Videos
Anne Frank’s diary finds a new musical voice in Evgeni Orkin’s oratorio Annes Passion. At its centre are a young person’s thoughts, hopes and fears as persecution and life in hiding transform her everyday world. Orkin brings selected diary passages into an encounter with spoken narration, solo voices, choir and orchestra, connecting an individual life with the remembrance of the Holocaust. Work on the oratorio began in 2019, and an initial recording was assembled across different locations during the pandemic. This video documents its public world premiere at Tübingen’s Stiftskirche on 30 January 2025. Philipp Amelung conducts the University of Tübingen’s Academic Choir and the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, with Johanna Pommranz as Anne and Jürgen Herold speaking the role of her father, Otto Frank. An accompanying university programme placed the performance within a wider conversation about remembrance, history and antisemitism today.
Requiem for a Poet commemorates the Ukrainian poet and soldier Maksym Kryvtsov, who was killed at the front on 7 January 2024. On 6 January, the penultimate day of his life, he received at the front a copy of his newly published first poetry collection, Вірші з бійниці (Virshi z biinytsi, often translated as Poems from the Loophole). That same day he turned the book into a game on social media: readers gave him a page number and a line – counted from the top or the bottom – and Kryvtsov replied with a photograph of the corresponding passage. Orkin builds the form of the requiem around precisely this idea. A voice in the sound sample takes, as it were, the role of the people on social media: it gives a page and line number, and the baritone answers with the corresponding verse from Kryvtsov’s book. The poet’s final exchange with his readers thus becomes a musical dialogue between question, answer and remembrance. This video was recorded at the German premiere in Monheim am Rhein on 24 February 2025, with Oksana Lyniv conducting the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Andrii Bondarenko as baritone soloist.
Paul Celan’s Death Fugue is the starting point for Evgeni Orkin’s work for violin, narrator and orchestra. Its engagement with the Holocaust unfolds through the spoken poem, the solo violin and an orchestral part that confronts the opposing worlds of victims and perpetrators. A cadenza for violin and percussion concentrates the harrowing image of prisoners forced to make music. The work closes with a historical recording of Celan reading his own poem. Death Fugue is also the fourth and concluding part of PARDES – Four Symphonic Narratives. The four-part cycle also includes Radetzky March after Joseph Roth, The Cinnamon Shops after Bruno Schulz and From the Fair after Sholem Aleichem. The works were, and are being, premiered in a chronology different from their order within the cycle: Death Fugue received its world premiere at the Wiener Konzerthaus on 2 June 2024 as part of the Wiener Festwochen; Radetzky March on 12 January 2025 at the New Synagogue in Düsseldorf; and The Cinnamon Shops on 21 December 2025 at the Aula am Berliner Ring in Monheim am Rhein. The world premiere of From the Fair is announced for 6 December 2026 at Theater Fulda. At the premiere of Death Fugue, Andrii Murza was the violin soloist and Philip Leonhard Kelz the narrator; Oksana Lyniv conducted the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra together with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.
Five children whose lives ended in a single night in Odesa are remembered in Evgeni Orkin’s Five Interrupted Lullabies. Commissioned by Oksana Lyniv, the orchestral work was written in 2024 in response to the Russian attack of 2 March, which killed twelve people, including five children. The title itself expresses the loss: the lullaby, associated with closeness and safety, becomes an image of childhood violently interrupted. The dedication extends to children who fall victim to wars. The world premiere took place on 5 September 2024 in the Carl Nielsen Hall at Odense Concert Hall, with Oksana Lyniv conducting the Odense Symphony Orchestra. The German premiere followed in Monheim am Rhein on 24 February 2025. This video captures that performance by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra under Lyniv: an act of remembrance rooted in a particular tragedy and reaching beyond it.
A Jewish wedding musician discovers Wagner’s Lohengrin and returns home with music that changes his life. Evgeni Orkin’s klezmer singspiel follows Mendele, who spends his savings on a visit to the opera in Vienna and thereafter insists on playing Wagner even in his home shtetl. His new passion sparks a conflict that is both comic and thought-provoking, raising questions about tradition, belonging and artistic freedom. Martin Valdés-Stauber’s libretto is based on Heinrich York-Steiner’s 1898 story of the same name. Orkin brings klezmer, Wagner and contemporary musical expression together in a stage work that also asks how we engage with art and the antisemitism of its creators. Commissioned by the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich for its twentieth anniversary, the production returned to the Münchner Kammerspiele in 2026. This recording is not from the world premiere; it documents the revival performance on 8 February 2026 at the Münchner Kammerspiele. Ethel Merhaut and Stefan Merki perform with the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich under Daniel Grossmann.
