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First Steps During a lifetime of inflation and grave deficiencies, many have not strength enough to make or appreciate art. Fatigue caused by the "struggle for survival" consumes one's remaining energy. One doesn't want either to hear or see. Who and what is there to hear? Where are our best musicians? Where are our leading composers? Some have left for abroad, many are going to follow suit. Having written this sad introduction, I nevertheless want to tell you about a young, very talented girl - particularly so because any natural endowments are twice as valuable. This young artist is HALYNA OVCHARENKO. No, she is not a wunderkind but a young adult musician. She is taking her very first steps as a composer, and is known to practically no one. Ovcharenko is a joyful, graceful and tender woman, a typical dark-haired and brown-eyed Ukrainian. I've known her well since childhood. This girl from the provincial town of Malyn, Zhytomyr Region was good at composition as a student at Kiev's Lysenko Specialised Secondary Music School. She wrote a beautiful cycle of songs to the words of children's poems, which were distinguished by their French harmonies and perfectly matched texture. The graduation exam at Kiev's Conservatory of Music included her choral cantata pieces. By that time Ovcharenko had developed a serious interest in folklore, and she joined expeditions to record folk songs. She became a singer with the "Drevo" ensemble keen on authentic folklore, and toured many places as part of the ensemble. (She returned with the group from Belgium not long ago.) Halyna Ovcharenko was admitted to Ukraine's Composers Union. Her "Vesnoiy" and cantata, based on wagoners' folkloric texts, won approval from her mature colleagues. At present Halyna Ovcharenko teaches at the very same specialised music school where she was once a student, raises a four-year old daughter together with her husband, and continues to compose. She is now working on a large-scale composition for choir, soloists and orchestra, dedicated to tragic events in Ukraine in the 1930s - famine and purges. It is too early to say what will come of it, but I know she is deeply absorbed in this work. And she is progressing steadily. NINA
SHUROVA |