Boris Lyatoshynsky is regarded as one of the leading Ukrainian composers of the twentieth century. He developed and established a distinctive musical style rooted in the traditions of nineteenth-century European romanticism and the modernism of the first third of the twentieth century. He held a number of important positions in the various committees and panels of Soviet composers’ organisations, and also became professor of Music at the Kyiv Conservatoire.

The first String Quartet is a student composition, written whilst he was studying with Reinhold Glière, whose stylistic influence is clearly discernible in the thematic material. The second Quartet dates from 1922, when the composer, aged twenty-seven, had established his own musical voice. Like the first quartet, it introduces traces of Russian and Ukrainian folk music whilst adhering to the established four-movement form of the traditional string quartet. Founded in Kyiv in 2015, the NotaBene Chamber Group is a collective of musicians of the new generation, whose repertoire focuses on classical and contemporary music.