The arriving audience for the weekend’s concerts by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in the Tennessee Theatre was greeted with glasses of champagne, no doubt to add a bit of sparkle and lightness to the usual anxious expectations of season-opening concerts. For those who had missed the real season-opener for the orchestra, the production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with the Clarence Brown Theatre, the bubbly reinforcement may have been necessary. However, those who had already been dazzled by Candide arrived warmed up and ready for the season.
It was just two years ago at this time that Maestro Aram Demirjian was making his debut as the KSO’s new music director and principal conductor. On that occasion, the orchestra offered an all-Russian program of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 along with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, a bit of a departure—but a successful one—for a season-opener that often tends to be lighter and varied. This season, Demirjian again went straight to a welcome and hearty meal of European romanticism including Rachmaninoff and capped off with Brahms— perhaps an unconscious counter to the comic operetta sparkle of Candide. After a performance of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Starburst, the pianist Joyce Yang joined the orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with the second half taken up by Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
Yang made a name for herself in 2005 with a Silver Medal win at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and has since defined herself as a pianist with dramatic depth and a seemingly effortless technique. Those characteristics played out in her performance of the Rachmaninoff concerto where she leapt into bold, thunderous statements, but carefully contrasted them with the moments of forgiving delicacy. The characteristic Rachmaninoff passagework—mind-bogglingly packed with tonal color and detail—was rendered cleanly and virtuosically. Yang articulated the deceptively complex phrasing with just the right narrative emphasis that never drifted into unnecessary rubato or melodrama.
Rachmaninoff’s orchestration plays a prominent role in the mood of all of his piano concertos, a fact that Demirjian focused on, not just in the immaculate balance with Yang’s piano, but, more importantly, as a provider of painterly textures, push and pull dynamics, and descriptive gestures from woodwinds. In this regard, the simply gorgeous second movement—an Adagio sostenuto—was a feast of gentle description. Demirjian and Yang brilliantly built the excitement in the finale through dynamics and tempo, practically making a leap to one’s feet an imperative at the end.
The orchestra’s careful attention to narrative through instrumental textures carried over into the second half of the program—a lusciously rich, and creatively played, Brahms Symphony No. 1. Haunted by the unforgiving shadow of the Beethoven symphonies, Brahms agonized over his first, injecting both real and imagined effects of the work’s gestation into its musical cloth. Hearing those magical hints come alive, as one did through Demirjian’s urging, was a listener’s paradise.
Those who cannot resist Brahms’ slow Andante sostenuto movement’s poignancy were well rewarded. The gorgeous theme for oboe was rendered with the requisite spine-tingle by Principal Claire Chenette, a theme that is later joined by the solo violin, perfectly taken by concertmaster William Shaub. Notable, too, was the horn solo by Principal Jeffery Whaley, as well as the flute work throughout the evening from Hannah Hammel.
Demirjian opened the evening with a work dripping with drive, momentum, and energy, Jonathan Leshnoff’s 2008 work, Starburst. Thanks to a remarkable orchestration that pulses with life, the work has moments of punctuation, moments of flowing rhythm, and moments of sonic surprise that inevitably force the listener into a state of optimistic elation. Come to think of it, optimistic elation is a great way to start a season.
