The orchestra performed Thomas de Hartmann’s violin concerto, Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, and Brahms’s ‘Tragic Overture’ amid 40-concert tour
By Christopher Benfey Globe correspondent,Updated February 13, 2023, 12:01 p.m.
AMHERST — It took 80 years for the Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann’s achingly beautiful violin concerto to reach American ears. Judging from the rapturous response Friday night at a packed Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, it was well worth the wait.
Composed on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943, when de Hartmann was grieving for his lost Ukrainian homeland, the violin concerto, amazingly, hasn’t been performed anywhere in 60 years. An international movement to restore de Hartmann’s varied music to prominence, led by several musicians based in Western Massachusetts, has acquired urgency from the war in Ukraine. Recordings by Joshua Bell of the violin concerto and Matt Haimovitz of the cello concerto are expected later this year while Elan Sicroff will be performing de Hartmann’s piano concerto with the Pioneer Valley Symphony on March 18 in Amherst.