The Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music is excited to announce the gift of three complete performance sets for works by Russian-born Chinese national composer Aaron Avshalomov to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The three orchestral works are Concerto for Violin in D, Symphony No. 2, and Hutungs of Peking.

Written in the 1930s, the works came to the Fleisher Collection as part of the Work Progress Administration Federal Music Project in the 1940s. The scores alone comprise approximately 400 pages with over 150 orchestral parts needed for the stage. Dr. Gary Galván, Music Special Collections Curator, and the Music Special Collections team scanned archival materials from the 1940s, cleaned them up for legibility, and reprinted them for use on the stage. He also worked with David Avshalomov, Aaron’s grandson and a third-generation composer, to secure permissions and make the gift possible. 

The Fleisher Collection is sending these performance sets to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra as a gift to show our respect and appreciation for Avshalomov’s cultural significance in China and demonstrate how the arts bring us together. Displaced by the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Avshalomov established himself as a leading music educator in Shanghai and inspired a school of nationalist composers between 1918 and 1947. His contributions to Chinese classical music remain unparalleled. David, who has been invited by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra to conduct the work of his grandfather, says it best: "Music can warm the connections between nations and peoples; may it be so now."

Materials were shipped to prepare for a September 12, 2024 concert, the recordings from which will be included in an episode of our monthly podcast Fleisher Discoveries featuring Aaron Avshalomov’s work and we're already looking ahead to the next step! Dr. Galván is working with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to deposit into their library copies of six orchestral scores that the Fleisher Collection possesses and that are not otherwise available in China. In addition to scores for the three works listed above, the Fleisher Collection will also send as gifts scores for:

• Symphony No. 1 
• Symphony No. 3
• Piano Concerto in G: Upon Chinese Themes and Rhythms
• The Soul of the Ch'in
• The Great Wall

Interestingly, the Fleisher Collection’s holdings of The Great Wall — an opera — contain notes, sketches, and other valuable performance and staging directions. 

We're excited to collaborate with David Avshalomov and our friends at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra! More to come!