by Mike Telin
When violinist Karen Gomyo made her Cleveland Orchestra debut, she brought the Mendelssohn concerto. When she returned in 2014 she delivered a gripping performance of Saint-Saëns’s third concerto.
On Saturday, July 18th, Gomyo will heard in Shostakovich’s haunting Violin Concerto No. 1. The 7:00 pm Blossom Music Center program led by Semyon Bychkov, will also include Brahms’ Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.
I spoke to the violinist by phone and began our conversation by asking her to share her history with the Concerto.
Karen Gomyo: It’s a piece that has impacted me profoundly since I first heard it when I was about 13 . I had really immersed myself in the world of Shostakovich at that time. My entry into this concerto was the recording by David Oistrakh. I was just captivated by his playing and by the music.
Back in the day when Tower Records was still across the street from Juilliard, I went in and bought recordings of all the symphonies. The Eleventh ended up being the most moving for me. I think it’s partly because the music itself is just so gripping. And also because it’s about a specific event — the 1906 Russian revolution. Reading about it while listening to the music was a terrifying experience, and I felt like that was my deeper entry into Shostakovich’s music.
The concerto was written around 1947 and ‘48, but out of fear that it could cost Shostakovich his life, Oistrakh, to whom the piece was dedicated, didn’t premiere the Concerto until 1955 after Stalin’s death.
Mike Telin: The concerto is a piece that grabs your attention.
KG: It’s almost like a secret document, something so personal that was too much to be made public at that time.
MT: It’s a very big piece.
KG: The scope of it is absolutely symphonic with its four-movement structure. Then there’s a massive cadenza between the third and fourth movements. So it’s almost like a symphony with a violin monologue in the midst of it, so it’s quite extraordinary.
It’s fascinating, because like the Eleventh Symphony, I see a connection between the movements in this concerto as well. The first movement is a very eerie premonition of what’s about to happen in the second movement scherzo.
And the passacaglia is a result of what happens in the second movement. The cadenza is finally a personal cry out of all the events that have happened up until that point — then it explodes into the finale.
MT: You said you were first introduced to it when you were in your teens, but when did you first start to learn it?
KG: I remember that I auditioned with it for the Young Concert Artists International Auditions when I was 14, so I must have picked it up pretty much right away.
MT: Have your thoughts about the piece changed over time?
KG: It’s an interesting question because I think what evolves is your own experiences as a human living in the world that test you.
Of course I don’t pretend to understand what it must have been like to live in the Soviet Union at the time that Shostakovich lived, with so many wars and awful events.
But I think the difficult experiences that you go through can be life-changing. So I think that is what has evolved for me more than the informational facts around the piece.
MT: You have worked with Semyon Bychkov in the past.
KG: Yes. In fact, we have played the Shostakovich Concerto together with the Czech Philharmonic, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, so we’ve done a number of performances of the Shostakovich together and a couple other concertos as well.
I have the utmost respect for him. And it’s always such an honor to be able to perform with him, especially in this music, because he has such a deep attachment to it. So it’s always very special — I feel like I learn a new perspective from him each time I play the piece.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com July 16, 2026
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