Concerto per la Pace – Concert for Peace

The Ascona Choral Academy’s joint concert with London’s Tenebrae Choir and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine serves as a bright closing mark, symbolizing peaceful coexistence, at the end of the 2026 festival and the first edition of the classicAscona academy.

In 2016, Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine to support young talent from across the country. During wartime, the orchestra became an international ambassador for Ukrainian cultural identity and has been wowing audiences at concerts throughout Europe ever since.

Ukrainian composer Hanna Havrylets died in Kyiv on Feb. 27, 2022, three days after the Russian invasion began, from a lack of proper medical care. Her “Canticum” for strings resonates like a wordless prayer, marked by deep melancholy yet unwavering inner strength.

The genesis of Antonín Dvořák’s “Stabat Mater,” Op. 58, is inseparable from the harsh blows of fate. During its composition, Dvořák lost three children. In that time of sorrow, he found in the medieval sequence about the Mother of God’s suffering at the foot of the cross a way to give voice to his own sadness. Rather than remaining in despair, the music moves from the somber si minor to a hopeful finale, becoming a symbol of the strength of faith and the overcoming of death.