Violin Concerto no. 5 in C minor

Alexey Shor, born in Kyiv in 1970, worked as a mathematician in the United States before turning to composition full-time in his forties; his concertos have circulated largely through the festivals and competitions he is associated with in Malta, Armenia and the Gulf, where they are frequently set as required pieces. The Fifth Violin Concerto belongs to that group and exists in performances by a whole series of soloists rather than being tied to a single dedicatee. Shor writes in a deliberately tonal, melody-led idiom, and his violin writing is modelled on the nineteenth-century virtuoso repertoire.