Klänge, Gesänge und Melodien aus den Karpaten.

Sounds, Songs, and Melodies from the Carpathians — Beriska Bandura and Vocal Ensemble

This impressive music, with its wide musical and emotional range, offers insights into the magical soul of the Carpathians—from rhythmic sounds to rousing melodies and beautiful, unusual, and heartwarming folk songs from Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland.

Quick Facts:

The bandura is an ancient and unique stringed instrument found only in Ukraine. With its 65 to 70 strings, the bandura produces an exceptionally broad range of sounds, which is why it is often referred to as a “small orchestra.” Its sound resembles that of the Celtic harp. The Ukrainian bandura evolved within Ukraine from a variety of similar stringed instruments. An 11th-century mural in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv depicts one of its predecessors.

The basic characteristics of the bandura can be described as follows:

1) Since there are no frets, each string produces only a single note, similar to a harp,

2) It has so-called “high” strings, whose pitch rises from the center toward the edge of the soundbox; in contrast, the “low” strings are stretched along the fingerboard.

The musical director of the traditional ensemble BERISKA, Ms. Tetiana, is a composer of bandura music and the principal soloist for bandura and voice with the Ukrainian Philharmonic Orchestra (Chernihiv, a region bordering Russia and Belarus).The European tours, which have taken place once a year since the COVID pandemic, not only help finance the ensemble’s travel costs and project-related expenses but also support other projects, particularly children’s care facilities in Chernihiv, where benefit concerts are also organized, for example at the rehabilitation center “Vidrodzhennia.”

Thank you very much and best regards,

On behalf of Victoriia Blazhko

Coordinator of the 2027 and 2028 European Tours

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.