The soloist who will join the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra this Saturday is a child prodigy, a teenager growing up in Communist East Germany when she suddenly must decide: Why play music?
Franziska Pietsch has learned the violin with Eastern Europe’s top teachers. She plays the masterworks of the repertoire, and has access to the state’s best orchestras. At age 14, in 1984, she is preparing for the Menuhin Competition in London, when her father defects, leaving East Germany to start anew in the west. His wife and daughter are left behind.
In a 2019 interview with the British radio station Classic FM, Pietsch remembers what happened next.
“When my father didn’t return, it meant two years of reprisals – I didn’t get any teaching anymore,” she said.
The authorities closed in, trying to find out whether the teenager knew anything of her father’s decisions and plans.
“They really tried to destroy me mentally for around two years. And this is not easy for a child,” Pietsch recalled. “I was forced to ask, at 14 years old, life’s big question – why do I actually play the violin, now nobody is interested anymore?”
Pietsch began playing the music of J.S. Bach — and it was “a key for me, to open a gate” to a new kind of freedom. It was “the beginning of me understanding that music, art in general, can have a message in this world. It’s something I really love,” she told Classic FM.
“I play because I want to give something to the world.”
Pietsch will step onto the stage for two performances Saturday: the 10 a.m. public rehearsal and the 7:30 p.m. concert, both at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.
Jonathan Pasternack, Port Angeles Symphony’s conductor and artistic director who is celebrating his 10th anniversary season, will give a short pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m.
Pietsch, who is making her first trip to Washington state, will be surrounded by the orchestra in this first full Symphony series concert of the 2024-2025 season.
Information — along with details about specially priced season ticket packages — is at portangelessymphony.org and the Symphony office, 360-457-5579. Individual concert tickets may be purchased online, at Port Book & News in Port Angeles, and at the door.
“She is a captivating artist, and a fascinating and truly unique human,” said Pasternack, who met Pietsch six years ago through their mutual friend, Spanish pianist and Port Angeles Symphony guest soloist Josu de Solaun.
Pasternack, Pietsch and the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada collaborated in Spain last summer, recording two masterworks. The album, on Aria Classics, will be released by early 2025.
Meantime, Pietsch and the Port Angeles Symphony will perform those two works this Saturday in Port Angeles.
In an interview this week from her home in Cologne, Germany, Pietsch described the music she loves. First will come a piece she said is “bursting with youthful passion, virtuosity and emotional depth,” Richard Strauss’ early Concerto for Violin.
“The music unfolds like a lively dialogue that appeals to all of the senses … [yet] despite its beauty and finesse, it is often overshadowed by Strauss’ more famous works,” she added.
The composer wrote the concerto when he was just 16.
Pasternack gave another reason this Strauss isn’t often performed: It is supremely challenging for the violinist.
Fortunately he, the soloist and the orchestra share an adventuresome spirit when it comes to these things.
“When you hear how difficult the piece is, you realize how much sheer technique and grit she has,” Pasternack said of Pietsch.
In the second half of the concert comes Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, with its many moods and colors — another kind of journey, Pietsch said.
The Lalo “unfolds like a great dance of life,” she said. The Symphonie is all about passion, rhythm and energy, to draw the listener into deeply moving musical story.
Pasternack has added one more piece of music to Saturday’s performances: Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis,” which he has loved since he was a teenager.
“It is such an amazing work,” the conductor said, “a tour de force that features every section of the orchestra.”
Pasternack also looks forward to the full season of symphony and chamber orchestra concerts, with soloists including cellist Gregorio Nieto on Dec. 14, Port Angeles-bred violinist Erin Hennessey on Jan. 17 and 18, well-known local cellist Traci Tyson Feb. 15, violin virtuosa Rachel Lee Priday on March 22, and de Solaun’s return May 3.
Season packages are available, with savings of up to 35 percent over single ticket prices; information is under the Tickets heading at portangelessymphony.org.
