Ukrainian Spring festival to be held in Sweden for fourth time

The programme of the fourth European Festival: Ukrainian Spring has been announced in Stockholm. The festival will take place from 1 to 24 April.

Source: the programme posted on the event's website

Details: Over the course of three weeks, more than fifteen events showcasing 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 "Contra Spem Spero" ("Against all hope, I hope"), the title of a poem by Lesia Ukrainka.

The organisers explained that this motto is the foundation of the programme, which brings together works of art that were created at difficult times in history, yet are filled with faith and inner resilience.

Concert pianist Natalya Pasichnyk, the artistic director of the festival, said: "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 does not mean denying reality, but rejecting helplessness and indifference."

The festival will open with a concert at Konserthuset Stockholm featuring young musicians from the orchestra academy of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lviv National Philharmonic.

The project is 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 the 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' 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.

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