Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
00:05 I. Introduction
02:35 II. Poem-Nocturne
09:27 III. Dance
14:15 IV. Mournful Music
19:44 V. Variations
Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Vadym Gnedash
The skip around 26:40 loses almost two full pages' worth of music; unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it, as it comes from the original recording (same with the audio clicks at the beginning). There are also a few minor differences between the score and the recording. Many thanks to @fortisanimaukraine3027 for uploading the original, which seems to be quite rare: youtube.com/watch?v=Syrs7DJiRJc
Borys Lyatoshynsky (Борис Лятошинський; also Latinized as Boris Lyatoshinsky, 1895-1968) was an influential Ukrainian composer, conductor, and teacher. Having composed in his juvenile years, Lyatoshynsky entered the Faculty of Law at Kyiv University on his father's advice. However, after his family asked Kyiv native Reinhold Glière, the new head of the city's conservatory, to teach him (which Glière accepted), Lyatoshynsky soon enrolled in the conservatory, where he himself would teach after graduating.
At the age of 25, Lyatoshynsky founded the first professional contemporary music society in Ukraine, and ten years later, he was promoted from lecturer to full professor at the Kyiv Conservatory; he also taught at the Moscow Conservatory in two separate periods in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In his early works, he drew strong influence both from Russian late Romanticism and the novel ideas of Scriabin, but he went down a decidedly more modernist path beginning in the 1920s, although strains of Ukrainian and Polish music (having been born and raised in the city of Zhytomyr, historically inhabited by ethnic Poles) as well as Orthodox liturgical music continued to percolate through his work.
Lyatoshynsky's music was not often performed during his lifetime; his second symphony was criticized even before its planned premiere in the mid-1930s, which was then canceled due to the death of Soviet politician Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Although he received some recognition for his arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs and Ukrainian-influenced chamber works during World War II, Lyatoshynsky came under further attack - as did many of the other Soviet composers whose music I have posted here - during the postwar "anti-formalist" drive under Stalin. Lyatoshynsky was frustrated by the campaign against his music, writing to Glière "as a composer, I am dead, and I do not know when I will be resurrected", but nevertheless persisted on his stylistic path. Restrictions on his music finally eased after the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s, and in 1960s he was allowed to travel and meet composers west of the Iron Curtain.
As a teacher, Lyatoshynsky was instrumental in developing the talents of subsequent generations of Ukrainian composers, most notably Myroslav Skoryk and Valentyn Sylvestrov. His music has been increasingly well-represented on recordings since the 1990s and is now receiving (belatedly) stronger recognition among listeners worldwide after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Lyatoshynsky gave the monikers "Slavic" or Slavonic" to multiple of his works, including his fifth symphony and his "Slavic Concerto" for piano and orchestra. Written in either 1966 or 1967 according to different sources, just before Lyatoshynsky passed away, the "Slavonic Suite" is characteristic of his later music, with a typically modernist harmonic language, intriguing evocations of folk music, and the composer's distinctive luminous orchestration.
00:05 I. Introduction
02:35 II. Poem-Nocturne
09:27 III. Dance
14:15 IV. Mournful Music
19:44 V. Variations
Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Vadym Gnedash
The skip around 26:40 loses almost two full pages' worth of music; unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it, as it comes from the original recording (same with the audio clicks at the beginning). There are also a few minor differences between the score and the recording. Many thanks to @fortisanimaukraine3027 for uploading the original, which seems to be quite rare: youtube.com/watch?v=Syrs7DJiRJc
Borys Lyatoshynsky (Борис Лятошинський; also Latinized as Boris Lyatoshinsky, 1895-1968) was an influential Ukrainian composer, conductor, and teacher. Having composed in his juvenile years, Lyatoshynsky entered the Faculty of Law at Kyiv University on his father's advice. However, after his family asked Kyiv native Reinhold Glière, the new head of the city's conservatory, to teach him (which Glière accepted), Lyatoshynsky soon enrolled in the conservatory, where he himself would teach after graduating.
At the age of 25, Lyatoshynsky founded the first professional contemporary music society in Ukraine, and ten years later, he was promoted from lecturer to full professor at the Kyiv Conservatory; he also taught at the Moscow Conservatory in two separate periods in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In his early works, he drew strong influence both from Russian late Romanticism and the novel ideas of Scriabin, but he went down a decidedly more modernist path beginning in the 1920s, although strains of Ukrainian and Polish music (having been born and raised in the city of Zhytomyr, historically inhabited by ethnic Poles) as well as Orthodox liturgical music continued to percolate through his work.
Lyatoshynsky's music was not often performed during his lifetime; his second symphony was criticized even before its planned premiere in the mid-1930s, which was then canceled due to the death of Soviet politician Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Although he received some recognition for his arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs and Ukrainian-influenced chamber works during World War II, Lyatoshynsky came under further attack - as did many of the other Soviet composers whose music I have posted here - during the postwar "anti-formalist" drive under Stalin. Lyatoshynsky was frustrated by the campaign against his music, writing to Glière "as a composer, I am dead, and I do not know when I will be resurrected", but nevertheless persisted on his stylistic path. Restrictions on his music finally eased after the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s, and in 1960s he was allowed to travel and meet composers west of the Iron Curtain.
As a teacher, Lyatoshynsky was instrumental in developing the talents of subsequent generations of Ukrainian composers, most notably Myroslav Skoryk and Valentyn Sylvestrov. His music has been increasingly well-represented on recordings since the 1990s and is now receiving (belatedly) stronger recognition among listeners worldwide after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Lyatoshynsky gave the monikers "Slavic" or Slavonic" to multiple of his works, including his fifth symphony and his "Slavic Concerto" for piano and orchestra. Written in either 1966 or 1967 according to different sources, just before Lyatoshynsky passed away, the "Slavonic Suite" is characteristic of his later music, with a typically modernist harmonic language, intriguing evocations of folk music, and the composer's distinctive luminous orchestration.
