“Ciprés” with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and Rossen Milanov

PROGRAM

Rossen Milano, conductor      Bella Hristova, violin

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Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times). She performs Sergei Prokofiev’s lyrical first violin concerto. Andreia Pinto Correia’s 2018 work Ciprés explores themes of trees and water. The program concludes with Dmitri Shostakovich’s first symphony, an early work revealing the composer’s profound talent.

Ciprés was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras and the Columbus Symphony with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

Key Notes

• Andreia Pinto Correia took inspiration for Ciprés from Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s poem of the same name (1898-1936).
• Prokofiev began writing his first violin concerto in 1915, but due to political unrest in Russia it did not receive its premiere until 1923 when the composer was living in Paris.
• Shostakovich’s watershed first symphony, written as a graduation assignment when he was just 18 years old, bypassed the conservatism of his professors to embrace musical language of the new 20th-century era.