Event

Jeffrey Nytch and Bela Bartok

Our season concludes with two tremendous works!

The Pittsburgh Premiere of Jeffrey Nytch's Violin Concerto "Concordia" and Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta will be on the concert.

Considered to be among his greatest works, Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta hasn't been performed in Pittsburgh for decades!

About the violin concerto:
The wreck of an Italian cruise ship that made international headlines in 2012 is the subject of a Jeffrey Nytch's Violin Concerto.

The Costa Concordia ran aground on an Italian island with more than 4,000 people aboard. Thirty-two people died in the wreck -- including a violinist named Sandor Feher. He helped other passengers to safety, but then went to retrieve his instrument and never made it off the ship.

Feher's story became the spark for a new violin concerto from Jeffrey Nytch, an instructor at the University of Colorado. He called the composition Costa Concordia.

Nytch says it's not a literal retelling of shipwreck and Feher's final moments. It's more of a meditation on the relationship between a violinist and a musician -- and the human connection that led Feher to help save the lives of strangers during a crisis.