Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra: A Call for Peace

A CALL FOR PEACE

Nazaykinskaya | World Premiere
Wieniawski | Violin Concerto No. 2
        Kinga Augustyn, Violin
Tchaikovsky | Symphony No. 4

The ECSO’s February concert, a call for peace in Eastern Europe, will begin with a world premiere by Polina Nazaykinskaya, a graduate of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory College and the Yale School of Music. Next, Polish violinist Kinga Augustyn, who made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2008, will be the soloist for her compatriot Henryk Wieniawski’s virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1862 with Wieniawski as soloist. After intermission, Music Director & Conductor Toshiyuki Shimada will conduct Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s powerful Symphony No. 4 in F Minor. In composing his “Fate Symphony,” Tchaikovsky had Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fate Symphony” in mind (its first-movement fanfare recalls the famous “duh-duh-duh-DUM” from Beethoven’s Fifth). The Tchaikovsky piece was too advanced for some tastes at its U.S. premiere in 1890, a New York Post reviewer wrote: “If Tchaikovsky had called his symphony ‘A Sleigh Ride Through Siberia’ no one would have found this title inappropriate.”