This weekend the Susanville Symphony Society is presenting one of the most widely anticipated concerts of their 2011-2012 season. Taking the stage will be violin virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn and her violin, a 300 year-old Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius.
Pitcairn has earned a stunning reputation as one of America’s most beloved soloists. She made her New York debut at Lincoln Center in 2000 with the New York String Orchestra and she appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music.
The unique Mendelssohn Strad was the inspiration for the Academy award-winning film The Red Violin and Pitcairn collaborated with Lionsgate Films for the Red Violin DVD.
She was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1973 into a closely knit musical family: her mother is a Juilliard-trained cellist. She began playing the violin at age three and made her debut with orchestra at 14. Her path led her to Los Angeles to study with preeminent violin professor Robert Lipsett at the University of Southern California.
She has recently been named Artistic Director of the Luzerne Chamber Music Festival and is currently a member of the distinguished faculty at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.
This weekend’s symphony performance will feature the 1st movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, the Scottish Symphony and other classical masterpieces.
The historic violin was crafted in 1720 by Antonio Stradivari, who lovingly made his instruments in his small shop in Cremona, Italy centuries ago, and remains the most famous violin maker of all time.
Not long after its creation, the instrument appeared to vanish; no one knows where or to whom the violin belonged for more than 200 years, spawning any number of historians, writers, journalists, critics as well as Canadian filmmaker, Francois Girard, to speculate on the violin’s mysterious history.
Girard’s imaginative speculations became the narrative for his beloved film, “The Red Violin.”Tickets are available at Leslie’s Jewelry, call 257-2920. Concerts will be held tonight at 7:00p.m. and Sunday at 2:30p.m. at the Assembly of God Church, 473-465 Richmond Road.
