It rarely happens this way, but thanks to the whims of the calendar, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will be opening the 2023-24 season for two of its major series within a few days of each other.
The KSO’s always-intriguing Chamber Classics Series in the Bijou Theatre comes first with a program titled “William Shaub Plays Mozart”— this Sunday afternoon, September 17, at 2:30 PM—with works by Jorge Variego, Dame Ethel Smyth, and, of course, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Concertmaster William Shaub will be the featured soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219, a work that carries the descriptive, but somewhat misleading nickname of the “Turkish.”
Opening the concert will be BLINK, an atmospheric work for orchestra and multimedia by Jorge Variego that was commissioned by the KSO for a 2021 Young People’s Concert. The work’s title refers to the unique event of the synchronous fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One of Knoxville’s busiest musicians and performers, Variego is on the faculty of the University of Tennessee College of Music and is the founder of the Domino Ensemble.
KSO music director and Maestro Aram Demirjian will conclude with Ethel Smyth’s Serenade in D Major for Orchestra. The work premiered in 1890 and was the composer’s first orchestral work. Smyth, a key figure in the British suffrage movement, is one of the composers finally gaining deserved attention after being passed over for years by virtue of gender discrimination in music circles.
“William Shaub Plays Mozart” — Chamber Classics Series
Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra — Conductor Aram Demirjian
Bijou Theatre
Sunday, September 17, 2:30 PM
Jorge Variego: Blink (KSO Commission)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5
Dame Ethel Smyth: Serenade In D Major
Tickets and Information
• • • • •
Following Sunday’s Chamber Classics debut for 2023-24, Maestro Demirjian and the Orchestra will kick off the Moxley Carmichael Masterworks Series on Thursday and Friday, September 21 and 22, in the Tennessee Theatre.
The featured work will be Pictures at an Exhibition, the exceedingly popular work by Modest Mussorgsky as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. “Not only is it a much-beloved work for our audience,” says Demirjian, “but we will also be on the figurative eve of the 150th anniversary of the composition of piano suite on which this orchestration is based.”
Demirjian will open with contemporary composer Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Studies, which was conceived by the composer as a 21st Century Pictures at an Exhibition. “Like Mussorgsky’s work,” explains Demirjian, “it is in 10 movements, inspired by works of art and the experience of walking through a gallery. Unlike the Mussorgsky, these works are not all paintings nor are they by the same artist. What unites them is the museum they all reside in: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.”
Also on the opening Masterworks program is Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto in A-flat Major. The 1950 work from the Armenian/Soviet composer has become an essential composition in the solo trumpet repertoire. Performing here will be William Leathers, the Principal Trumpet in the Nashville Symphony. Demirjian encountered Leathers when he was guest conducting the Nashville orchestra and “…it didn’t take long to realize that here is a special musician. His star is already starting to soar, and I just wanted to get him to Knoxville while he is still close to home.”
“Pictures at an Exhibition “— Masterworks Series
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — Conductor Aram Demirjian
Tennessee Theatre
Thursday and Friday, September 21 and 22, 7:30 PM
Adam Schoenberg: Picture Studies
Alexander Arutiunian: Trumpet Concerto
Modest Mussorgsky (Arr. Ravel): Pictures at an Exhibition
Tickets and Information
