Saturday, November 19, 2022
7:30 PM
Garde Arts Center, New London

Two pieces on the orchestra’s November program are by Ukrainian composers. Valentin Silvestrov’s Prayer for the Ukraine was originally written for unaccompanied choir in 2014, during the protests in Kyiv’s Independence Square. Born in Kyiv in 1937, Silvestrov fled to Berlin earlier this year because of the ongoing war. Performing an symphonic arrangement of the Prayer for the Ukraine, the ECSO joins the many ensembles expressing solidarity with the besieged nation. Melody is by the late Myroslav Skoryk, born in 1938 in Lviv (at the time, part of Poland), who taught at the conservatories of Lviv and Kyiv and was named People’s Artist of Ukraine and Hero of Ukraine.

The ECSO’s performance of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, will feature guest soloist Igor Pikayzen, a graduate of Juilliard and Yale and the grandson of legendary violinist Viktor Pikayzen. Following intermission, Music Director & Conductor Toshiyuki Shimada will lead the orchestra in Sibelius’s single-movement Symphony No. 7, an evocative work completed in 1924.