Momotenko: Summer

‘Summer | Lito’ for an a cappella choir presents in about 7 minutes the second vibrant season of the calendar year (in Ukraine, countdown starts with “Spring”, instead of ‘Winter’) and is based on the poem by Dmytro Pavlychko (1929 - 2023).

This poem ‘oscillates’ as it were between two extreme meanings: the optimistic and the sad. Chronologically, the poet writes this work already in his ripe years, when he feels that beautiful childhood and youth are already irrevocably over.

Thus, the listener is constantly confronted with scenes of childhood (such as summer, flashes of the plough in the sun, the scents, the cradle, fields, rainbow, the mother's necklace with pearls etc...) and on the other side: the wistful longing thoughts of that time, or ‘darkness in the soul’.

Finally comes the summer evening, it gets darker and darker, collectively seen as a symbol that life has passed its zenith. The piece concludes with a beautiful Slavic hymn.