The international festival of classical music KharkivMusicFest will be held in Kharkiv

On Saturday, April 13, an international music festival will open in Kharkiv Kharkiv Music Festival. This year, the program will consist mainly of Ukrainian names, and special attention will be paid to the understanding of war through music, the press release states.

At the opening concert, the Spanish-German conductor Rock Fargas will perform together with the National Ensemble of Soloists “Kyivska Camerata”. Together they will present a work by a young Ukrainian composer Zoltana Almashi “City of Mary”, dedicated to Mariupol.

According to the organizers, Fargas became the only foreign artist who agreed to perform in Kharkiv. The conductor himself will perform in the city for the first time and considers it an honor to participate in the event. Previously, he represented “City of Mary” in Germany.

In addition, the festival will become symbolic for the “Kyiv Camerata” orchestra. In 2024, the team celebrates its 30th anniversary.

“We dedicate this concert to Valery Matyukhin, the founder of the group, to his hometown of Kharkiv. Valery Oleksandrovych would have turned 75 this year. He wanted to come to you for a long time with a performance of the most interesting Ukrainian music, which he promoted all his life, but he did not have time“, says Kateryna Suprun, deputy artistic director of Kyiv Camerata.

“The festival fulfills an important task from the point of view of humanism – art supports people, gives people spiritual comfort, and an opportunity to distract from the terrible realities of war. This is a rare opportunity to switch at least for a while and perhaps recharge your internal resources a little”– said the president of the festival Serhiy Polituchy.

The opening program of the festival includes works and names somehow related to Kharkiv. A Hungarian composer came to the city with concerts Bela Bartoka German Felix MendelssohnUkrainian virtuosos Oleksandr Kozarenko, Volodymyr Zubytskyi. They will also play music by a native of Kharkiv, a member of the Union of Composers of Ukraine Vitaly Gubarenko.

The slogan of the festival is “Listen. Hear. Feel” reminds of the perception of the surrounding world, which has changed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

“Our festival is about the situation in which the listener found himself during the war, about the feelings and changes that happen to us, about the importance of sensuality to the time in which we live and the sharpness of feelings. And also – about the creative power of unity in our time, about what confuses, inspires and supports”– notes Julia Nikolaevskaprofessor, program director of the festival.

This year the festival will be held from April 13 to June 1. The organizer is the Kharkiv community fund “Toloka”. In addition to the musical program, concerts of an alternative program, educational and art projects await Kharkiv residents. Entrance is free, but the location of the festival is not announced for security reasons. To register for the event you need to fill out form.

Program of the KharkivMusicFest opening concert:

• Bela Bartok – “Divertissemento for Strings”
• Vitaly Gubarenko – “Flute Concerto”, solo – Dmytro Kuzmin
• Felix Mendelssohn – “String Symphony No. 9 in C minor”
• Zoltan Almashi – “City of Mary”
• Oleksandr Kozarenko – Concerto “Rutheno” for piano, solo – Dmytro Tavanets
• Volodymyr Zubytskyi – “Violin Concerto”, solo by Bohdan Pivnenko
  

Kharkiv Music Festival – an international festival of classical music, held for the first time under this name in 2018. It introduces examples of high art and the best musicians of Ukraine and the world, presents an educational and educational program.

The KharkivMusicFest symphony orchestra will also perform at the festival, which has been conducted at various times by the world-famous Ukrainian conductors Myroslav Skoryk, Andriy Yurkevich, as well as the Polish conductor Tomasz Bugai.

In addition, KharkivMusicFest hosts the All-Ukrainian Competition of Young Composers named after Borys Lyatoshinsky.