The Orchestra Now Will Perform 'Violinist as Composer' Next Month

Music Director Leon Botstein leads The Orchestra Now in Violinist as Composer, the final performance in TŌN’s Carnegie Hall series this season, on Wednesday, May 8 at 7 PM. The concert spotlights four European virtuoso violinists who were also major composers in their respective countries but are not household names elsewhere today. Program highlights include the Carnegie Hall debut of award-winning Russian violinist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, who joins the Orchestra in two works: the New York City premiere of Eugène Ysaÿe’s recently uncovered Violin Concerto in D minor, and Joseph Joachim’s virtuosic Variations for Violin and Orchestra.

Violinist as Composer

Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 7 pm

Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

The Orchestra Now

Leon Botstein, conductor

Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, violin (Carnegie Hall debut)

Grażyna Bacewicz: Partita for Orchestra

Joseph Joachim: Variations for Violin and Orchestra in E minor

Eugène Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in D minor (NYC Premiere)

George Enescu: Symphony No. 2 in A Major, Op. 17

TŌN performs Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s four-movement Partita for Orchestra, premiered by the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw in 1957. Bacewicz was an acclaimed concert violinist and short story writer with more than 200 works in her catalogue. Hungarian composer and violin prodigy Joseph Joachim’s stunning Variations for Violin and Orchestra has not been performed in New York City since 1894. The performance features internationally acclaimed Russian violinist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, winner of both the Jean Sibelius and Fritz Kreisler Violin Competitions, in his Carnegie Hall debut. Joachim was a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn, who conducted the 12-year-old violinist’s London Philharmonic Symphony debut in a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The concert also features the New York City premiere of the recently discovered Violin Concerto in D minor by famed Belgian violinist, conductor, and composer Eugène Ysaÿe. Hailed as “The King of the Violin,” he was regarded as the leading interpreter of the string works of French and Belgian composers of his day, and served as conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1918 to 1922. The evening closes with Romanian composer George Enescu’s three-movement Second Symphony, premiered in Bucharest at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1915. The work was not performed again until the conductor Iosif Conta revived it in 1961, six years after Enescu’s death. A composer, conductor, violinist, and professor, Enescu’s many honors include Officer and Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, Correspondent Member of the Fine Arts Academy in Paris, and namesake of the George Enescu National Museum in Bucharest.

Tickets, priced at $25–$50, are available online at carnegiehall.org, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800, or at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th & Seventh Avenue.

TŌN’s next concert in Manhattan will be Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, led by French conductor Chloé Van Soeterstède in her New York debut on May 19 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater.