Washington University faculty to join Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra members for March 4 concert

Violinist Silvian Iticovici, pianist Seth Carlin and violist Stephen Ewer will join members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra for a recital of works by Robert Schumann (1810-56) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75).

The concert is free and open to the public and will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 4, in Holmes Lounge. For more information, call (314) 35-4841 or email staylor@wustl.edu.

The program will open with Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in A minor, op. 105, for violin and piano. Written in 1850, the sonata reflects a calm, placid period in the composer’s life (through the happy mood of its second movement) yet the disquiet and apprehension of the work’s outer movements seem to presage the upheavals of Schumann’s final years. Performers will be Iticovici, who teaches violin in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and serves as second associate concertmaster for the Symphony Orchestra; and Carlin, professor of music and director of performance.

The program will continue with Shostakovich’s Tenth String Quartet, a work written more than two decades after Stalin and the Soviet regime had begun imposing compositional and other artistic restrictions. Shostakovich’s frustration and anger can be felt in the harsh instrument effects of the opening portion, while contrasting slow passages, interspersed with silences, foreshadow the isolation and withdrawal felt in the composer’s later works. Performers will include Iticovici and Ewer, a clinical fellow in cardiology at the WUSTL School of Medicine, as well as violinist Asako Kuboki and cellist Alvin McCall, both members of the Symphony Orchestra.

The recital is co-sponsored by the Department of Music and the Symphony Orchestra’s Education and Community Partnership Program, which presents more than 300 events annually in venues throughout the area, ranging from schools and churches to parks and retirement communities.