Solomiya Ivakhiv: Poems & Rhapsodies
Centaur Records

It's impossible to listen to Poems & Rhapsodies in early March 2022 without awareness of the horrors of war currently being visited upon Ukraine and its people reverberating in the background. Not only does the recording pair the Ukrainian-born violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv with conductor Volodymyr Sirenko and the country's National Symphony Orchestra, it includes works by Ukrainian composers Anatoly Kos-Anatolsky and Myroslav Skoryk in addition to ones by Vaughan Williams, Saint-Saëns, Chausson, and Kenneth Fuchs. A work such as The Lark Ascending here takes on added resonance when its moments of longing and triumph are heard amidst harrowing reports of Ukrainian destruction. It's safe to assume that the lives of the musicians featured on the release as well as those of their families and friends have been profoundly and irrevocably affected by the events still unfolding.

Though Ivakhiv has established herself as a champion of new music, only one of the six programmatic works presented is by a living composer; all are, however, relatively recent creations, with the earliest, Chausson's Poème, Op. 25, written in 1896 and those by Fuchs and Skoryk from the 2000s. At the outset, American cellist Sophie Shao joins Ivakhiv for Saint-Saëns' La muse et le poète, Op. 132, written in 1910 and pitting the soloists as agreeable dialogue partners rather than competitors vying for dominance. The work opens tenderly, its tone immediately complementary to the rhapsodic dimension of the recording. With Ivakhiv and Shao gently intoning alongside the orchestra's strings, the music exudes the lyricism characteristic of the composer as it advances fluidly through a number of episodes, from the playfully buoyant to the epically heroic.

Chausson's Poème follows, it too beginning softly and with strings and woodwinds setting an evocative pastoral scene for the violinist's poised entry. As the music turns dramatic, Ivakhiv delivers the first of many solos, this one enriched by artful double-stops and inviting an almost Wagner-esque reply from the orchestra. In the third consecutive show-stopping performance by Ivakhiv, all of the things that make The Lark Ascending (1921) so beloved are present, from stirring cadenzas and plangent woodwind figures to the rapturous soar of musical passages that evoke graceful flight. The score swells from hushed beginnings, and the violinist gracefully soars. Ivakhiv's plaintive, vocal-like voicings, her teasing interaction with the triangle, and the folk-flavoured character of the orchestra writing help make the poetic work the literal and figurative centrepiece of the album.

Kos-Anatolsky's Poem for Violin and Orchestra in D Minor (1962) can't help but seem anti-climactic after such a peak, but it's striking nonetheless, especially when its dark and brooding tone presents such a pronounced contrast. Originally written in 1962, the score for the Ukrainian composer's nine-minute tone poem was lost until the violinist commissioned a reconstruction in 2019. Had American Rhapsody (Romance for Violin and Orchestra) (2008) followed The Lark Ascending, the similarities of the work by American composer Fuchs to its earlier counterpart would have been even more pronounced. Fuchs, like Ivakhiv a professor at the University of Connecticut, initiates his rhapsody with hushed strings that provide a serene entry-point for the violinist's sonorous expressions and subsequent interactions with woodwinds and horns. Again extended cadenza passages grant the violinist ample opportunities to showcase her artistry and command until the work resolves in a shimmering glow of flutes and strings. Similar to Kos-Anatolsky's work, Skoryk's Carpathian Rhapsody (2004) offers a stark change in tone from the piece before it, with in this case the material growing emphatically more dance-driven and frenzied.

March 2022