Last evening’s SFS performance of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto was praised to the skies by the San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic, and others mesmerized by the star quality of young Karen Gomyo.
After wowing the audience with a triumphant rendering of this highly demanding piece, she graciously performed an encore, rarely heard at Davies Symphony Hall: Piazzolla’s Etude #4, from Six Tango Etudes.
Patrons planning on attending tonight’s performance should are also advised to arrive early to catch and informative (and highly entertaining) pre-concert talk by Elizabeth Seitz.
She describes, with considerable animation, how a beleaguered Shostakovich kept his sardonic Violin Concerto No. 1 hidden two years after the death of Joseph Stalin.