In the second Concertmaster Series outing of the 2023-24 season at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster William Shaub and his KSO colleagues chose to make the legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz the connecting force for their recital—and with good and appropriate reasons. Born in 1901, Heifetz was recognized as a child violin prodigy before his teenage years and was performing across Europe to great acclaim. At the age of sixteen, Heifetz’s family left a troubled Europe and emigrated to the United States, the teenager making a Carnegie Hall performance later that same year. Critics and audiences regarded him as the greatest violin virtuoso of the 20th Century.
Following the usual scheme of the Concertmaster series, Shaub filled the first half of the concert with awe-inducing solos and duets, in this case, arranged by, or somehow connected to, Heifetz as a performer. Shaub opened with Vittorio Monti’s virtuosic Csárdás, setting the stage for a series of works that would later bring Shaub colleague, violinist Sofia Glashauser, out for some beautifully rendered duos by Wieniawski and Halvorsen.
On the second half came the ensemble work of the evening, César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor. Some might have wondered what the connection was between Heifetz and Franck, and deservedly so. In their introductions, Shaub and his violist colleague of the evening, Josh Ulrich, cleared that up. It seems Heifetz, not generally enamored of chamber music, loved Franck’s Piano Quintet and recorded it twice.
Although Franck’s own wife disliked the piece, as did the pianist to first perform it, Camille Saint-Saëns, audiences are generally enraptured by the quintet’s heat and its dramatic progressions. A lot of this drama is dependent on careful dynamics, both subtle and demonstrative. These attributes—along with balance—are often difficult to achieve in the hall’s reflective sonic environment that favors the high end and varies throughout the space. Nevertheless, the quintet (Shaub and Gordon Tsai, violins; Josh Ulrich, viola; Adam Ayres, cello; Kevin Class, piano) was aware of the passion within the work that evolves and transforms out of unfolding themes, and made on-the-fly communicative adjustments.
The third and final installment of the Concertmaster Series is but two months away on April 3 and 4, this time with KSO Principal Oboe Claire Chenette joining Shaub and his string colleagues for Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe. That concert will also feature other Baroque works by Heinrich Biber and Jean-Marie LeClair.
