Times Through the Looking Glass. The Choice of Borys Liatoshynskyi

Before you is a book about a great and at the same time terrible era that created and broke generations of artists whose names still remain unknown to the general public. Borys Liatoshynskyi is a world-class figure and a composer who chose to be Ukrainian is one of them.

Strict and demanding of himself, but at the same time sincere and devoted to his friends and students. A master on the level of Richard Strauss and Alban Berg, whom Soviet cultural policy kept in the shadow of Russian musical authorities. A man capable of bold gestures even in the most terrible years of Stalin's terror. Who was he really - a Soviet classic or a Ukrainian innovator? And is it possible to understand his music without looking into the complex and contradictory "looking glass" of the time in which he had to create?

Weaving documents, letters, and the living voices of eyewitnesses into the narrative, musicologists Iryna Tukova and Olena Korchova create a fascinating story about the life and music of one of the most prominent Ukrainian composers of the 20th century. It is a story about the choice between freedom and survival, truth and compromise, art and censorship. And it is this choice of Borys Liatoshynskyi that makes him closer to us today than ever before.