Postcards from Ukraine, Volume Two: Chamber Music

The first album of Postcards from Ukraine gave a potted history of Ukrainian music in the form of a series of miniatures for piano and violin. In this second instalment four representative chamber works demonstrate how quickly music in Ukraine developed its own identity – although all four composers here had to contend with repression by the authoritarian regime to the north. One of them, Vasyl Barvinsky, even spent ten years in the Gulag, with his manuscripts destroyed by the Soviet authorities. Upon his release, unbowed, he set about reconstructing those lost scores, though he died before he could complete the task. His glorious A minor Piano Trio gives an indication of what was nearly lost – and how much remains to be discovered.

Markiyan Melnychenko, violin
Josephine Vains, cello
Peter de Jager, piano
Stewart Kelly, piano