Shostakovich II
For this three-concert mini-festival, SummerFest Music Director Cho-Liang Lin has assembled an ensemble of instrumentalists, some of whom knew and worked with Shostakovich himself. Working together over the past year, these artists have selected works that represent the composer’s mastery in many forms: string quartets, sonatas for violin, viola, cello and piano as well as trios and octets, showcasing vividly contrasting moods, now whimsical and witty, now intensely emotional then self-questioning. This evening begins with the Piano Trio No. 1 written when the composer was just seventeen years old. Dmitry Sitkovetsky plays the Sonata for Violin and the Borromeo String Quartet will perform perhaps the most loved of all Shostakovich’s quartets, the String Quartet in C Minor, Opus 8. The evening concludes with Seven Romances on poems by Alexander Blok for soprano, violin, cello and piano.