Second time’s a charm? After COVID delay, violinist finally debuting with Tucson Symphony

Shostakovich wrote the Violin Concerto No. 1 in 1947-48 but it languished unperformed after it was denounced by the Russian government and local critics. The government at the time was trying to root out all Western influence in classical music, and Shostakovich was in their crosshairs.

The four-movement piece was finally premiered in 1955 after Stalin’s death.

Huang’s performance this weekend also reunites him with TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez. The pair have been friends for years after both appeared with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.

Also on the program for this weekend’s concerts at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 20, is Tucson composer Daniel Asia‘s five-minute fanfare “Gateways.”

“It’s a fun piece,” Asia said of the work that he composed in 1993 on commission from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. “I did something that I had never done before, which was write a piece through sketching.”

Asia, who teaches at the UA and who has composed hundreds of works from symphonies to string quartets, sketched ideas that popped in his head with no particular regard to the beginning, middle and end. After three months of sketching, he put those ideas, all laid out on paper, on the floor and walked around them for three hours, looking at what he had created.