Postcards from Ukraine
Volume One – Violin Miniatures
Markiyan Melnychenko (violin)
Benjamin Martin (piano)
Peter de Lager (piano: Lysenko)
rec. 2022/24, Prudence Myer Studio, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music
Toccata New TOCN0040 [65]

Ukrainian National styles in music are represented by these miniatures for violin and piano, which range from the idiom’s founding father, Mykola Lysenko, to the most recently-born representative in this volume, Ivan Karabyts, who died in 2002.

That style, as these examples show, tends to the folkloric, specifically Carpathian-infused elements, though the East of the country also provides zest courtesy of its Zaporizhian Cossack history. Such elements are smartly laid out in the booklet essay by violinist Markiyan Melnychenko. Inevitably all the pieces are pocket-sized compositions that coalesce their essence into no more than a few minutes and almost all – except Karabyts’ Musician, Lyudkevych’s Chabarashka, and Lyatoshynsky’s Melody – are heard in world première recordings.

The folk basis of the music is established immediately by Lysenko’s Ukrainian Rhapsody which, at nearly nine minutes, is by some way the longest single piece in the recital. Opening with bardic-folk-harp impressions – that’s how it seems to this Western listener – it’s a piece built along lassú and friss principles, that’s to say slow, then fast, though clearly not without an admixture of Sarasate’s virtuoso influence. This is the most recent recording, made in October 2024 with pianist Peter de Lager.

The remainder of the programme was taped back in July 2022 with Benjamin Martin and ranges widely. Lyatoshynsky’s undated Two Pieces embrace the gauzy post-impressionist as well as the more resinous and folk-tinged. Three Pieces on Tajik Folk Themes offer an exotically spiced first panel, and a somewhat deceptively titled Tranquil Song which manages to pack in plenty of space and incident into its five minutes. It enshrines a ‘call and response’ section and plenty of atmosphere. The final piece of the three is a driving Dance with a quietly intense B section.

Anatoliy Kos-Anatolskyi’s Two pieces from the ballet The Shawl of Dovbush, composed in 1950, show rich romanticism in the first piece – it makes him sound like a Ukrainian Francis Thomé – whilst the second adheres more to the folk-dance frolics familiar from other examples here; limited in extent but characterful. The long-lived Stanislav Lyudkevych is represented by Chabarashka (1912), a quirky dance with a nostalgic B section, and Lamentations, another work steeped in late-Romanticism.    

Karabyts’ Musician (1974) is cut from a more modernist cloth and is replete with technical devices – left-hand pizzicati, double stops included – providing all the virtuosic niceties necessary for the depiction of a folk fiddler.

Then there is Mykola Kolessa, whose Three Kolomyiky were written for solo piano but have been arranged for violin and piano very stylishly by Heorhiy Kazakov. These brief sketches are pictures of Carpathian Ukraine and are once more drenched in folkloric influence. Finally, Vasyl Barvinsky, a student of Vitezslav Novák in Prague, and a most gifted composer, was ruthlessly treated by the Soviets who imprisoned him for ten years and burned his scores. His warm and lyric Chanson Triste is played with sweetness and discretion by Melnychenko who also plays the brief but charmingly light Humoresque on Ukrainian Folk Themes with just the right sense of style.

This is indeed a lyrical and terpsichorean disc, presented with authentic-sounding vitality, as well as nuance, by the Ukrainian-Australian Melnychenko and his two pianist colleagues. They’ve been well recorded in the same venue, two or so years apart.

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)
Ukrainian Rhapsody, Op. 34 (c. 1900)
Borys Lyatoshynsky (1895-1968)
Two Pieces (date unknown)
Vasyl Barvinsky (1888-1963)
Chanson Triste (1910)
Humoresque on Ukrainian Folk Themes (1934-35)
Borys Lyatoshynsky
Three Pieces on Tajik Folk Themes (1932)
Anatoliy Kos-Anatolskyi (1909-1983)
Two pieces from the ballet The Shawl of Dovbush (1950)
Borys Lyatoshynsky
Melody (date unknown)
Ivan Karabyts (1945-2002)
Musician (1974)
Stanislav Lyudkevych (1879-1979)
Lamentations (1946)
Chabarashka (1912)
Mykola Kolessa (1903-2006)
Three Kolomyiky (1958, arr. Heorhiy Kazakov)