Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered. Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.
This event will be held in English.
1991 Project presents Zahortsev Days in Paris, co-organized by Columbia Global Paris Center and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. With the support of the Embassy of Ukraine in France. Curated by Anna Stavychenko.
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The Zahortsev Days in Paris continue the spirit of the 2023 Silvestrov Days, organized by the 1991 Project. Like Valentyn Silvestrov, Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zahortsev was a student of Borys Lyatoshynsky and one of the key figures of the Kyiv avant-garde.
In Pierre Boulez’s Orbit: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Composer’s Birth
2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding French composer, conductor, musical figure, and educator Pierre Boulez, who already in the early 1950s became one of the leaders of the European post-war avant-garde. His creative, performing, and organizational activities in the development and popularization of modern classical music cannot be overestimated.
In his new program “In Pierre Boulez’s orbit”, Evgeny Gromov with meticulous research traces in detail, on the one hand, the Boulezian genesis, creative origins, and performing preferences of the artist; on the other hand, the radius of his direct personal compositional influences on the future generation of young colleagues, including Volodymyr Zahortsev and other Ukrainian composers.
Program [80min]
Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)
D'un cahier d'esquisses, CD 112; L 99 (1903 – 04)
Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945)
Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, op. 20; Sz. 74; BB 83 (1920)
VII. Sostenuto, rubato Claude Debussy in memoriam
VIII. Allegro
Arnold Schönberg (1874 – 1951)
Klavierstück, op. 33/a (1928 –1929)
André Jolivet (1905 – 1974)
Mana (1935) à Louise Varèse
III. La princesse de Bali
Anton von Webern (1883 – 1945)
Variationen, op. 27 (1935 – 1936)
Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016)
Douze notations (1945)
Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992)
Quatre études de rythme (1949 – 1950)
II. Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (Darmstadt, 1949)
Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016)
Une Page d'Éphéméride (2005)
Intermission
Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016)
Troisième sonate (1955-1957, rev. 1963)
Formant 2 "Trope"
Glose – Texte – Parenthèse – Commentaire
Vitaly Godziatsky (*1936)
Surface ruptures (1963)
Valentyn Silvestrov (*1937)
Elegy (1967)
Osvaldas Balakauskas (*1937)
Cascades – 1 (1967)
Volodymyr Zahortsev (1944 – 2010)
Rhythms (1969 version)
Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016)
Incises (2001 version)
Fragment d’une ébauche (1987)
Musician
Evgeny Gromov is a Ukrainian pianist internationally recognized for his deep commitment to 20th-century music. His repertoire spans composers such as Satie, Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ravel, Bartók, Szymanowski, Roslavets, Lourié, Dallapiccola, Messiaen, Cage, Carter, Feldman, Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen, Knaifel, Kurtág, and others. He has studied with Helmuth Lachenmann, Pierre Boulez, and Péter Eötvös in masterclasses and workshops.
Gromov has curated and performed numerous solo monographic concerts, including tributes to Valentyn Silvestrov (60th anniversary, 1998), Pierre Boulez (80th anniversary, 2005), György Kurtág (80th anniversary, 2006), and Viktoria Poleva (50th anniversary, 2012). He also creates conceptual programs that explore unexpected connections across eras, such as Mozart and His Aesthetics (2006), Wagner – Webern (2008), Haydn – Knaifel (2009), and Dmytro Bortniansky and 20th-Century Ukrainian Piano Music (2009).
In addition to his performance career, Gromov is active as a researcher and educator. He has led lectures and workshops on 20th-century music, aleatoric techniques in Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata, the Kyiv avant-garde of the 1960s, and the early work of Volodymyr Zahortsev.
Gromov has premiered over 100 works in Ukraine and worldwide. His recordings feature compositions by Wagner, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Revutsky, Hrabovsky, Godziatzky, Silvestrov, Huba, Stankovych, Solovkin, Zahortsev, Krutykov, Knaifel, and Boulez (TNC Recording, USA).
He is a recipient of the Levko Revutsky National Prize (1996) and the StART Award (2003).
Volodymyr Zahortsev
Volodymyr Zahortsev (1944 – 2010) was among the last students of Borys Lyatoshynsky, who himself was one of the greatest symphonists of the 20th century and founder of Ukrainian musical modernism. Zahortsev was also the youngest member of the informal underground group known as the Kyiv avant-garde, along with Leonid Grabovsky, Vitaliy Gozdyatsky, Valentyn Silvestrov, and others.
Zahortsev is perhaps the brightest representative of musical structuralism in Ukrainian music, who widely used in the 1960s the latest compositional techniques of the time—dodecaphony, serial pointillism, sonoristics, clusters, graphic-spatial notation. An emblematic example of this period of his work is “Rhythms” for solo piano (1967/1969). In the mid-1970s, Zahortsev moved away from the avant-garde style, composing a series of chamber instrumental concertos and sonatas. However, later he has returned to a more complex musical language, thus combining his own work from the early and middle periods. One of Zahortsev's last compositions, his Piano Trio (2008), is a typical example of this combination.
Venue
This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.
Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.
