Spectacular Stradivarius: Elizabeth Pitcairn and the Red Violin at The Sembrich

The Sembrich’s 2022 Summer Festival Reimagining the Classics continues with “Spectacular Stradivarius: Elizabeth Pitcairn and the Red Violin” on Thursday, July 7 at 7:30 PM. For this special musical evening, celebrated violin virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn, President and Artistic Director of the Luzerne Music Center, joins with world renowned faculty players from the Center for an evening of violin showpieces and chamber music to benefit The Sembrich’s Studio Preservation Campaign.

“It is an honor and a pleasure to partner with world-renowned violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn for this special benefit performance,” says Sembrich Executive Director Suzanna M. Bernd. “We are excited to continue our ongoing relationship with Luzerne Music Center through this collaborative event!”

The program will include chamber music and violin solos by Ms. Pitcairn, who performs on one of the world’s most legendary instruments, the “Red Mendelssohn” Stradivarius violin of 1720. The featured work of the evening is the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 by Johannes Brahms, performed by Ms. Pitcairn along with her Luzerne Music Center colleagues Marko Stuparevic (piano), Eliezer Gutman (violin), Roberto Henriquez (viola), and Kayla Herrmann (cello). Composed during the summer of 1864 and dedicated to Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Hesse, the F minor Quintet is often regarded as “the crown of Brahms’ chamber music,” a dramatic, momentous work that is, according to Brahms biographer Jan Swafford, "at times anguished, at times demonic, at times tragic.”

Born in 1973 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to a closely-knit musical family (her mother is a Juilliard-trained cellist), Pitcairn began playing the violin at age three. Pitcairn made her debut with orchestra at age 14, performing the Saint-Saëns concerto. She has appeared as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York String Orchestra and performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Academy of Music, the Kimmel Center, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Fisher Center at Bard College.

This event is generously sponsored by Bob and Ginger Bailey, Martie Newell in Memory of Ronald L. Newell, Fenimore Asset Management, and the Times Union.

Tickets are $60 and are available at TheSembrich.org/festival or by calling (518) 644-2431.