A glimpse at the selections:

An arrangement by Andrij Hnatyshyn (b. 1906, in Chyzhykiv, a village now in the Lviv Oblast; d. 1995, Vienna), also the composer of a wide range of liturgical works integral to the Choir’s repertoire. Upon graduating from the New Vienna Conservatory (1934), he decided to remain in the Austrian capital, where he came to serve as the Kapellmeiters of the St. Barbara Ukrainian Catholic Church Choir, an ensemble that travelled throughout western Europe during his tenure, and enjoyed a triumphant tour of Ukraine in the 1990s.

First conceived circa the turn of the 17th-18th centuries as an element of a “Vertep” cycle (an extension of the traditional itinerant puppet-theatre Nativity Play) in the style of the Kozak Baroque. Thanks to her extensive contacts with contemporary Ukrainian composers, Maestro Zinchenko happened on this arrangement, by Ostap Manuliak (b. 1983) inflected by the genre of madrigals.

The composer of this piece, Stepan Stelmashchuk (b. 1925, d. 2011, in Ukraine), a graduate of the Lviv Conservatory (1959), was appointed Choirmaster of the Lviv Pedagogical Insitute, whereupon the Soviet regime forced him and the entire institution to relocate to Drohobych in 1960. Stelmashchuk began to compose a musical setting to the Divine Liturgy in secret in 1949, completing it 42 years later, a few months after Ukraine’s declaration of independence. He was fortunate to live to see it published? at long last? in 2007.

Mykhailo Hajvoronskyj (b. 1892 in Zalishchyky, a town now in the Ternopil Oblast; d. 1949, New York City) is a composer whose contributions are not as widely recognized as those of his contemporaries Mykola Leontovych and Kyrylo Stetsenko. Nevertheless, we made similar efforts in the spheres of ethnographic musicology and composition, An officer of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, he emigrated to the US in 1923, where he continued his seminal and influential work.