MSO gives the World Premiere of Elena Kats-Chernin’s Sarenka Concerto for Solo Violin and Cello with soloists Dale Barltrop (violin) and Rachael Tobin. The work honours the memory of Sara Weis, nicknamed Sarenka, who escaped Nazi-occupied Poland as a 16-year-old and went into the resistance. After the war she moved to Melbourne with her husband, where she established a successful business and raised a family. Commissioned by nine members of Weis’s family, Sarenka is a moving and poignant portrait of war, survival and redemption, divided into six movements that move between light, darkness, mourning and hope. As Kats-Chernin says, “It’s not just a piece about her – I thought it was a piece that she would like to listen to.”