05/15/2026
Concertmaster Sara Usher playing a solo during rehearsals for Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, what she calls "a massive, dramatic tour tour de force for the orchestra."
By endurance alone, Usher says it's the hardest thing the Diablo Symphony Orchestra will perform this season.
"It's a pleasure to play it. It's a style that we're not so used to," she said, calling it "big, strong, angular, rigorous" music.
Shostakovich composed Symphony No. 5 in 1937 during one of the most dangerous periods of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, after the composer had been publicly denounced by the regime and feared for his life. The symphony balances triumph and terror, grandeur and grief; music many listeners and historians have interpreted as both public compliance and private anguish.
Audiences "need to be extremely aware of the time that this was written, the struggle and the suffering of the people," Usher said. "It's pretty impressive just from that perspective."
Catch Shostakovich, alongside Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Up North," a piano concerto the Diablo Symphony commissioned, at the orchestra's season finale, Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek.
🎟 Tickets and information: diablosymphony.org
