For Orchestra

For: 2.2.2.2 / 2.2.3.0 / timp.mar. / strings (minimum 5.4.3.3.1 players)

Duration: 4’

First Performance: 2025, TBD

Dedication: “Commissioned by the Steve Gerber Trust, 2025, in memory of Michaela Modjeska Paetsch”

Publisher: Peermusic Classical

Michaela Paetsch in mid-career. p/c: www.michaelapaetsch.com

Audio Block
Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

Program Note:   

Throughout her life, American violinist Michaela Modjeska Paetsch performed with major orchestras and at major international venues as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. The first female violinist to record the 24 Paganini Caprices for Solo Violin (Teldec, 1987), she studied with Ivan Galamian at Meadowmount, and with Szymon Goldberg at Yale University and at the Curtis Institute of Music.

A prodigy, she made her solo debut at the age of eleven, performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. She won first prize in the G.B. Dealey International Competition (for which she premiered the Hagen Solo Suite at Carnegie Hall), a bronz medal in the Queen Elizabeth International Competition, and the prize for the Russian composition by Juri Falik at the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

As a student at Curtis, she made her debut as a soloist with the orchestra in the world premiere of Hagen’s Violin Concerto, composed for her, and went on to record Concertos by Joachim Raff with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra for Tudor, the complete music for solo strings of Hagen for Arsis Records, and was featured soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra on the live recording of the Offertorium  by Sofia Gubaidulina.

Born on 12 November 1961 in Colorado Springs, CO, to a large musical family, Michaela died of cancer in hospital on 20 January 2023 at the age of 61in Bern, Switzerland, where she was based for many years. She played on a 1704 violin by Gaetano Pasta.

Musical tendrils of Liszt, a skein of notes from a youthful concerto, and a strain of Martin Luther’s Mighty Fortress appear and unravel. Love abides.