Lyatoshynsky's main works are his operas The Golden Ring (1929) and Shchors (1937), the five symphonies, the Overture on Four Ukrainian Folk Themes (1926), the suites Taras Shevchenko (1952) and Romeo and Juliet (1955), the symphonic poem Grazhyna (1955), his "Slavic" piano concerto (1953), and the completion and orchestration of Reinhold Glière's violin concerto (1956).

Despite his music being criticised by the Soviet authorities, who officially banned such compositions as his Second Symphony, Lyatoshynsky never adhered to a style of socialist realism.

[5] Polish literature and history was held in high esteem in the Lyatoshynsky household; Borys read a lot as a boy, especially the historical and romantic works of Henryk Sienkiewicz and Stefan Żeromski.

He signed his early musical compositions under the pseudonym 'Boris Yaksa Lyatoshynsky', using the name of a Polish knight who had fought in the Battle of Grunwald.

His earliest pieces included mazurkas, waltzes, and a Chopinesque scherzo, which bear little resemblance to compositions written later in life.

Zhytomyr was the cultural and administrative centre of a region long inhabited by ethnic Poles, and his first music teacher was of Polish origin.

Later in life, he recalled that he "became really interested in music" at school; he mastered the violin, and created his first compositions,[4] which included a piano quartet.

The pieces, although naïve and unoriginal, revealed his musical talent, and motivated his father to encourage his efforts as a schoolboy composer.

Lyatoshynsky's family decided to ask the composer Reinhold Glière, then the director and professor of the newly opened Kyiv Conservatory (now the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music), to teach the young man composition.

[14] From 1922 to 1925, Lyatoshynsky, then a 25-year-old lecturer and teacher of composition in the Kyiv Conservatory, organised and led the Ukrainian Society of Contemporary Music [uk].

[16] During the 1920s, the Communists introduced a policy of korenizatsiia ('growing roots'), designed to foster indigenous cultures as a way to undermine what was perceived as imperial domination.

[20] During the 1920s Lyatoshynsky composed a series of romances based on the writings of poets that included Heinrich Heine, Konstantin Balmont, Paul Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Shelley, Maurice Maeterlinck, and a setting of Heine's poem "Black sails on a boat" (1922–1924).

[30] Many faculties of the Moscow Conservatoire, including the music department, were relocated to Saratov, a town near the Volga, and Lyatoshynsky was evacuated there along with his colleagues,[4] In Saratov, the Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko Radio Station broadcast political speeches and daily concerts of Lyatoshynsky's arrangements of Ukrainian music.

He created solo pieces, and works for chamber groups, notably his "Ukrainian Quintet" for piano and strings (1942, 2nd ed.

There was a danger that everything that was in the house could be lost, so Lyatoshynsky's father-in-law used a cart to take all the composer's papers to the family dacha at Vorzel, outside Kyiv, where they were kept for the rest of the war.

[8] In September 1943, Lyatoshynsky was invited by the Moscow Conservatory to work there for a year, but on 10 November 1943, after the liberation of Kyiv, he returned on the first flight back to his home city, as part of a delegation that included the poets Maksym Rylsky and Mykola Bazhan, and the artist Mykhailo Derehus.

It was denounced by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who stated:[29] “The anti-national formalist trend in Ukrainian musical art was manifested primarily in the works of composer B. Lyatoshynsky.

This is a disharmonious work, cluttered with unjustified thunderous sounds of the orchestra, which depress the listener, and in terms of melody—the symphony is poor and colourless.”Lyatoshynsky wrote at this time of his despondency over the prohibition of his music by the authorities.

However, the composer was accused of "abstract understanding of the struggle for peace", and told by the authorities that the symphony did not "reveal the true Soviet reality".

[39] Lyatoshynsky wrote music with a modern European style and technique, skillfully combining it with Ukrainian themes.

[42] Lyatoshynsky's main works are his operas The Golden Ring and Shchors, the five symphonies, the Overture on Four Ukrainian Folk Themes (1926), the suites Taras Shevchenko (1952) and Romeo and Juliet (1955), the symphonic poem Grazhyna (1955), his "Slavic" concerto for piano and orchestra (1953), and the completion and orchestration of Glière's violin concerto (1956).

[31] More tuneful and Scriabinesque in comparison with his four other symphonies,[33] it was written as his graduation composition at a time when he had become influenced by the music of Scriabin and Richard Wagner.

[43] The First Symphony is described in the 1999 edition of The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs as "a well-crafted, confident score" that "abounds in contrapuntal elaboration and abundant orchestral rhetoric".

The reflective second movement is balanced by a finale that is, according to the music historian Ferrucio Tammaro, "not only dynamic, but even heroic, in close conformity with the tastes of emerging Soviet symphonism".

[47] The Fourth Symphony (1963) has an expressive contemporary character, challenging for the listener because of its atonal aspects,[33] and is more reminiscent of Shostakovich than its predecessors.

[44] The slow second movement begins darkly, but is followed by a chorale surrounded by shimmering bells and a celesta used to depict the Belgian city of Bruges, "a brief but really haunting invention".

[44][48] In his Fifth Symphony (the 'Slavonic', in C major, (1965–1966)),[22] which includes liturgical melodies from the Orthodox Church, the music is more post-Nationalist in nature than other works composed during this period in the composer's career, Lyatoshynsky included a Russian folk song as the main theme and a song from Yugoslavia as a secondary theme.

They include Intermezzo from the Second String Quartet, op.4 (1922) orchestrated in the early 1960s, and the Lyric Poem (1964), an elegy written in memory of Glière.

[25] The orchestrated version of the Intermezzo, which according to the British classical music journalist Michael Oliver consists of "delicate melodies floating over a gently rocking pulse", is praised by him as being "magical".

[48] Impressionistic touches in Lyatoshynsky's smaller-scale works can be seen in the second and fifth of his Reflections, where he uses the tone quality of instruments, transient layers of harmonies, and variable rhythms.