Postcards from Ukraine Volume 2 – Chamber Music
Viktor Kosenko (1896-1938)
Violin Sonata, Op.18 (1927)
Borys Lyatoshynsky (1895-1968)
Violin Sonata, Op.19 (1926)
Yevhen Stankovych (b.1942)
Two Pieces for violin and cello (1972)
Vasyl Barvinsky (1888-1963)
Piano Trio No.1 in A minor (1910)
Markiyan Melnychenko (violin)
Josephine Vains (cello)
Peter de Jager (piano: Kosenko, Lyatoshynsky)
Stewart Kelly (piano: Stankovych, Barvinsky)
rec. 2023 -24, Prudence Myer Studio of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music
Toccata TOCN 0043 [73]

The first volume in this series offered violin miniatures and this second presents a chamber music perspective on Ukrainian music and thus longer, more involved pieces from a quartet of significant composers, from Vasyl Barvinsky (b.1888) to Yevhen Stankovych (b.1942), still alive at the time of writing. There are two violin sonatas, one piece for violin and cello, and a Piano Trio.

Viktor Kosenko’s Violin Sonata dates from 1927 and is in two movements. The first offers an edgy, nervous start leavened by a Grieg-Franck inheritance and a richly evocative second subject. The second movement offers a flowing tempo and themes that are refined and lyrically attractive, almost effusive, ending in sheer charm. Borys Lyatoshynsky’s Sonata was written the previous year but occupies a wholly different aesthetic. This is a much more abrasive and tensile work, dissonant and modernist. After the brief reprieve of a second subject the opening movement resumes its brittle course, whilst the second is sinuously atmospheric. The music in this sonata lightens in tone as the sonata develops so by the time of the finale it’s generally airier and has a driving energy without dissonance though not wholly without recollections of earlier strife.  

Stankovych’s Two Pieces are first recordings. Composed in 1972 and crafted for violin and cello, the opening embraces a Bartókian nocturne, slow stasis interrupted by brief excited flurries before returning to the opening nocturnal. The second piece is much the shorter of the two but is a Presto of constantly fluctuating metrics, too-ing and fro-ing and, with a slither of a B section, over very quickly – and excitingly.

Finally, there is Barvinsky’s Piano Trio of 1910, written when he was just 22. It’s a work of open-hearted lyricism and warmth and a compound of Ukrainian and Dvořákian features – Vitězslav Novák was one of Barvinsky’s teachers. Its passionate intensity is ripely conveyed in this performance and makes one wish that many of Barvinsky’s other works had not been destroyed by the NKVD by whom he was brutally treated – 10 years imprisonment and much destruction of his scores ensued his 1948 arrest. The performers enjoy the richness of the central movement though I’ve heard it taken faster – the Lviv Trio, for one – but its languid charm is strongly etched and the Ukrainian dance rhythms in the finale – full of fun, lyricism and rhythmic ardour – are well conveyed.

As usual with this label, documentation is admirably full and just as admirably laid out on the page. The performers, led by Markiyan Melnychenko, play with sensitivity and have been well recorded. I’m looking forward to volume 3.

Jonathan Woolf

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