• Maksym Berezovsky: Symphony in C
• Mykhailo Verbytsky: Symphony No. 6 in G
• Viktor Kosenko: Etude
• Boris Lyatoshynsky: Prelude from the film Taras Shevchenko
• Levko Kolodub: From the Ukrainian Dance Suite No. 1
• Hanna Havrylets: Chorale
• Mykola Skoryk: Melody
• Benjamin Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, keeping eternal memory is the promise given by the living to the recently deceased. In honor of the many thousands who have died needlessly in Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and of the resilient culture that Russia has now labored for centuries to appropriate and erase, this concert seeks to be at once a celebration and an act of mourning. A centuries-wide sampling of Ukrainian music – from the bright, recently discovered Symphony of Maksym Berezovsky, which connects Ukraine to the wider trends of Classical music in Europe; to the charming, early Romantic symphony-overtures of Mykhailo Verbytsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem; to the brooding late-Romantic lyrical lament of Viktor Kosenko; to the angular, muscular music of Soviet composer Boris Lyatoshynsky, written for a movie about the patron saint of Ukrainian letters, Taras Shevchenko; to the folk-inflected dance suites of Levko Kolodub; to the hypnotic, sacred stillness of composer Hanna Havrylets; and finally to her teacher Mykola Skoryk’s timeless Melody, a unofficial second national anthem of Ukraine – seeks to paint a picture of multi-faceted richness, a flourishing of talent against all odds. On the second half, we present the powerful Sinfonia da Requiem of Benjamin Britten, one of the most searing anti-war protests ever captured in music. It was completed as World War II began to ensnarl the globe, and takes, as its inspiration, the text of the Catholic service for the dead.