Olexiy Voytenko: The music of Erich Zann

Alex or Olexiy Voytenko (b. 1981 in Kyiv, Ukraine) is a composer, music teacher, and musicologist. He graduated from the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music in 2002 in the Department of Composition in the class of Yuri Iuschenko and received an invitation to return to that department as a teacher in 2012. Since 2014 he has worked at the Music School in Kiev now Academy Of Music GLIERE. In 2005 and 2007, Voytenko was the co-organizer of the festival International Forum for Youth Music in Kiev. Olexiy Voytenko’s compositions include Lento for chamber orchestra (2012), The Possibility of an Island for piano and strings (2011), and Spirit of Solitude for solo piano (2003/2008). He is a member of the National Composers Union of Ukraine.

Olexiy Voytenko’s 2016 composition for violoncello solo The music of Erich Zann takes its inspiration from a short story of the same name by the American fantasy and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Voytenko has previously composed versions of this work for violin solo (in 2009) and solo double-bass (2010). The violoncello version, which is dedicated to cellist Zoltan Almashi, received its world premiere on 9 February 2017 in a performance by Almashi which we feature here in a video recorded by Edward Skrypa with audio production by Igor Melnyk.