Vitaliy Kyreyko was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer, teacher, and musical public figure. He was born on December 23, 1926, in Shyroke, to a family of rural educators. His father, a schoolteacher with musical training, organized school and village choirs. Through these choirs, Kyreyko encountered works by Mykola Leontovych, Mykhailo Verykivsky, Mykola Lysenko, and Ukrainian folk songs.
He attended secondary school in Kobeliaky from 1935 to 1941 and studied composition at the Kyiv Conservatory with Levko Revutsky, graduating in 1949. He completed postgraduate study there in 1952. For his final-year work, he wrote his first large-scale composition, the cantata Mother, setting words by Maksym Rylsky. He joined the conservatory’s teaching staff in 1949, became an associate professor in 1961 and a professor in 1978, and taught there until 1988. He received the degree of Candidate of Art Studies in 1953.
His opera Forest Song (1957), based on Lesya Ukrainka’s play, was an important early success. In 1959 he composed the ballet Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, becoming the first artist to adapt Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novella. He also turned repeatedly to Taras Shevchenko’s writing, composing the women’s chorus Over the Dnieper Saga (1964), the song The Poplar, and the one-act ballet The Witch (1967). His choral works included Shevchenko (1964), for unaccompanied mixed choir, on words by Rylsky.
Kyreyko’s instrumental works included a Concerto for Violin and Cello with Orchestra (1971), one of the first Ukrainian double concertos, and a symphonic poem, Don Quixote (1980). He composed ten symphonies, as well as concertos for cello and violin, a piano poem with orchestra, chamber music, piano sonatas, and children’s pieces. His stage works included the ballets Orgy (1976), based on Ukrainka’s play, and Sunstone (1982), inspired by legends of the Donetsk region.
His later works included the opera-drama The Boyarynya (2003), based on Ukrainka’s dramatic poem. His wider output also encompassed operas, vocal and choral works, folk-song arrangements, and music for theatrical productions. He wrote musicological work on Ukrainian folk songs arranged by Soviet composers for voice and piano, and published articles. Kyreyko received the titles Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR and People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1977, and the Mykola Lysenko Prize in 1985.