Solomiya Ivakhiv: Music of Resilience

The Strad Issue: October 2026

Description: A powerful album offering music as protest

Musicians: Solomiya Ivakhiv (violin) Symphony Orchestra of Lviv National Philharmonic/Roman Kreslenko, Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra/Serhii Khorovets

Works: Music by Frolyak, Havrylets, Kryvopust, Polevá, Prydatkevych, Shevchenko and Zalesky

Catalogue number: NAXOS 8579191

There are times when cold-headed critical objectivity proves hard to maintain, and Lviv-born violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv’s new disc is one of them. Devoted entirely to Ukrainian music, and delivered by an all-Ukrainian roster of performers (on fine, characterful form), it’s far more an assertion of the country’s distinct cultural identity – and a solemn witness to recent Russian atrocities – than merely a CD. Indeed, its opening track is the disc’s most harrowing. Victoria Vita Polevá wrote her 2022 Bucha. Lacrimosa in response to the massacre of Ukrainian civilians as Russian troops withdrew from the northern Ukrainian city, and Ivakhiv offers a heartfelt account, her careful, tender articulation of the piece’s solo line later transformed into unapologetic anguish.

Elsewhere, Ivakhiv unearths works demonstrating the richness of the country’s musical history: Roman Prydatkevych’s 1956 Ukrainian Rhapsody no.1, for example, glitters and dazzles in its collection of folk tunes, while there are further traditional Ukrainian themes amid the whirling dance rhythms and declamatory solos of Hanna Havrylets’s 1993 Ex libris, which serves as an excellent vehicle for Ivakhiv’s confident playing.

Bringing us back to more recent events, the violinist provides intimacy and focus amid the Hollywood-style opulence of Bohdan Kryvopust’s On the River, inspired by the 2014 protests in Kyiv’s Independence Square. Perhaps inevitably, it’s a disc of shorter, more occasional works, whose wide-ranging styles can end up sounding rather bewildering. But for its unflinching testimony on recent horrors, it’s an offering that’s bold, defiant and deeply moving.

DAVID KETTLE