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“Angelus,” Lupanu’s Violin Highlight A Mixed-bag Concert

By Lawrence Toppman, WDAV --

Three composers with uncomfortable ties to Russia and the Soviet Union came together Friday in the last guest-conducted concert of the Charlotte Symphony's classical season.

Vladivostok-born Victoria Borisova-Ollas moved away from her homeland as a teenager in the 1980s and has spent the bulk of her life in Sweden. Dmitri Shostakovich faced condemnation and censorship through much of his career in the USSR. And Jean Sibelius spent the first 50 years of his life under Russian sway: The armies of Tsar Alexander I took control of Finland in 1809, making it an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire until World War I.

No wonder, then, that the current invasion of Ukraine hung over the concert. Even soloist Calin Ovidiu Lupanu, who played Shostakovich's long-suppressed Violin Concerto No. 1, prefaced his encore with the simple phrase "For peace." He then gave us the sarabande from Bach's Partita No. 2 for solo violin, soul-soothing music at its deepest.

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