Oleksandr Shchetynsky

OLEKSANDR SHCHETYNSKY (b. 1960, Kharkiv) is a graduate of V. Borisov’s class at the Kharkiv Art Institute. He participated in the Summer Courses for Young Composers in Kazimierz Dolny in 1990 and 1991, where he listened to lectures by L. Andriessen, W. Lutoslawski, K. Penderecki, B. Schaeffer, M. Lindberg. He has also completed Computer Music Courses at the Academy of Music in Cracow, master classes in Lerchenborg (Denmark) with E. Denisov, among others.

He has received awards at seven international composition competitions in Austria, France, Luxembourg, Poland, Russia and Switzerland. His list of works includes compositions in many forms and performance compositions, from solo instrumental and chamber music to orchestral and choral works, as well as operas. In the past decade, he has written the opera fantasy “The Interrupted Letter” based on Taras Shevchenko (staged in Vienna in 2015), the Piano Concerto (premiered in Mainz in 2015), choral cycles “Six Poems by Pavlo Tychyna” (premiered in Harlem, the Netherlands in 2016) and “Pastorals for Angels” (2021), apocryphal opera “Judah and Magdalene” (2017), accordion concerto “Ascension” (2018), Sonata for Organ (2021). In 2018, he published a book on Ukrainian avant-garde composer Leonid Hrabovsky (b. 1935) containing dialogues with the composer, analytical articles, letters and other materials. Since 2018, he has held the Chair of Composition and Instrumentation at Kharkiv’s I.P. Kotliarevsky National University of Arts.