Lviv Early Music Festival: Stages of Development

Abstract

The International Lviv Early Music Festival is one of the largest and most prominent art forums in Ukraine, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. The program of the festival is based on the current trends of historically informed performance and on the history of early music. It brings together Ukrainian and foreign musicians who have extensive experience in performing on historical instruments and playing music from different eras. Part of the program of each forum represents Ukrainian early music. Since the first festival, the organizers have been striving to present as diverse a program as possible, including not only works of the High Baroque, familiar to Lviv audiences from concerts at the Organ Music Hall and the Philharmonic but also music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ukrainian early music is mainly represented by the choral church tradition performed by such ensembles as Kalofonia, ACappella Leopolis, Sarmatica, and the Chorea Kozatska, etc. In addition to concerts, the festival hosts academic conferences on the history of music with the participation of prominent Ukrainian and European scholars, as well as roundtables, where festival participants discuss the interpretation of early music and the development of historically informed performance in Ukraine. The festival’s educational program has had a significant impact on professional performance in Lviv.