The Gloria Chamber Choir was founded in the city of Lviv, Ukraine in the early 1990s. Since 1999 the artistic director and conductor of the choir is Volodymyr Syvokhip. The choir was among the first to revive Ukrainian religious music of the 17th and 18th centuries that had been almost totally forbidden in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities from the 1920's to the 1980's. Western church music and works that have never or rarely been performed in Ukraine became a distinguished component of its repertoire: Kanon Pokajanen by Arvo Pärt, Mass by Igor Stravinsky, and choral works by J.S. Bach and J. Haydn. The first recording of the unpublished opera Alcide by the 18th-century composer Dmytro Bortnyansky that the choir, together with the Leopolis Chamber Orchestra, produced for the National TV and Radio Broadcasting Company of Ukrainian, as well as several CD's with Ukrainian music, are important achievements for Gloria. |