On Sunday: UT Symphony Orchestra Takes On Sibelius, Schumann, and Brahms

UT Symphony Orchestra - James Fellenbaum, music director

BY ALAN SHERROD

It is simply too easy, if not dangerous, to take the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra for granted.

Year after year in the 20-year tenure of Conductor and Director of Orchestras James Fellenbaum—of the now UT College of Music—the orchestra has grown steadily and matured into a first-rate university ensemble that one can call “Knoxville’s Other Symphony Orchestra” without reservation. Their September opening concert of the season clearly made that case. The concert featuring guest violinist Frank Huang, Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto, was an opportunity to see and hear just how high and far the ensemble has come. In addition to the Sibelius on that concert, the orchestra was stunningly impressive in Dosia McKay’s atmospheric Watercolors (conducted by Hunter Wilburn) and Respighi’s textural masterpiece, the symphonic poem Fountains of Rome, conducted by Maestro Fellenbaum.

Moving on with expeditious confidence, UTSO’s concert season continues this Sunday, October 15, 4:00 PM, with yet another program that represents their elevated status. The orchestra will explore another side of Jean Sibelius with his tone poem Finlandia, an 1894 work that was first heard in America in 1905. The work is a contrasting mix of anger and agitation resolving to an eloquent hope for peace.

Faculty cellist Wesley Baldwin will then join the orchestra as soloist in Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 129, a work written during the composer’s decline into unfortunate madness. The concerto was never performed in his lifetime; the premiere came in 1860 in Leipzig.

The concert will conclude with Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn (often referred to as the Saint Anthony Variations). It consists of an opening theme based on a “Chorale St Antoni”, eight variations, and a finale. The work carries the interesting backstory that while Brahms publicly assumed that the “Chorale St Antoni” was actually a true Haydn creation, there is scholarly evidence to support the fact that the attribution was false. Either way, the work is eminently satisfying for its charming character. Conducting grad student Hunter Wilburn will take the baton for the Brahms.