Sunday in the Concert Hall: UT Symphony and Young Pianist Series

The University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra finds itself downtown this weekend at the Tennessee Theatre for its Sunday afternoon concert—“Viva l’Italia! II”—a sequel of sorts to its September 2017 concert. UTSO music director and conductor James Fellenbaum follows up that concert which featured Ottorino Respighi’s Fountains of Rome by continuing that composer’s tone poem series with Pines of Rome.

What would an afternoon of Italian-themed works be without opera? Fellenbaum and the orchestra will start with the Giuseppe Verdi’s Overture to Nabucco.

While Verdi wrote his final opera Falstaff at age 80, Gioachino Rossini ended his operatic career voluntarily and unexpectedly at age 37 after having written 40 operas. He didn’t exactly quit composing, though. In 1835, he published a suite of songs titled Soirées Musicales. The song series has been the basis for a number of transcriptions and arrangements, the most notable one being the work to be heard on this concert by Benjamin Britten.

Also on the concert is Puccini’s Intermezzo from Act III of the opera Manon Lescaut.

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Earlier in the afternoon, the Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series offers up its second recitalist of the 2018 season, Peng Cao.

From his bio—

“Peng Cao has held recitals, concertos and chamber music concerts in Europe and a number of cities in China. As a soloist, Peng Cao has appeared with Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Armenian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra, Xi’an Symphony Orchestra, Hubei Symphony Orchestra, Shenyang Symphony Orchestra, etc. Cao Peng also played on the same stage with famous conductors including Zhang Guoyong, Hu Yongyan, Yang Yang, Eduard Topchjan, Sergey Tararin, Hodge Kawamoto, Dane Lam, as well as the violinist Lu Wei and the cellist Qin Liwei.”