Ukrainian Spring festival to be held in Sweden for fourth time
The programme of the fourth European Festival: Ukrainian Spring event has been announced in Stockholm. The festival will take place from 1 to 24 April.
Source: The programme was posted at the event's website
Details: Over the course of three weeks, more than fifteen events dedicated to Ukrainian and European music, poetry, art and cinema will be held in the Swedish capital.
The festival is organised by the Ukrainian Institute in Sweden in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine in Sweden and nearly 40 cultural partners. The events will take place at key cultural venues across Stockholm.
This year's theme is the motto Contra Spem Spero, the name of a poem by Lesia Ukrainka.
The organisers explain that this phrase became the foundation of the programme, which brings together works of art created in difficult historical moments yet filled with faith and inner resilience.
"Lesia Ukrainka wrote the poem Contra Spem Spero! at the age of nineteen, when she was already seriously ill. In the very title, she reinterprets the Latin expression Dum spiro spero — 'While I breathe, I hope'. To hope without hope means not denying reality, but refusing helplessness and indifference," said pianist and artistic director of the festival Nataliia Pasichnyk.
The festival will open with a concert at Konserthuset Stockholm. Young musicians from the orchestra academy of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lviv National Philharmonic will perform there.
The project has become part of a new international partnership between music institutions in Sweden and Ukraine and is being implemented with the support of the Swedish Institute.
The festival will conclude with a concert at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where a symphony orchestra will perform works by Ukrainian composers Mykola Lysenko and Borys Liatoshynskyi. Among them will be Liatoshynskyi's Third Symphony, which was once banned by Soviet authorities.
Between the opening and closing concerts, fifteen more events are planned. These include a concert of sacred choral music at Stockholm Cathedral performed by the Lviv boys' choir Dudaryk Choir; a concert of Ukrainian music at the Royal Swedish Opera; organ improvisations at Engelbrekt Church based on melodies from Gammalsvenskby, a historic Swedish village in southern Ukraine; and an evening of Ukrainian and Swedish Baroque music at the Swedish History Museum.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!