Description
The Ukrainian composer Stefania Turkewycz (1898-1977) is an artist featured in our catalogue whose name was previously known only to the most initiated circles of experts. A multitude of reasons pushed her to the very periphery of the musical universe - not least her own decision after the end of the war to flee west to escape the Red Army. She ultimately found a home in Great Britain without ever really settling there. Yet this young woman from Lemberg (Lviv), who studied with Guido Adler and Joseph Marx in Vienna and with Franz Schreker and Arnold Schoenberg in Berlin, possessed astonishing creative potential. Building on the foundations of Ukrainian folklore, she forged her own unique path into modernism shown by these first recordings - from her rhapsodic Violin Sonata (1935) to two chamber works from her later years in Britain. Here her advanced technique, coupled with the dance-like energy and the folk songs of her homeland, pull the strings.