Performing National Identity: Interpreting the Folkloric Idiom of Lyatoshynsky’s Piano Preludes as Curated Musical Experience

Abstract

The piano preludes of Borys Lyatoshynsky (1895–1968)—the Three Preludes, Op. 38, the Two Preludes on Ukrainian folk-song melodies, Op. 38bis, and the Five Preludes, Op. 44, all composed during the 1942–43 wartime evacuation—have re-entered Western concert life as vehicles of Ukrainian identity. This article shifts the question of national identity in these miniatures away from a text-immanent reading of the score toward how performing and curating them affords an experience of Ukrainian identity for the present-day listener. Drawing on documented recent performances and recordings—Vadym Kholodenko’s recital programming of Op. 38 alongside the canonical European repertory, and Margaret Fingerhut’s curated album Ukraine: A Piano Portrait—it argues that performance largely realises an identity the score encodes, while curation can add—through sequence and paratext—meaning the notes do not fix. The preludes’ internal difference between literal folk-song quotation (Op. 38bis) and folk intonation (Opp. 38 and 44) becomes a resource that performers and curators mobilise. Situating these cases within the broader re-reception of Lyatoshynsky during the Russo-Ukrainian war, the article reframes the prelude as a site where national identity, encoded in the score, is realised as a present-day experience through performance and curation.