Solomia Soroka
Violinist Solomia Soroka, born in L’viv, Ukraine, made her solo debut at age 10, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the L’viv Philharmonic Orchestra. Her playing combines the powerful background of the Ukrainian system with a passionate exploration of lesser played music, especially American and Ukrainian.
She has appeared as soloist and as chamber musician at concerts and festivals in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, USA, Canada, China, Korea, and Taiwan. She is praised for being “a truly wonderful musician” (The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand), her “technical mastery…ferocity, light and mystic lyricism” (Daily Freeman, New York), and as one who “plays with great warmth and authority” (BBC Music Magazine). She has performed with orchestras in Ukraine, Australia, and the United States.
Ms. Soroka has performed premieres of a number of important contemporary Ukrainian compositions for violin, including works by Borys Lyatoshynsky, Myroslav Skoryk and Yevhen Stankovych.
Since her U.S. debut in 1997, she has performed throughout the United States. Her recitals in Washington DC were part of the Smithsonian Institute performing arts series and she received the following review in the Washington Post:
“Soroka is a superbly equipped violinist, at ease with the technical challenges
of Sarasate or of Jeno Hubay’s Czardas No. 2, but even more impressive in the gentler moments…. Her tone is warm and mellow on the low strings, brilliant on the high strings, perfectly controlled and expressively used.”
Solomia Soroka has toured and recorded extensively with her husband, the pianist Arthur Greene. Their Naxos recording of Four Violin Sonatas by William Bolcom was selected as Recording of the Month with the highest ranking for both artistry and sound quality by Classics Today, and received reviews in various distinguished journals:
“Another virtuoso piece…confidently delivered by this brilliant duo” (Gramophone)
Their recording of the violin sonatas of Nikolai Roslavets, also for Naxos, has received international attention. “Soroka seemed utterly confident, catching a haunting, languid quality within Roslavets’s elusive harmonic idiom……” (The Strad)
In the past eight years Soroka has been recording for Toccata Records, based in London, where she made six premier recordings, of music by American composer Arthur Hartmann, Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk, Mykola Lysenko, and Yevhen Stankovych, and Holocaust composers Leone Sinigaglia and Bernhard Sekles.
Ms. Soroka’s current passion is for unknown American music from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. She has gathered a substantial collection of rare scores of American sonatas from that period by lesser-known American composers, and is in a process of recording and releasing them online. She will tour US universities with lecture-recitals introducing this unknown music to American students, academia and a general audience.
Solomia Soroka is currently a violin professor at Goshen College, Indiana, and is on the faculty of Music Fest in Perugia, Italy. Ms. Soroka has taught at the Castleman Quartet Program, Pilsen Summer Academy, and Schlern Music Festival. She is active giving masterclasses in her native Ukraine, USA, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Czech Republic, and Italy.
She studied with Hersh Heifetz, Bohodar Kotorovych, Liudmyla Zvirko and Charles Castleman. Website information:www.solomiasoroka.com