Camerata Pacifica Premiere of Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony

Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/19/2026
7:30 pm

Location
The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall

Category(ies)

• Music

Grace Park, violin (Photo – Courtesy of Artist)

The esteemed international chamber music collective Camerata Pacifica caps its 36th season with the highly anticipated California premiere of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15, Op.144, arranged by Viktor Derevyanko for piano trio and percussion.

This is just the fifth performance in the western hemisphere of the 47-minute arrangement, which Shostakovich himself approved. Premiered in 1972 in Moscow, it is considered an alluring textural and rhythmic alternative to Shostakovich’s original. The Fifteenth Symphony, the composer’s final symphonic work, is regarded as a summation of Shostakovich’s remarkable artistry, blending “a hard-earned gravity with the buoyant spirit of youth” (The Wall Street Journal).

Featured artists include Grace Park, violin; Ani Aznavoorian, cello; Gilles Vonsattel, piano; and percussionists Ji Hye Jung, Ayano Kataoka, Svet Stoyanov, and Jason Treuting.

Beethoven and Modern Friends

Additional highlights include the season’s final “Beethoven 32” offering with Principal Piano Gilles Vonsattel performing the Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 2, No. 2, a masterpiece that helped cement Beethoven’s reputation as one of the most important composers of his era. Camerata Pacifica’s “Beethoven 32” is a three-year Beethoven cycle that launched last fall featuring Vonsattel on all 32 of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas.

Two contemporary works spotlighting percussion round out the repertoire. The featured percussionists add rhythmic joy to Belgian composer Thierry De Mey’s fascinating Musique de Table for which the artists “play” small tables as their only instruments.

The percussionists also join violinist Grace Park for Kenji Bunch’s Transcontinental for Violin and Percussion Quartet. Bunch has earned a reputation as one of America’s most engaging, influential, and prolific composers, with genre-defying music that has been performed on six continents and by more than seventy American orchestras.

Tickets

For tickets ($35/$75 at The Huntington, Music Academy of the West, and Zipper Hall; $48.25/$94.40, including fees, at Janet and Ray Scherr Forum) and information, visit cameratapacifica.org.

PROGRAM

• BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 2, No. 2 (Sponsored by George T. & Susan Northrop)
• THIERRY DE MEY: Musique de Table
• KENJI BUNCH: Transcontinental for Violin and Percussion Quartet
• D. SHOSTAKOVICH (arr. Derevyanko): Symphony No. 15, Op. 141, for piano trio and percussion (California Premiere*)