Legacy

Program

• Grażyna Bacewicz: Concerto for String Orchestra
• Sándor Szokolay: Violin Concerto (featuring Sophia Szokolay, violin)
• Joseph Suk: Serenade for Strings

Sunday, May 3, 3PM, Pilgrim Congregational Church, Harwich Port, MA

Join us for a pre-concert talk at 2:15pm with Violinist Sophia Szokolay!

About the Program: A Tribute to Central-Eastern European Music

This concert celebrates Eastern European musical heritage through three compelling works. At the heart of the program is a deeply personal tribute: CCCO violinist Sophia Szokolay performs a Violin Concerto by her Hungarian grandfather, Sándor Szokolay. Composed a few months before the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against the Communist Regime, the concerto gained international recognition and put the young composer on the map at a pivotal moment in Soviet history. 

Like Szokolay,  Grażyna Bacewicz contended with Soviet censors in her native Poland. In Grazyna Bacewicz, The ‘First Lady of Polish Music’, author Diana Ambache writes, “There was a particularly oppressive period under Stalin’s control (1948–53) with the diktats of socialist realism, when the creative process was compromised by state censorship.” Despite the cultural confines, her career flourished. In 1948, Bacewicz wrote what would become her most frequently performed work, Concerto for String Orchestra in three movements. 

A prominent figure in the Czech musical world, Joseph Suk composed his The Serenade for Strings in 1892. the Serenade was written on the recommendation of Dvorak, who felt that the 18-year-old composer, at that time his student at the Conservatory, should broaden the emotional content of his compositions, which to that point were very dark and tragic, and write something more cheerful. The result was splendid. While Dvorak's influence is quite apparent, it is very much original music.