Knoxville Symphony This Week: Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Copland, Jean Sibelius

Composer Jennifer Higdon: A Tennessee Treasure Comes Home

Composer Jennifer Higdon once remarked that she grew up “a stone’s throw as the crow flies” from Cold Mountain, the setting of her twice Grammy-nominated opera based on Charles Frazier’s bestselling novel of the same name. Higdon, who attended Heritage High School just outside Maryville, certainly has an affinity for this region. And for many of us here in East Tennessee, there is great excitement about the girl next door coming home.

Cold Mountain, Higdon’s operatic debut, sold-out in Santa Fe when it premiered in 2015, helping Higdon build the laudable title of the third most frequently-performed contemporary composer today. The opera’s popularity was the driving force behind Higdon’s decision to create an orchestral suite derived from the work, one that will be premiered in Tennessee by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra on its upcoming Moxley Carmichael Masterworks concert pair this week.

Cold Mountain was not only nominated for two Grammys, but won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016, the first American opera to do so in the award’s history. She is the recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto, written for superstar violinist Hilary Hahn. She has won three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Further, Higdon has been commissioned by some of the most prestigious orchestras in the U.S., including Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Minnesota. 

For those of us lucky enough to live in East Tennessee, we not only have a chance to hear the Tennessee premiere of Cold Mountain Suite, but we can also revisit a favorite – Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite. Brought together under the KSO’s broader concert theme, “Appalachian Journey,” both works are drawn from stories set in the Appalachian Mountains.

If there was ever a reason to get out of the house this week, hearing music by Higdon and Copland would certainly be enough. But Maestro Aram Demirjian is giving us another compelling reason: Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82. 

Demirjian made an inspired choice in building this week’s program around the monumental Sibelius 5. “Sometimes the through line of a program is as much sonic as narrative since some pieces just sound right when juxtaposed,” said Demirjian, “From beginning to end, our program features an ever-expanding sense of open space and grandeur, which reaches its peak with Sibelius’ soaring Fifth Symphony.”

The symphony was first performed in Helsinki in 1915, on Sibelius’ 50^th birthday, with none other than the composer himself on the podium. Although the premiere was well-received, Sibelius made two subsequent revisions, a striking feat that started by reconfiguring the overall structure from four movements to three. In 1919, Sibelius again conducted the piece, now in its third and final iteration – the version KSO will perform.

An avid nature enthusiast, Sibelius may have found inspiration for this symphony in the great outdoors. “Though not literally referenced in this symphony,” said Demirjian, “much of Sibelius’ music calls to mind the snow-capped mountains, majestic coastlines, and heavenly skies of his Finnish homeland.” Demirjian notes that as Sibelius worked on the piece, he wrote in his diary: “It was as if God the Father was throwing pieces of mosaic from the edge of heaven and asking me to figure out what the pattern was.”

If hearing this masterpiece is still not enough reason to get to the Tennessee Theatre this week, try this. Demirjian fans can witness one of the greatest “conductor moments” of all time at the end of the symphony. Without spoiling this delicious moment for those unfamiliar with the symphony, be warned: Applaud at your own risk!