University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra
Viola Celebration Finale
Sunday, October 24, 4:00 PM
James R. Cox Auditorium on the UT Campus
FREE
Bartok: Viola Concerto
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
In Viola Celebration Finale, Three Notable Violists Combine for Bartok’s Viola Concerto; UTSO Takes On Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
At the time of his death in September 1945, the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók had been living in the United States for only five years. Forced to flee Europe in the World War II environment of 1940 due to his strong anti-Fascist stands in his native Hungary, Bartok eventually overcame a creative block in his first years in the U.S. to write some notable works before his death. Certainly at the top of these U.S. works was the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation for a premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bartok had also received a number of other commissions, including a 1944 one from violist William Primrose for a viola concerto.
Suffering from leukemia, Bartok died with the Viola Concerto incomplete. The Bartok family subsequently asked the composer’s close friend Tibor Serly to finish projects left undone, including the final orchestrations for the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Viola Concerto which existed mostly as solo line sketches with no orchestration. Serly finished the work in 1949, at which time it was given a premiere by Antal Dorati and Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra with Primrose as the violist.
This resurrected Bartok Viola Concerto will be a topic for this Sunday’s University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra concert led by conductor James Fellenbaum, a concert combined with the UT School of Music’s Viola Celebration finale. In an interesting twist, there will be three viola soloists from the guest artist and faculty side of the viola workshops and masterclasses—
Steven Tenenbom is on the faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he is the Coordinator of String Chamber Music. He also serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School, The Conservatory of Music at Bard College and was a visiting professor at The Yale School of Music. He is the violist of the Orion String Quartet.
Juliet White-Smith is currently Professor of Viola at The Ohio State University and previously taught at the University of Northern Colorado and Western Michigan University. She holds degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Houston and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music. She joined the Artist-Faculty at the Brevard Music Festival in 2018.
Hillary Herndon, the viola faculty member at the UT School of Music, is the driving force behind the UTSOM Viola Celebration. In addition to teaching at the University of Tennessee, Herndon is involved in the Montecito Music Festival and the Viola Intensive Workshops.  She has recently been elected to serve on the American Viola Society Executive Board and has published teaching articles in the American String Teacher Association Journal and the Journal of the American Viola Society. Ms. Herndon holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School.
Following the Bartok, the UTSO will tackle Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, a work that has the distinction of having delighted the Russian public, the Russian music critics, and the Soviet political forces that so often made the composer’s life a living hell.
