Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Masterworks: “Michelle Cann Plays Rachmaninoff”
Guest Conductor: Francesco Lecce-Chong
Pianist: Michelle Cann
Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street in Downtown Knoxville
Thursday and Friday, October 13 and 14, 7:30 PM
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Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3
Hindemith: Symphony: Mathis der Maler
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Tickets and Information
As we are forced to mention at least once every season, Knoxville and Sergei Rachmaninoff are bound together in history in a connection that is either ironically fortunate or unfortunate—depending on your point of view. On February 17, 1943, the Russian-born composer/pianist gave the last performance of his life in Knoxville at a solo recital on the University of Tennessee campus. World’s Fair Park in downtown Knoxville is the site of a statue by sculptor Victor Bokarov commemorating that event.
The history behind the connection is covered in two articles I have written in the last 12 years—most recently in Arts Knoxville, “Sergei Rachmaninoff, We Hardly Knew Ye.”
In the last years of his life, Rachmaninoff had become known to American audiences as a virtuosic piano recitalist, performing the compositions of other composers, as well as his own. Today, many listeners make their first contact with Rachmaninoff as a composer through his works for piano and orchestra—and often, that introduction comes with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, a work completed in 1901 that virtually defines the late-Romantic Period in emotion. It is that concerto that is on the program this week for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra with its guest soloist, Michelle Cann.
Cann last appeared with KSO in 2018 in a performance that included Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
This concert will be under the baton of guest conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong, currently the Music Director of the Eugene Symphony in Oregon, and the Santa Rosa Symphony in Northern California. He will open the concert with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, one of the three composer-rejected overtures for the opera that became Fidelio.
Maestro Lecce-Chong and the KSO will also perform Symphony: Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter), by Paul Hindemith. Although the work began as an opera, Hindemith was induced to use the material for a symphony for the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1934. The opera was eventually finished in 1935, but was held back in Germany due to opposition of its themes from Nazi leaders such as Goebbels.
As far as I know, this performance of Symphony: Mathis der Maler is the first by the KSO.
