Prof. Oleh Krysa ranks with the world’s leading violinists, he is Meritorious Artist of Ukraine. After finishing a ten-grade music school in Lviv, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory under the great David Oistrakh, then took a postgraduate course. He is a laureate of most prestigious international contests: Henri Weniawski in Poland, Nicolo Paganini in Genoa, Peter Tchaikovsky in Moscow, and a contest in Toronto. He was a major Soviet violinist and professor with the Kyiv and Moscow Conservatories. Since 1988 he has lived and worked in the United States. He is a professor with the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He has of late been visiting Ukraine on a yearly basis. He visited Kyiv last year, marking his sixtieth birthday. Sometimes his grownup sons take part in his concerts: violinist Petro and conductor Taras. This year he visited the Ukrainian capital again and gave two concerts, performing a chamber program with his wife and invariable piano accompanist Tetiana Chekina in the National Academy’s audience. Their excellent duet has been known since the 1960s. They played Prokofyev, Beethoven, Ravel, and Shnitke. Many numbers were encored.
Several days later Krysa’s devotees gathered at the National Opera for a concert marking the opening of his Benevolent Fund in Ukraine (it has branches in Moscow and New York). That night the violinist surpassed himself. Accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Merited Worker of Art Volodymyr Syrenko Oleh Krysa and his brother Bohdan performed Bach’s double violin concerto. Viorika Kuryliv, eighth-year student at the Lysenko College of Music, appeared in the first part of the concert with Weniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2. The audience looked forward to the second part and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Krysa’s favorite composition. Beethoven wrote it in 1806, at his creative peak and it ranks with the world’s best works of this genre. Prof. Arnold Alschwang [Russian art and music critic, pianist (1898-1960)] wrote that it is “a combination of the grand simplicity of themes with an outstanding subtlety of arrangement, arresting deep- reaching emotions, iron logic, and a great freedom of form; it is truly a brilliant work.” Also, it is one of the most complicated compositions technically as well as conceptually. Oleh Krysa’s performance was colorful, warm, unpretentious, clear, and strong. The audience was especially impressed by the violinist’s nonstandard cadenzas. Oleh Krysa is also known as an interpreter of modern Russian and Ukrainian music. His repertoire includes most of Alfred Shnitke’s works (they were friends). The nonconservative, democratic musician performed Shnitke’s cadenzas for Beethoven’s concerto. Using complex technique and coloration, he laid a thematic bridge between music written almost 200 years ago and the present day. In a cadenza in the Part I, Shnitke quotes from two other great violin concertos by Brahms and Shostakovich. Beethoven eventually did his best to rid the traditional concerto of the genre’s conventionalities, bringing it closer to the symphony. Shnitke’s cadenzas performed by Krysa are perceived as a continuation of the process. The giant musical canvas came alive thanks to the beautiful soloist-orchestra ensemble, translating into life Beethoven’s and Shnitke’s concepts as author and conductor.
