Thursday’s opening night for the 2019-2020 season at The Soraya in Northridge would be a not-to-be-missed event by virtue of it featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman with pianist Rohan De Silva in a rare recital. But there’s more than just great music that makes this concert appealing.
The concert launches a season that will feature a tour of Violins of Hope – 60 stringed musical instruments rescued during the Holocaust. In late March and early April there will be multiple concerts (at The Soraya, the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civics Arts Plaza and the Long Beach Symphony) that will feature some of these rescued instruments.
Perlman himself has been to the workshop in Tel Aviv where the instruments have been restored. He said of the experience, “I believe that the violin is a replica of the soul, and these violins more than most are powerful examples of perseverance. They once represented survival for their owners, and they symbolize the same to us today.”
The program for Thursday night’s rare recital by Perlman is scheduled to include Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in E-Flat Major, Op. 12, No. 3, the Franck Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano and Dvorak’s Sonatina in G major for Violin and Piano, Op. 100, B. 183. The website also indicates that additional works will be announced from the stage.
Hopefully you have tickets for The Soraya opening. It appears they have sold out. But the link above for the Violins of Hope concerts will give you full details of where and when you can see and hear the recovered and restored instruments.
For tickets (you never know when an extra ticket or two might become available) go here.
Photo of Itzhak Perlman by Lisa Marie Mazzucco/Courtesy of The Soraya
