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Performers
- Alter Ratio vocal ensemble (12 singers)
- Olga Prykhodko conductor
Programme
- György LigetiLux Aeterna (1966) – for 16 voices, in a version for 12 voices and live electronics
- Maxim KolomiietsDisappearing Voices (2023) – for vocal ensemble and electronics
- Maxim ShalyginSub Rosa (2023) – for vocal ensemble and electronics (based on text by Robert Frost)
- Alla ZagaykevychPsalms of Falling (2023) – for vocal ensemble and electronics
- Peter KerkelovPhosphorus (2023) – for vocal ensemble and electronics
Including a panel discussion about the power of art in times of war with Floris Akkerman, Christian van der Kooy and Olga Korol (NL4UA).
This concert has been made possible thanks to the support of V Fonds, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Ukrainian Institute and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
Symbolic echoes
The Ukrainian vocal ensemble Alter Ratio is causing an international sensation. The twelve singers make their Dutch debut with Lux Aeterna Revoice. György Ligeti’s iconic Lux Aeterna — featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — is performed alongside four brand-new works dedicated to Ukrainian artists who lost their lives in the war.
This impressive and innovative programme sees each composer intertwine the singers’ voices with electronic soundscapes in a unique and personal way. Ligeti’s sixteen-part masterpiece acquires a new, poignant resonance. The twelve singers of Alter Ratio are joined by four electronic layers — echoes of voices silenced by war.
Each of the new works explores the theme of memory and loss in its own way. In Disappearing Voices, Maxim Kolomiiets gives voice to the fragility of sounds fading into darkness. In Sub Rosa, Maxim Shalygin creates a labyrinth of sound where melodies and electronics alternately embrace and contradict one another. Alla Zagaykevych evokes a constant motion between hope and despair in Psalms of Falling, while in Phosphorus, Peter Kerkelov lets the light of vanished souls glow as beacons for the living.
On display at the concert is the striking photographic exhibition Regeneration Generation – Messages from Kharkiv by Christian van der Kooy.
Regeneration Generation –
Messages from Kharkiv
Photographic exhibition at the concert
In the autumn of 2024, Dutch photographer Christian van der Kooy spent five weeks in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian city just forty kilometers from the Russian border. His journey was a search for how culture endures in the midst of war.
Van der Kooy met with twenty-seven cultural workers – from archaeologists and theatre directors to visual artists and curators – all of whom chose to remain in Kharkiv despite the constant shelling. His photographs and field notes reveal not only the destruction of war, but also the resilience, creativity, and deep sense of belonging that persist within the city’s artistic community.
The exhibition paints a vivid portrait of cultural life on the frontline — the daily courage of those who stay, their refusal to abandon art, and their conviction that creation itself is an act of survival.