Alexander Pechenyuk was born in 1959 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (formerly part of the Soviet Union). Pechenyuk played piano and violin from an early age, but did not originally choose music as a career. While completing a diploma in economics, he began to study with the renowned Russian composer Boris Zeidman. Zeidman encouraged Pechenyuk to continue composing and in 1986 he received a Master’s Degree in Music Composition from the State Conservatory in Tashkent. In 1998, Pechenyuk moved to Israel and in 2001 he came to Canada, settling in Vancouver.

Pechenyuk’s symphonic and chamber compositions have been performed and recorded at concerts and festivals throughout Russia, the European Union and Canada. He has written several pieces for the Association of Contemporary Music in Moscow and has been featured at the 2006 Winnipeg New Music Festival and the 2007 RussiaFest of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Programme Note, In Memoriam

In Memoriam, for soprano (on tape), solo violin, solo viola, and orchestra, is an elegy for Pechenyuk’s former composition teacher, Boris Zeidman. Pechenyuk transforms Zeidman’s Umolknu skoro ya..., for soprano and piano, whose text is a poem by Alexander Pushkin on death and loss.

Zeidman’s work, firmly in the tradition of Russian classical music, is a romance in triple time, with wave-like arpeggios rising and falling in the piano. Pechenyuk alters its instrumentation, slows its tempo, and adds changing time signatures; though the harmony of the original remains, it is shifted against the soprano line, creating an interplay of accents between melody and accompaniment. With this transformation, the mood of the original changes considerably, achieving a mystical quality that is heightened by the disembodied voice on tape.

With In Memoriam, Pechenyuk explores the shared human experience of death and loss, offering a new interpretation of Zeidman’s music, itself an interpretation of Pushkin’s poem on this theme.

Credits: Gregory Lee Newsome
Creator: Gregory Lee Newsome
Subject: In Memoriam | Alexander Pechenyuk | Boris Zeidman | Alexander Pushkin
Date Created: 2007-04-16

Interview, Pechenyuk’s Cultural Influences: Uzbekistan to Canada

“Russians in Uzbekistan were like missionaries with religion and culture. They established the educational, medical and cultural traditions. You can’t talk about one culture in Uzbekistan – everything is mixed up.” – A.P.

Pechenyuk describes his own musical language as influenced by Shostakovich, Bach, and Mahler, as well as Debussy and Messiaen, and his identity as more cosmopolitan than simply Russian. Since coming to Canada, he feels he has matured as a composer, and knowingly draws on musical elements of cultural traditions and education in his compositions because, he admits, “you can’t get rid of traditions completely, and what you see around you still influences you.”

In Memoriam is based on two elements of Pechenyuk’s Russian heritage: a song written by his composition teacher in Uzbekistan, Boris Zeidman (1908-1981), and a poem by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) on which Zeidman’s song was based. Zeidman was an important mentor in Pechenyuk’s compositional career and in writing this work he was able to reflect on both the man and his music. Pechenyuk describes Zeidman’s music in this song as harmonically and melodically “traditional.” In reworking it into his own composition several years after Zeidman’s death, Pechenyuk explored techniques for representing the independence of two different modes of expression by surrounding Zeidman’s music in his own original material. The conflict of different harmonies is played out until near the end, when Pechenyuk’s C# overcomes the D minor of his mentor.

Credits: Dr. Mary Ingraham
Creator: Dr. Mary Ingraham
Subject: Alexander Pechenyuk | In Memoriam
Date Created: 2007-04-23

Portrait, Alexander Pushkin

The Russian author Alexander Pushkin.

Credits: Orest Adamovich Kiprensky
Creator: Orest Adamovich Kiprensky
Subject: Alexander Pushkin
Date Created: 1827