Boris Kudrik (1897-1952, Ukraine) - Symphony

[Christopher]

This, I believe, could be rather a substantial find. There is nothing folksy or fleeting about it at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdyOgFomWm8&t=389s

Boris Kudrik (1897-1952, Ukraine)

Symphony in E minor

Chernivtsi Symphony Orchestra
Yosyp Sozansky - conductor

40 mins long.

A very serious work in the late-romantic style, with a passionate first movement (I particularly like its defiant finale, around the 14 minute mark).  Kudrik wrote it in the gulag prison camp in Mordovia in 1951, where he had been imprisoned since 1945.  He died shortly afterward, in 1952. It's described in the book excerpt below as his swansong, and as his salvation from the inhuman conditions in which he found himself.

More about him here (in Ukrainian, you'll need google-translate):
http://mus.art.co.ua/ukrainian-live-borys-kudryk-portret-kompozytora/
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кудрик_Борис_Павлович

Boris Kudrik
(JUNE 10, 1897, ROHATYN - MARCH 28, 1952, POTMA STATION, DUBRAVLAG CAMP)

Kudryk Borys Pavlovych - Ukrainian composer, musicologist, folklorist and teacher. His work is sometimes considered by researchers as ,,a real anachronism and a kind of miracle in the development of modern Ukrainian music"* and compared with the music of Joseph Haydn**, but it would be more correct to attribute his legacy (and only partially) to the so-called ,,Galician Biedermeier"*** - a local manifestation in art, which poetized everyday life, glorified the lives of ordinary people, the beauty of rural nature and local folklore. In German and Austrian art of the 1830s and 1840s, this style was both the antithesis of the aristocracy of the classicist style and the tumultuous romanticism as a reaction to the events of the French Revolution of 1789. The mood of interwar Galicia contributed to the revival of this style with its tendency to seek harmony, simplicity and tranquility.

Borys Kudryk was born into a priest's family (perhaps that is why the basis of his future creative work is choral). He graduated from Rohatyn Gymnasium. Since childhood he played the violin, piano, sang in the choir.
He studied at the Academy of Music and the University of Vienna (he studied musicology, philosophy and German philology), later at the Polish Conservatory in Lviv and Lviv Universi-ty. Among the teachers who had the greatest influence on his development - Ukrainian and Austrian musicologist and composer, teacher of the Vienna Academy of Music Evseviy Mandychevskyy.

Contrary to a complex historical epoch, Kudryk's work is distinguished by a surprisingly light, childish worldview. Although the style of his works is quite diverse, they are all united by ,,childhood". According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the composer was always as if in a parallel reality, listening to only one audible otherworldly music. His musical erudition knew no bounds due to his phenomenal memory: any of the scores he knew, and there were many of them, he could reproduce by heart on paper with perfect accuracy.

The year 1945 turned out to be fatal for Kudryk.
He was in the third district of Vienna, which was later to be in the British sphere of influ-ence. A few months were not enough. Prior to the official demarcation, the Red Army began sweeping, and on April 11, the composer was detained by officers of the First Smersh Counterintelligence Division. The confusion in Kudryk's answers recorded in the transcripts of the interrogations testifies to the detainees' conscious desire to accuse the composer. He was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison with confiscation of property and sent to a camp in Mordovia. There, in December 1951, he fell ill with pneumonia complicated by hypertension and died in 1952.

Symphony in E minor
This is one of Kudryk's two symphonies written in the concentration camp. Ironically, before that, being free, the composer did not turn to this genre - the top in the musical genre hierarchy. He began writing the 40-minute work in May 1951, less than a year before his death. He did not have time to finish: there are gaps in the manuscript and there are no last bars. This work was a salvation for the com-poser, and despite the inhuman conditions, it did not lose the most important features of his work: tenderness and a certain amount of sentimentality. Even its sad nature refers more to Schubert's songs than to Mahler's despair.

The manuscript of the work is a ,,ragged" notebook with a hand-lined musical note and text written in pencil. Its premiere took place in August 2019 in Chernivtsi by the Chernivtsi Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yosyp Sozanskyi and edited by him. The amazing intertwining of folk-song intonations and extremely sincere personal expression creates a unique and recognizable style of this ,,swan song" by Kudryk.

Footnotes:
* Rudnytskyi A. Ukrainian music: historical and critical review -
Munich: Dnieper wave, 1963. - P.181
** The same.
*** This term was introduced into Ukrainian musicology by Kudryk himself, in particular in the article ,,We will all go to the meadow with braids". Musical-historical film of the Galician Biedermeier (3 occasions of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Mykhailo Verbytskyy
1815 - 1935). // Ukrainian music. - 2015. - Number 1-2. - P. 118-122.

 - from "The Forbidden Music", Collegium Management - Ukrainian Live Publishing, 2021, Publisher - Olexandr Savchuk, Kharkiv

[semloh]

Sorry, Christopher, but although you often unearth music that I enjoy, this isn't for me. The performance and recording are rather poor, and I find the music wholly unmemorable. I wish that wasn't the case, given the composer's sad life history. Maybe I am being unfair, and others on UC have a more positive reaction.

[Alan Howe]

The symphony's certainly a suitable 'fit' for UC so it's a shame the performance is no more than adequate.

[Mark Thomas]

The performance and recording do it no favours for sure but I do think this work has more than a little going for it. It reminds me of Taneyev's four symphonies in its mix of 19th century Russian lyricism, folk-inspired themes and Germanic solidity. Of course, for the time it was written (never mind poor Kudrik's circumstances) it was completely anachronistic but that needn't matter to us now. I shall certainly give it a second listen.

[Christopher]

Sorry, Christopher, but although you often unearth music that I enjoy, this isn't for me. The performance and recording are rather poor, and I find the music wholly unmemorable. I wish that wasn't the case, given the composer's sad life history. Maybe I am being unfair, and others on UC have a more positive reaction.

I never get why people say "sorry" for not liking something - I didn't write it 

I agree that either the performance of the audio (technical) quality aren't optimal, though I also think there is an improvement throughout the duration (the finale of the first movement, as I mentioned, being particularly impassioned).

[semloh]

I never get why people say "sorry" for not liking something - I didn't write it  .

But you do go to all the effort of telling us about these rather obscure works, Christopher, and providing links, and often uploads too! 

I think it was actually the mix that Mark noted that I didn't like, However, in view of the rather more positive comments from Alan and Mark, I'll give it a more careful listen. So... thanks!

[Christopher]

I never get why people say "sorry" for not liking something - I didn't write it  .

But you do go to all the effort of telling us about these rather obscure works, Christopher, and providing links, and often uploads too! 

I think it was actually the mix that Mark noted that I didn't like, However, in view of the rather more positive comments from Alan and Mark, I'll give it a more careful listen. So... thanks!

Well I enjoy doing so, and value all civilised feedback, regardless of whether people like the pieces or not. (By the way I don't necessarily like everything I post up - but I believe that if it's unsung and of our era/style, it's worthy of being posted as others might see value even when I don't.)

[Alan Howe]

Keep posting, Christopher! You never know when some absolute gem will come your way. And we need members whose interests may uncover music that others of us would never think of looking for.