Concert of Ukranian Piano Music for One World Week

Tuesday 18th October, 2022

7.20-8.00

in the Gallery at Stamford Arts Centre

In honour of Ukranian refugees in the Stamford area, pianist Fergus Black will present a short programme of Ukranian music from the 18th to 21st centuries. All the composers were born in the area that is now Ukraine. Some of the programme is light and easy on the ear: the first piece is like Mozart; the last is jazzy and upbeat; some are virtuosic; some are tragic; and others pedagogical.

Bortniansky • Witwicki • Maykapar • Gliere • Kosenko • Bortkevych • Kapustin

Free admission - donations for the Ukranian Refugee Fund.

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PROGRAMME

Sonata in F major - Dmitry Bortniansky
Ukrainka – Variations sur une chanson d'Ukraine, Op 1 - Józef Witwicki
Pedal Preludes, Nos 17, 18 and 19 - Samuel Maykapar
Three Mazurkas Op 29 - Reinhold Gliere
Three short descriptive piano pieces (from 24 children's pieces Op 25) - Viktor Kosenko

• Rain
• They Won’t Buy Me a Teddy Bear
• They Bought Me a Teddy Bear

Lamentation no. 1 in D minor and Consolation no. 2 in D major - Serhiy Bortkevych (Sergei Bortkiewicz)
Sonatina - Nikolai Kapustin

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SPOKEN PROGRAMME NOTES

I freely admit, although with a certain trepidation about confessing my own ignorance, that the only composers in this programme that I had heard of, before selecting and learning their music, were Maykapar (one of whose pieces was set for Grade 4 piano exam a couple of years ago), Gliere and Kapustin.

Many thanks for coming to tonight’s concert, and getting to know this repertoire with me.

For much of its history, Ukraine been part of the Russian empire, both under the tsars and then as part of the Soviet Union; and it has been invaded, and its borders have been fluid. So it is sometimes difficult and contentious to claim certain composers are Ukranian. I have taken “Born in Ukraine” as my definition, meaning an individual born on the geographical territory which, at the present time, is recognized as the independent state of Ukraine. Even if, like Bortkevych, he welcomed the German invasion of his country and ended up as an Austrian citizen, or like Kapustin, who left Ukraine at the age of 4, and never went back.

Sonata in F major - Dmitry Bortniansky

We start in the eighteenth century: Dmitry Bortniansky was born in 1751 in Glukhov, Ukraine; and died in 1825 in St. Petersburg. This makes him a slightly older contemporary of Mozart, and longer lived. As a boy he sang in the Imperial Court Chapel in St. Petersburg, and studied composition with the Italian maestro, Baldassare Galuppi, who was for a time court composer to Catherine the Great.

When Galuppi returned to Italy, Bortniansky was sent with him in order to continue his studies, before returning to Russia, eventually becoming Director of the Imperial Court Chapel. He is therefore known now mostly for his sacred works, but it should be no surprise that Bortniansky wrote keyboard music, since that is how we remember Galuppi, as in Robert Browning’s poem, A Toccata of Galuppi's.

There is one brisk movement in this Sonata in F major.

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Ukrainka – Variations sur une chanson d'Ukraine, Op 1 - Józef Witwicki

We don’t know much today about Józef Dominik Witwicki. He was born in 1813, so is a contemporary of all those romantic composers: Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, etc., all born at about the same time. His virtuosic piano compositions were very popular in his day, and are now being republished after years of neglect. They are showy, and great fun. A contemporary book of 1836 tells us* “D'après le titre de ces compositions, M. Witwiçki doit être né dans la poétique Ukraine sur les bords fleuris du Dnieper.”* And we do know he settled in Kiev, teaching at the Institute for Noble Maidens (!). And this Opus 1, Variations on a Ukrainian Song, is dedicated to “Polish Women”. So, popular with the girls. I am sorry to say that I do not know what the song is, that forms the basis of the variations. If you recognise it, please let me know.

