Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, 7 P.M.

Buckley Recital Hall, Arms Music Center, Amherst College

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Senior Oren Tirschwell '25 opens the concert as soloist in Shostakovich's thrilling and fiendishly difficult first cello concerto (1959), written for and premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich.  A technical and emotional tour-de-force, the concerto was a deeply personal work for the composer, who embedded his musical initials and cryptogram D-S-C-H throughout. The ASO also performs Shostakovich's effervescent and witty Ninth Symphony (1945), written at the close of the Second World War.  In its irony--with moments of darkness periodically engulfing irrepressible joy--Shostakovich's Ninth upended the Stalinist regime's expectations of a grand and triumphant commemoration of Soviet victory.

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Dimitri Shostakovich:

The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major.

 Oren Tirschwell '25, Soloist

Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major

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