In Kyiv, for the first time in 100 years, the concert of the American premiere of “The Generous” was resumed at Carnegie Hall

In Kyiv, with the support of the Department of Press, Education and Culture of the US Embassy in Ukraine, a concert-reenactment of the North American premiere of “Shchedryk”, which took place a century ago, on October 5, 1922, took place in the legendary concert hall of New York, Carnegie Hall.

On the initiative of the founder of the Leontovych Institute Tina Peresunko in Ukraine, for the first time, the program of the concert, which was an incredible success in New York and paved the way to the United States, was completely reproduced for the now world-famous Christmas melody by Mykola Leontovych.

Concert-reconstruction “The Grove, Rozhestvo!” in Kyiv took place on the stage of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine.

American booklets of the performance of the UNR chapel

“I found the program of the premiere concert of the Oleksandr Koshyts choir during my Fulbright research, in particular, while working with the foundations of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York,” said Tina Peresunko in a comment to Voice of America. – Thanks to the custodian of funds Tamari Skriptsi I managed to get a high-quality reproduction of the repertoire of the concert conducted by Košice at Carnegie Hall.”

Also, during research in the USA, Tina Peresunko found American choir booklets, using which she was able to reconstruct the list of songs presented by the Ukrainian choir in the USA.

“And there are 80 songs,” says Peresunko. – At our reconstruction concert at the Philharmonic, we played only 12 of them. In particular, the 7 songs in the first section are exactly the 7 songs of the first section of the Ukrainian premiere at Carnegie Hall, and the second section consisted of the hits of the South American tour choir.”

By the way, a song from the American repertoire of the Košice choir was also performed in Kyiv for the first time – “Oh, Suzanne!” by composer Stephen Foster, arranged in 1922 for the Ukrainian choir by Oleksandr Koshyts himself.

“I managed to find these notes precisely in the arrangement of Košice, and the Ukrainian Radio Choral Band also performed this song at our concert.

At the time of the birth of Shchedryk’s worldwide fame, Stalin’s terror continued in Kyiv

Tina Peresunko recalled that at the time when the English version of Shchedryk’s Caroll of the Bells was presented in the USA (translated by an American with Ukrainian roots Petr Vilgovskyi) Stalinist terror unfolded in occupied Ukraine.

One of the many victims of these Stalinist repressions was a singer of the UNR chapel Petro Stetsenko, who dared to return to his homeland after a world tour. In 1937, he was murdered in Kherson prison.

By the way, he was present at this year’s concert in Kyiv Kyrylo Stetsenkothe grandson of the famous composer Kyryll Stetsenko, co-founder of the Ukrainian Chapel of the Ukrainian National People’s Republic.

A composer Mykola Leontovychthe author of Shchedryk, was killed a year before the premiere at Carnegie Hall by an agent of the Russian special services.

As Tina Peresunko found out in the course of several years of research on the topic, the concert of the UNR chapel on October 5, 1922 in New York was opened by the ancient Ukrainian chant “The Last Judgment”.

This was followed by the composition “Pochaivska Mother of God”, the carol “There was a widow at the end of the village”, the Christmas carol “Oh there behind the mountain”, the freckled song “Yagil, yarrow”, the carol “Oh gray-haired cuckoo” and, finally, Mykola Leontovich’s “Schedrik”.

“The Last Judgment is approaching. Let’s all get ready. The end of the age will come, the Last Judgment will come, and those who have done good will receive the Kingdom,” these are the first words sung in Ukrainian that the New York audience heard,” says Tina Peresunko.

The cultural expert, describing the preparation for the concert, noted that she worked with this repertoire, symbolic even for today, in the corridor of her Kyiv apartment, under the roar of Russian shelling.

As the Voice of America reported, Tina Peresunko published a book about Shchedryk and his connection with Ukraine’s struggle for independence.

Thanks to Peresunko’s scientific work and her research within the framework of the Fulbright program, archival evidence was raised and preserved that “the cultural diplomacy of Ukraine is not a few years old, but more than 100.”

In 1918, the Ukrainian People’s Republic declared independence from Russia, led by the commander-in-chief of the army Simon Petliura. In order to strengthen the authority of the republic, he decided to send the UNR choir on a world tour.

“Petlyura’s aim was to show through song, through culture, through thousand-year-old folklore of Ukraine… that we are a nation, we are not Russians,” says Peresunko about the UNR choir’s tour to Europe, North and South America. “The idea was to convey the right of the Ukrainian people to independence through the song.”