Translation: Uliana Pasicznyk
and Maxim Tarnawsky

I’ll leave, I’ll run away into the blue mountains
That hold the heavens in a friendly embrace.
I’ll go into the forests, steppes, and open spaces,
Where I once ran in joy,
And there I’ll sing a song
With all the pain in my heart I’ll yell
The bloody song of my land—
It’s unstoppable weeping

Following the quelling of the Ukrainian revolution in1920, both poet and composer lament the fate of Ukraine. The unrestrained run of the impetuous vocal line, urged on by agitated piano passages, brings the art song to its tragic culmination, which explodes into an inconsolable cry

Олександер Олесь

Піду, втечу у сині гори,
Що з небом дружно обнялись;
Піду в ліси, степи, простори,
Куди біг в радості колись,
І там я пісню заспіваю,
Всім болем серця прокричу
Криваву пісню мого краю,
Його невтішного плачу!

Вслід за поразкою української революції в 1920-му році, поет і композитор оплакують долю України. Нестримний біг стрімкої вокальної лінії, спонукуваний збудженими пасажами фортепіано, приводить пісню до трагічної кульмінації, що вибухає невтішним плачем.

Stanyslav Liudkevych first studied composition with his mother, a pupil of Mykhailo Verbytsky who wrote the music to Ukraine’s national anthem. While at university, Liudkevych was a pupil of Sołtys at the Lemberg Conservatory. Then in Vienna, he studied with Alexander Zemlinsky, Hermann Grädener, and Guido Adler; even attending Hugo Riemann’s lectures in Germany. In 1908, he succeeded Anatole Vakhnianyn as director of the Lysenko Institute.

During World War I, Liudkevych was drafted into the Austrian army. Captured by the Russians, he spent time in Kazakhstan as a prisoner of war. In 1919, he resumed work at the institute in Lviv. In 1936, Liudkevych became head of the musicological commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. From 1940 to 1972 he taught at the Lviv State Conservatory. Despite being a 20th-century composer, Liudkevych maintained a post-romantic palette that was later tempered by Soviet neo-folklorism. In fact, under the Soviet regime his creative output dwindled. At one of the first meetings with the Communist Party in 1939, the composer is reputed to have quipped, “liberated [by the Communists]—there’s nothing one can do
about that…”

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