A Sephardic song connects the memory of a lost homeland with a musical tradition that remains alive today. Evgeni Orkin’s arrangement of Árboles lloran por lluvias forms part of The Keys of Toledo, a music theatre project with texts by Martin Valdés-Stauber exploring Sephardic Jewish history and the survival of Ladino and music in exile. Recorded at Ballhof Eins in Hannover on 28 September 2025, this performance brings together the Janet & Jak Esim Ensemble from Istanbul and the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, conducted by Daniel Grossmann. The link attached to this entry leads to the complete documentation of *The Keys of Toledo*: the full playlist of videos created for the project, together with the project description.
Lviv, the composer’s birthplace, is at the heart of Evgeni Orkin’s Seventh Symphony, High Castle. Commissioned by INSO-Lviv, the work connects personal memories with a search for the city’s musical traces. Past and present meet with a sense of what the future may hold. Orkin dedicated the symphony to his native city and its many layers of cultural history. This recording documents the 2024 world premiere by the Lviv National Orchestra “INSO-Lviv”, conducted by Oleksandr Gordon. It was made during the concert Peredchuttia—Premonition—at the 43rd Virtuosos Festival. Commissioned and first performed by an orchestra from Lviv, the symphony brings this act of musical remembrance back to the city to which it is dedicated.
Evgeni Orkin’s Elegy is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the war in Odesa. Written in April 2024, the orchestral work creates a space for remembrance, keeping that remembrance connected to a particular city and the people whose loss it mourns. This video documents the world premiere at the Odesa Philharmonic on 14 June 2024, performed by the Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra under Hobart Earle. The first performance in Odesa itself lends particular immediacy to the dedication. In October that year, Michael Pratt and the Princeton University Orchestra gave the work its US premiere. The orchestra subsequently took Elegy on its tour of Greece in 2025.
Two solo violins guide the listener through a musical portrait of Odesa, from the sea and the bustle of the city to the unease of night. Evgeni Orkin’s Odesa Rhapsody traces a journey from the Black Sea and Prymorskyi Boulevard to the lively Pryvoz market. These scenes evoke the city’s diversity, openness and cosmopolitan character. Night brings uncertainty before the music returns to the sea, leaving a familiar Odesa melody as a lasting memory. Aleksey Semenenko and Andrii Murza perform the solo parts with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine under Oksana Lyniv. The recording was made at the Konzerthaus Berlin on 21 August 2023 during the Young Euro Classic Festival. Orkin received the 2023 European Composer’s Prize for Odesa Rhapsody, recognising a work that connects the remembrance of a city with the present life of Ukrainian music.
Children’s poems and a diary written under occupation meet in Evgeni Orkin’s cantata Tatuseva knyha—Daddy’s Book. Its texts are by the Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was killed by Russian occupying forces in 2022. His poems for children and his rescued diary represent two worlds: the imagination and safety of childhood, and the violence that breaks into that life. Children’s choirs, three vocal soloists and a narrator give expression to these different perspectives. Written in 2023 at Oksana Lyniv’s initiative for the Lost Childhood project, the cantata received its world premiere at BOZAR in Brussels on 5 September 2023. This recording features Lyniv conducting the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the Vognyk Girls’ Choir and the Dzvinochok Boys’ Choir, with Yuliia Tkachenko, Valentina Pluzhnikova, Andrii Bondarenko and narrator Philip Kelz. The concert took place under the patronage of Ursula von der Leyen. At its centre remains Vakulenko’s literary legacy—and the childhood whose protection becomes a shared responsibility.
A prayer without words: Evgeni Orkin’s Night Prayer was written for the benefit concert Wilni—The Free in Berlin. The occasion brought the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine together with members of the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra under the direction of Oksana Lyniv. This recording captures the 2023 world premiere at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Within that setting, Night Prayer can be heard as a moment of reflection and an expression of solidarity. Its title leaves room for personal thoughts, while the shared performance gives audible form to the connection between the musicians.
The title of Evgeni Orkin’s Galician Overture refers to the historical region of Galicia, which includes his birthplace, Lviv. It takes its place alongside other orchestral works whose titles evoke cities and landscapes. The performance presented here is by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, conducted by Volodymyr Sirenko. The overture was a finalist in the nationwide Ukrainian Concert Overture composition competition, in which Orkin received a diploma. Organised for the thirtieth anniversary of Ukrainian independence, the competition sought a new musical calling card for the country. In this context, the recording represents the development of a contemporary Ukrainian orchestral repertoire and its presentation by the national orchestra.
