KSO Chamber Series This Sunday — Beethoven, Ravel, Schoenberg, Zwilich

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra resumes its Chamber Series this Sunday afternoon, March 1, with a program enticingly titled “A Cast of Characters: Peanuts, Mother Goose and More.”  The concert will open with Beethoven’s Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus and close with Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (Ma mère l’oye Suite).

In between comes two contrasting works, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op 4 in an arrangement for strings, followed by the intriguing Peanuts® Gallery for Piano and Orchestra by Ellen Zwilich featuring KSO pianist Emi Kagawa. The concert will be under the baton of guest conductor Chelsea Gallo.

The KSO program notes by Ken Meltzer offer a very interesting creation story for the Zwilich piece.

“In 1990, cartoonist Charles Schulz learned about American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and her music. Later that year, Schulz created a Peanuts® cartoon in which Peppermint Patty and Marcie attend an orchestral concert, featuring Zwilich’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1989). When Marcie tells Peppermint Patty the name of the composer “who, incidentally, just happens to be a woman,” Patty responds: “Good Going, Ellen!” 

Zwilich contacted Schulz, and the two became friends. Later, when Carnegie Hall requested Zwilich compose a work for a children’s concert, she contemplated the idea of music based on the Peanuts® characters. Schulz readily approved the project. On March 22, 1997 at a Carnegie Hall Family Concert, pianist Albert Kim and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra premiered Zwilich’s Peanuts® Gallery.”