LET THERE BE LIGHT

KYIV MUSIC FEST– 2026

CLOSING CONCERT

LET THERE BE LIGHT

LET  THERE  BE LIGHT is the closing concert of Kyiv Music Fest – 2026. The programme explores themes of light and darkness, loss and hope, spiritual choice, and the human capacity to preserve a sense of inner strength. The concert opens with Bohdana Frolyak’s Let There Be Light, a work composed during the war. For Frolyak, light is the light of Ukraine, the light of freedom and dignity, the memory of those who gave their lives for it, and the conviction that this light will prevail. The programme continues with Liubava Sydorenko’s Concerto for Cello and Large Symphony Orchestra, in which the intimate, solitary voice of the cello is set against the immense forces of the orchestra. Hanna Havrylets’ Signs follows, reflecting on fate, choice, and the search for one’s own path.

The second half of the concert brings together two major sacred works of the twentieth century. In Arvo Pärt’s Credo, faith becomes a deeply personal musical statement formed by the confrontation of two worlds, violence and non-violence, conflict and beauty. Giya Kancheli’s Styx is a work of remembrance and reconciliation. At its centre is the viola, whose voice seems to form a fragile bridge between the world of the living and the world of those who are no longer with us.

In wartime, music cannot remain untouched by reality. It speaks of loss and pain, memory and resistance, of what we experience both privately and collectively. But it can also remind us of what enables us to endure and not to surrender to the darkness around us. This is why LET THERE BE LIGHT, the festival’s final words, are at once a statement, a prayer, and an act of faith. They express a determination to hold on to hope despite the war, the losses, and everything that surrounds us. Throughout the festival, light has appeared in many forms: in memory, which refuses to let the past disappear; in art, which gives voice to what has been lived and endured; and in our capacity to love, create, and resist. Robert Schumann wrote of the artist’s duty to bring light into the darkness of the human heart. Today, that light can be found in music that helps us resist  darkness, preserve our humanity and our memory, and hold on to the belief that dawn will come.