Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — “Beethoven and The Rite of Spring”
Conductor: Aram Demirjian
• Lili Boulanger: Of A Spring Morning
• Tan Dun: Passacaglia: Secret Of Wind And Birds
• Ludwig Van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 — Zhenni Li-Cohen, Piano
• Igor Stravinsky: The Rite Of Spring
Thursday and Friday, May 18 and 19, 7:30 PM
Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Downtown Knoxville
Tickets and Information
For years after the Paris premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) on May 29, 1913, writers on both sides of the issue fueled the sensationalist idea that a riot had taken place between traditionalists and supporters of the new. Although “riot” is probably a bit of hyperbole—boos, hissing, violent quarrels, demonstrations, and a general uproar between the two factions made for interesting discussion of a reaction that probably had more to do with Nijinsky’s choreography than Stravinsky’s score. The New York Times review a week after the premiere was headlined “Parisians Hiss New Ballet.” In it, Stravinsky was quoted as remarking: “No doubt it will be understood one day I sprang a surprise on Paris, and Paris was disconcerted. But it will soon forget its bad temper.”
Indeed, the world has forgotten its bad temper and moved on as evolution in the arts requires. While the societal and political turmoils of Europe in 1913 have been replaced innumerable times since then, the eternal debate between those who fear change and those who embrace it goes on in different contexts. Thankfully, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will wrap up its current season this week featuring The Rite of Spring—one hundred and ten years after its fateful premiere—embracing inventiveness, diversity, and innovation. No riots will be necessary unless the Tennessee Theatre bar runs out of adult refreshments.
Stravinsky’s score calls for a very large orchestra of extra winds, brass, and percussion that the composer uses to evoke a spiritual rhythm and a visceral worship of nature in a pulsed primitivist manner, but one that frolics in the suggestive machine-like throb of Futurism in music.
Interestingly, KSO maestro Aram Demirjian is including Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, a work the composer premiered publicly at that infamous December concert on December 22, 1808, that also included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Choral Fantasy. Pianist Zhenni Li will be making her KSO debut.
To preface the Stravinsky, Demirjian is opening the concert with two works that reflect a changing world. First, D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning) by Lili Boulanger, a younger sister of composer and educator Nadia Boulanger.
In many ways like Stravinsky’s musical and audience challenges in 1913, Chinese composer Tan Dun takes on the ancient and the modern in Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds, a work that combines the orchestra’s emulation of bird, wind, and ocean sounds with recordings of bird sounds played back on smartphones. The shock of the new, indeed.
