This Week: Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Opens Season With Works By Vivaldi, Elgar, and Valerie Coleman

 

 

One of the minor twists of the English language is that the word commencement—meaning a start or a beginning—often refers to a final ceremonial occasion in which one ends one phase of life and commences another. In a sense, that’s the situation for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra as their Masterworks concerts have a new beginning this week—the opening concert of the 2021-22 season and a return to full-capacity at the Tennessee Theatre for the first time since February 2020.

Although I am sure it is a total coincidence, Edward Elgar, the English composer heard quite ubiquitously at commencements in the United States,  is also being featured on the KSO program with his Variations on an original theme, Op.36, that is popularly known as Enigma Variations.

Although a veritable cottage industry has sprung up in an attempt to “solve” the Enigma, the work’s creation began rather simply. While Elgar was idly doodling at the piano one evening, a particular tune caught his wife’s attention. The composer began playing with the tune, adapting it in musical caricatures to represent some of the couple’s friends. Each variation subsequently was titled with the initials of the friend, beginning with “C.A.E” for Elgar’s wife, Caroline Alice, and ending with the 14th variation, “E.D.U” for the composer himself.

Elgar’s own note of explanation only added to the mystery of the puzzle.

“The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connexion between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played …”

Although many historians (and others) have claimed to have the solution to the Enigma, there has never been a solution that seems conclusive, or satisfactory to a majority of those concerned.

One puzzle that will be solved at the concert is what Maestro Aram Demirjian is calling a “reimagining” of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons using original spoken word poetry, created by Knoxville Poet Laureate Rhea Carmon and her poetry collective The 5th Woman. Guest artist in the Vivaldi will be violinist Robyn Bollinger.

Bollinger was last heard with the KSO three years ago in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto that electrified the Tennessee Theatre audience. From my Arts Knoxville review in October, 2018—

“While Tchaikovsky must bear a lot of the blame for this quasi-rapture, he was assisted on this occasion by violinist Robyn Bollinger who, frankly, stunned the audience with an inarguably brilliant performance. Bollinger, playing a 2017-constructed violin by Brooklyn-based luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz, took listeners on a captivating jaunt through Tchaikovsky’s changing musical scenery. The young violinist kept her interpretation fresh—and the audience enthralled— through passagework that brimmed with clean details and a delightful rhythmic and melodic take, all the while displaying razor-sharp technique.”

Demirjian will open the concert with Umoja (Anthem of Unity) by American composer Valerie Coleman. Umoja is the Swahili word for Unity and the first principle of the African Dispora holiday Kwanzaa. The work began life in 2001 as a wind quintet performed by the Imani Winds, Coleman’s own chamber music ensemble. The orchestral version that will be heard on this concert was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2019, its performance by that orchestra being the first classical work by a living African American female composer.

Critic Peter Dobin wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer,: “Let’s start off by calling Umoja, Anthem for Unity exactly what it is apart from the question of who wrote it. It’s a terrific work. The piece — umoja means unity in Swahili — arcs from serene peace to racing tension before emerging in sunlit joy.”

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Those attending KSO concerts at the Tennessee Theatre and the Bijou Theatre should be aware of the new and continuing Covid-19 venue information.

•  Mobile Tickets: the KSO is utilizing mobile tickets that can be printed or displayed on your smartphone.

•  Programs: Text “program” to 865-270-0091 to access the digital program book

•  The venues require a completed series of COVID-19 vaccinations indicated by a vaccination card OR a negative COVID-19 test administered within 72 hours of entry

•  Masks are required at all times in the venues except when eating or drinking