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Pedal Preludes, Nos 17, 18 and 19 - Samuel Maykapar

Samuel Maykapar, composer and pianist, was born in 1867 in Kherson, and spent his childhood in Taganrog. He studied at the Conservatoire in St. Petersburg, and with Theodor Leschetizky. If you know about the history of piano pedagogy, Leschetizky is a “name”). Maykapar is the author of a number of books of piano studies, such as his collection of pedal studies for the piano, from which these three short pieces are taken.

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Three Mazurkas Op 29 - Reinhold Gliere

I am now going to play Three Mazurkas by Reinhold Glière, who is perhaps the most famous of the composers in this programme, at least in the West. He was born in 1874 in Kyiv, and died in 1956 in Moscow.

Glière was Director of the Kiev Conservatoire of Music from 1914 to 1920, before being appointed to the Conservatoire in Moscow, where among his pupils were Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, and Khachaturian.

Glière was noted for incorporating elements of the folk music of several eastern Soviet republics in his compositions, and he was very highly regarded by the Soviet establishment after the Russian Revolution, largely because of his interest in national styles.

There is little evidence of folk influences in these full-blooded Mazurkas, which were written in 1906, and dedicated to the famous virtuoso Leopold Godowsky.

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Three short descriptive piano pieces (from 24 children's pieces Op 25) - Viktor Kosenko

• Rain
• They Won’t Buy Me a Teddy Bear
• They Bought Me a Teddy Bear

We turn now to another lyrical composer, Viktor Kosenko (1896 – 1938), a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and educator. He studied in Warsaw, taught in Zhytomyr, and later in Kyiv, where he devoted more time to the symphonic compositions on which his fame rests. He composed over 100 pieces for piano, including waltzes, preludes, nocturnes, sonatas and mazurkas.

I have selected three short pieces from a collection of children’s pieces: Rain, obviously a feature of Ukrainian weather, and a pair of Sad then Happy pieces, in this case about a teddy bear.

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Lamentation no. 1 in D minor and Consolation no. 2 in D major - Serhiy Bortkevych (Sergei Bortkiewicz)

Serhiy Bortkevych was born in Kharkiv in 1877. He studied in St Petersburg and then in Leipzig. Indeed he lived in Germany up until the outbreak of the First World War, when he was deported back to Kharkov. Eventually, the German army advanced as far as Kharkov, and Bortkevych was happy to be in a German environment once more. As we know, however, the Germans were soon on the retreat and the Bolsheviks took over. The family estates were plundered, and Serhiy and his wife escaped penniless on a steamer to Constantinople, where he began for the fourth time to build his career. He eventually settled in Vienna, where he became an Austrian citizen and taught piano at the Vienna Conservatory. But in the 1930 the Nazis, suspended him from teaching, and he could not be published. Another misfortune came upon him when his house caught fire after WW II bombing of Vienna that destroyed most of his unpublished musical manuscripts. After WW II, he was asked to teach in Vienna Conservatory. It revived interest to his music and even prompted establishment of Serhiy Borkevych Music Society bringing together lovers of his music.

Bortkiewicz’s music is romantic and melodic, with no hint of modernism. He eschewed innovation for its own sake, and built on the structures and sounds of Chopin and Liszt. This pair of pieces (sad and happy, one might call them again, although tragic might be closer the mark) were published in 1914, and dedicated to Moriz Rosenthal.

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Sonatina - Nikolai Kapustin

The last composer in this concert, Nikolai Kapustin was born in in Horlivka in 1937, and died only in 2020. He played with early Soviet jazz bands, and his compositions, mostly for piano, fuse jazz style with classical forms.

Kapustin studied with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Moscow Conservatoire, and during the 1950s, Kapustin worked as a jazz pianist, arranger and composer. He had his own quintet, and played with big bands of the day. Kapustin always regarded himself as a composer rather than a jazz musician: "I'm not interested in improvisation – and what is a jazz musician without improvisation? All my improvisations are written, of course, and they became much better; it improved them."

This short Sonatina in one movement is very much in a jazz idiom, in the same one-movement sonata form that Bortniansky used in the first piece in the programme, some 200 years earlier.