Antonyuk, Valeriy: Cello Concerto

Valeriy Antonyuk was born in Ukraine in 1979. A composer, arranger, pianist and songwriter, he works across classical and popular music and plays Ukrainian flutes, cimbalom, classical and electric guitar, drums and bass guitar. He began studying piano at five and started composing at twelve. His early works included five piano preludes entitled Imitating Prokofiev, the solo-flute sonata Dedication to Debussy, three arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs for unaccompanied mixed choir and a string-quartet Nocturne in memory of Gustav Mahler.

From 1993 to 1997 he received composition lessons from Vitaliy Kireyko, composer of the opera Forest Song and ballet Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. In 1998 he entered the composition and orchestration department of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. He graduated in 2003 after studying twentieth-century compositional techniques, counterpoint and orchestration with Gennadiy Lyashenko and piano with Yuriy Gluschenko.

His graduation work, The Sounding Is Present, is a twenty-minute piece for full symphony orchestra, performed in the National Radio Company of Ukraine’s Grand Recording Studio by its orchestra under Vyacheslav Blinov. Yevhen Stankovych, then head of the composition department, praised its individuality, orchestration and formal boldness. Antonyuk continued postgraduate studies at the same academy with Lyashenko from 2004 to 2008.

His screen work includes music for the television films Red Lotus, Bread Day and Snake Is Creeping, produced by Star Media/Freshproduction.ua; the documentary Black Sea Navy 1941–1944, produced by Insitemedia; and the short films Who Is Tanya? and She Called Him an Idiot. His music has featured at Ukrainian contemporary-music festivals including Kyiv Music Fest, Musical Premieres of the Season and Contrasts.

The Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra has recorded his music for the national broadcasting archive. These recordings include his cantata on poems by Federico García Lorca, the Piano Concerto (2007) and Four Songs on poems by Vasyl Stus (2008), in performances conducted by Victoria Zhadko. His cantata on poems by Alexander Pushkin and Symphony No. 2, Fanfare, were recorded in 2011 and 2012 respectively under Vladimir Sheiko.

His collaborators have included the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine with Vladimir Sirenko and Natalia Ponomarchuk; the Symphony Orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine with Myroslav Skoryk; the State Academic Variety-Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine with Mykola Lysenko; the Bulgarian Film Orchestra with Gregor Narholz; and the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra with Nikoloz Rachveli. He has also worked with the Archi and Collegium string quartets, the Credo Chamber Choir under Bogdan Plish, the Khreshchatyk Academic Chamber Choir under Pavlo Struts and Italian bass clarinetist Fabrizio Bardelli. His mother, lyric-dramatic soprano and professor Valentina Antonyuk, has premiered and championed his vocal music.

By the time of this album’s publication in 2018, his output encompassed around 600 symphonic, choral and chamber works, pieces for instrumental ensembles and orchestral miniatures, as well as approximately thirty songs setting his own Ukrainian and Russian lyrics in styles including rock, pop-rock and Britpop.

He joined the National Union of Composers of Ukraine in 2004, BMI in 2008 and MCPS in 2009. He won the International Prokofiev Composers’ Competition in Ukraine in 2000 with Theme and Six Transformations for Piano Quintet, and the Grand Prize in the music-for-film competition Solospiv at the eighth Kyiv International Documentary Film Festival, Kinolitopys, in 2009. His honours include the Levko Revutsky Award (2010) and the Borys Lyatoshynsky Award (2018) for Symphony No. 7, Masquerade of Unseen Dreams, dedicated to innocent victims of war and terror.