A i960 graduate ofthe Moscow film academy vgik, visionary Ukrainian

filmmaker Yuri Ilyenko (1936-2010) was first recognized for his stunning

cinematography for Sergei Paradjanov’s folkloric Shadows ofForgotten Ancestors. He went on to produce his own distinctive body ofpainterly allegorical

films while working at Kiev’s Dovzhenko Film Studios in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ilyenko’s sheer energy and expressive flair helped to craft the midcentury

Ukrainian poetic cinema movement with images so surreal and audacious that

his work was frequently banned by the communist authorities. The film series

Yuri Ilyenko: Ballad of Ukraine, to be shown in the Gallery’s East Building 

Auditorium on December 10 at 2:00 and 4:00 pm, and December 17 at 2:00

pm, includes three ofIlyenko’s principal works. A fourth film, White Bird with

Black Mark, will be presented at the Gallery in a larger survey of Ukrainian

poetic cinema in 2012. This series is presented in Washington on the occasion

ofthe twentieth anniversary of Ukrainian independence. In honor ofthe film 

series and the anniversary, pianist Thomas Hrynlciw brings a program of

piano music by Ukrainian composers.

Known as “the bread basket of Europe,” Ukraine is rich in natural

minerals and fertile soil. Settled and civilized by descendants ofthe Vikings, 

its strategic position between Asia and Europe has caused it to be coveted 

and invaded in turn by Mongols, Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Russians,

and Germans. When Peter I of Russia decided to institute reforms in the

late seventeenth century, he turned to the universities and monasteries

of Kiev for advisors to conceive and administer his new policies. Many of

the folk melodies that have been made famous and labeled as “Russian”

by Bartok, Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky,

and other composers ofthe eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries

are actually ofUkrainian origin. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, a strong and loyal Ukrainian diaspora maintained art, music,

and science institutes and Ukrainian language schools as well as choruses,

dance troops, and summer camps in the United States and Canada.

Composer, pianist, and teacher IosyfVytytsk’kyi studied music with his

4

father, an organist in Berdychiv, Ukraine. He taught music from 1840 to

1864 in the Volyn’ and Podillia regions and in the School for Noble Girls in

Kiev. In Ukrainian Maiden, he presents a folklike theme and a set ofvariations rich in variety and contrast.

Born into a clerical family, composer and pianist Lev Revuts’kyi was 

educated in the Gymnasium of Pryluky, Ukraine. In 1913 he entered the

newly established Kiev Conservatory of Music to study composition with

Reinhold Gliere and piano with Mykola Lysenko. In 1935, after twenty years

ofteaching and concertizing in Pryluky and Kiev, he was appointed professor at the Kiev Conservatory. From 1941 to 1944 he served as chair ofthe

composition department ofthe Tashkent Conservatory and head ofthe

Union of Ukrainian Composers. Closely involved with Mykola Lysenko’s

National Music School, Revuts’kyi was a versatile and original composer and

an outstanding contributor to Ukrainian musical culture. His single-movement Sonata in B Minor is a work in the grand romantic tradition. It features cyclical form, singable melodies, and rich harmonies in passages that

are at times chorale-like and at other times instrumental and virtuosic. His

Prelude and Canon, presented later in the program, show respectively his

whimsical side and his skill in counterpoint.

Venerated in Ukraine as the father ofthe national musical style, Mykola

Lysenko founded the Ukrainian National Musical School in 1904. He studied

natural sciences at the universities of Kharkiv and Kiev, graduating from

the latter school in 1864. His music studies took place at the Leipzig Conservatory under Carl Reinecke (1824-1910), Ernst Richter (1808-1879), and Ernst

Wenzel (1808-1880), and in Saint Petersburg under Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakov

(1844-1908). In 1876 Lysenko settled in Kiev, where he was active in all phases

ofmusical and cultural life. He published numerous folksong collections and

theoretical studies, including The Characteristics of Ukrainian Dumas and Songs

as Peformed by the Kobza Player Ostap Veresai, and was one ofthe first composers to write children’s operas for child performers. Lysenko’s piano piece 

Dream imitates the style ofsalon music at the turn ofthe twentieth century.

5
Educated in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg, composer, pianist, and 

teacher Viktor Kosenko studied piano with Irina Miklashevska, composition 

with Nikolai Sokolov, and conducting with Nikolay Cherepnin. In addition 

to his extensive career as a concert pianist and chamber musician, he taught

at the Music Technicum in Zhytomyr, Ukraine (1919-1928); the Lysenko

Music and Drama Institute in Kiev (1929-1934); and the Kiev Conservatory

(1934-1938). Kosenko’s haunting Poem is a rare example of Slavic impressionism in music.

One ofthe many Ukrainians who suffered political oppression during

World War II and its aftermath, composer, musicologist, and music critic

Vasyl’ Barvins’kyi spent ten years (1945-1955) in a Soviet concentration

camp. Before and after that period, however, he distinguished himself as

an influential figure in the development of Ukrainian music, serving as

director ofthe Lysenko Music Institute in L’viv from 1916 to 1939, heading

the Union of Professional Ukrainian Musicians in the late 1930s, and

contributing regularly to the monthly music magazine Ukrains’ka Muzyka

throughout his career. His years ofservice in L’viv earned Barvins’kyi the 

unofficial title “Lather of Chamber Music in Western Ukraine.” A master

of piano miniatures, he is represented in this program by two preludes, both 

ofwhich display a uniquely Ukrainian mixture ofsadness and sweetness.

Prolific as well as long-lived, composer Stanislav Liudkevych (1879- 

1979) also centered his life’s work in the city of L’viv. Upon graduating from 

the University ofVienna in 1908, Liudevych returned to L’viv and became 

director ofits Lysenko Music Institute. He also organized new branches

ofthe institute in major Western Ukrainian cities (1926-1939), taught

composition at the Lviv Conservatory, and founded and edited a music

newsletter, Muzykal’nyi lystok. The author of numerous musicological

studies, Liudkevych ranks as one ofthe most important figures in the 

development of Ukrainian music in the twentieth century. His Paraphrase

on the Ukrainian Folksong “What Raven Caws over the Sea” accompanies a

typical Ukrainian melody with shifting harmonies and contrapuntal use of

countermelodies and motifs. The charming Humoresque is typical ofshort

6

pieces bearing this title, in that it is not a musical joke; it rather presents a

particular mood, or “humor.” In this case the listener encounters two moods, 

one in the opening and closing sections and another in the waltz that

interrupts the middle ofthe piece.

Program notes based on material provided by Michael Borthwick

and Thomas Hrynkiw

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

The Rose Ensemble

Early Mediterranean Arab, Christian, and Sephardic music

December 11, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Preceded at 6:00 pm by a preconcert talk

on Sephardic music by Jerome Barry

Menahem Pressler, pianist

Music by Beethoven

December 16, 2011

Lriday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium