Spotlight: KSO and Guest Conductor Vinay Parameswaran This Week

Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — “Dvořák and Tchaikovsky”
Guest conductor: Vinay Parameswaran
Program:
•  Quinn Mason: A Joyous Trilogy
•  Antonín Dvořák: Silent Woods (Waldesruhe)
•  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations (with cellist Thomas Mesa)
•  Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 8
Thursday and Friday, March 14 and 15, 7:30 PM
Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street
Tickets and Information

Asked to name off a few works by Antonín Dvořák and most people will start with his Symphony No. 9 — “From the New World”. That popular work, a feast of impressions of America from the pen of a European composer, will be coming up for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and its audience next season—on the May Masterworks concert, to be exact. Fortunately, Dvořák devotees won’t have to wait that long for a telling glimpse of the direction the Czech composer was taking in the few years just before the New World Symphony. His preceding symphony, the Symphony No. 8 in G Major, on the KSO program this week, is a warm and marvelously energetic and aggressive work, tinged with minor key side-trips that take the listener in new directions from his previous symphonies. Listeners will immediately understand why recordings often group the Dvořák 8th and 9th together.

The guest conductor for this week’s Masterworks pair of concerts is Vinay Parameswaran. In addition to a busy schedule of guest appearances, his impressive history includes five seasons with the Cleveland Orchestra as Assistant Conductor, eventually becoming Associate Conductor in 2021. Prior to his years with the Cleveland Orchestra, he was the Associate Conductor of the Nashville Symphony for three seasons.

Prior to the Dvořák 8th, Parameswaran will be joined by Cuban-American cellist Thomas Mesa for Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. Mesa was the recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s 2023 Medal of Excellence, its highest honor awarded to extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians.

Drawn to the late-18th-century classicism of Mozart as an escape, Tchaikovsky used the composer for inspiration in several works. Among them we can certainly include the Suite No. 4 (“Mozartiana”), but also the Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33. The theme, as it turns out, was Tchaikovsky’s own, but one skillfully designed around classical style. Tchaikovsky apparently got help from the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen who performed the premiere. The cellist later made significant changes to add emphasis to the cello part, but also rearranged the order of the variations.

Parameswaran will open with a 2019 work by Quinn Mason, A Joyous Trilogy, and follow with Dvořák’s Silent Woods (Waldesruhe).