Weekly Concert Round-up: May 13 – 19

This week’s featured concerts:

May 14 — Learn about the astounding life of poet Krystyna Zywulska, member of the Polish Resistance and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Music of Remembrance presents the world premiere performance of Jake Heggie’s Farewell, Auschwitz!, which brings Zywulska’s poetry to life.

May 16 — The Wayward Music Series presents an evening of “flexible music” at Wallingford’s intimate Chapel Performance Space. Organized by local composers Paul Kikuchi and John Teske, Any Ensemble brings together a variety of musicians to perform works created without a specific instrumentation in mind.

May 16 – 17 — The Seattle Symphony celebrates Shostakovich with two concerts of the composer’s most beloved works. On May 16, the orchestra performs the dramatic Symphony No. 5 along with Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring guest soloist Ignat Solzhenitsyn. The next evening, May 17, hear Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 performed by 21-year-old Julian Schwarz, son of SSO Conductor Laureate Gerard Schwarz.

May 17 — The vocal quartet Canonici: Consort of Voices traces the development of Italian Renaissance madrigals with a concert of French and Flemish music, including works by Josquin des Prez that were influential in Italy at the time.

May 18 — Revel in some of Gershwin’s most famous melodies as pianist Sara Davis Buechner joins the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Rhapsody in Blue. Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite round out this evening of orchestral favorites.

May 18 – 19 — Devoted to performing vocal music of the Baltic region, the seven-member Mägi Ensemble explores the past hundred years of choral music in Estonia and Latvia, featuring pieces by living Estonian composers Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis, and René Eespere.

May 18 – 19Seattle Pro Musica presents “Lucis”, a program of contemporary choral music that centers on the theme of light. Hear Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Canticum calamitatis maritimae, written in honor of the 1994 MS Estonia shipwreck.

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