Examiner Review of Elizabeth Prior, viola / Jeffrey Sykes, piano — 2012 December 18
Violist Elizabeth Prior was the featured soloist at today’s Noontime Concerts™ recital at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral (“San Francisco’s Musical Lunch Break”). Her accompanist was pianist Jeffrey Sykes, and the major work they prepared for their program was the Opus 147 viola sonata by Dmitri Shostakovich. This was his last composition to receive an opus number (although, as I have previously observed, there is an Opus 147a transcription for cello and piano); and, as Prior commented in her remarks before the performance, the manuscript was sent to his publisher just days before his death on August 9, 1975…