The Barge Haulers

PROGRAM NOTE

The Barge Haulers has been composed as a companion work to Stravinsky’s Chant des bateliers du Volga, which is inspired by the Russian folk song Song of the Volga Boatmen, as it is known in its English translation. While working on this piece, I discovered the painting Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Yefimovich Repin, which highly impacted my compositional process. Stravinsky’s work was another important pillar in the composition of The Barge Haulers. This brief work is my response to both Repin’s painting and Stravinsky’s Chant des bateliers du Volga. 

—Ivette Herryman-Rodríguez