World premieres that had never been put on record: a Ukrainian violinist releases her third album on Naxos

Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv has released the album Music of Resilience on the British label Naxos. It is her third record for the label, and every piece on it is a world premiere recording.

The release is confirmed by the discography page on the violinist’s own website.

The album came out on 28 August. On it Ivakhiv does what she did on her two previous Naxos records: gives a voice to Ukrainian composers, both living ones and those nearly forgotten at home.

What a “world premiere recording” means

It is a label used only when a work has never been recorded at all. For Ukrainian music it comes up more often than one would wish: many scores lay for decades without a single studio version.

That is exactly what Ivakhiv builds her Naxos series on. Instead of another reading of well-known classics she takes what the catalogues do not have.

Part of the programme responds to wars, and not only to the current one. The rest, as the album itself puts it, celebrates the distinct identity of Ukrainian classical music and its folk roots.

“On her third album for Naxos, the violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv continues to give a voice to both living Ukrainian composers and overlooked figures from the country’s rich musical heritage,” the release description says.

Where this goes next

Naxos is not a boutique label for collectors but one of the largest classical catalogues in the world, with global distribution. These recordings will reach libraries and streaming in countries where Ukrainian music has never been heard.

The live launch is set for 19 September, in the Music at the Institute concert series. The programme is called “Music of Resilience — Ukrainian Voices and Beyond”.

Ivakhiv herself comes from Lviv. She has played with the Lviv Virtuosi orchestra and on American stages, and her earlier Naxos releases were built around Ukrainian music in the same way.

For the catalogue this means a simple thing: scores that could have stayed as paper in an archive now exist as sound, available anywhere.

Earlier we wrote about how the classics of Ukrainian pop were handed to three generations of singers — another way of making old songs sound new.