KSO Season Opener This Week: Beethoven’s Fifth and Gershwin’s Concerto in F

 

As 21st Century listeners, we discover there is something strangely satisfying about the familiar “ta-ta-ta-DAH” opening passage of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. That satisfaction, though, goes well beyond the pleasure of simple recognition. The remainder of the C-minor symphony is a masterpiece of melody and rhythm that engages the listener with a profound sense of urgency and importance—albeit one that can be a struggle to define. Imagine, then, the impression that the work made on first-time listeners at its premiere on a strange marathon December concert in the Vienna of 1808 —a concert in which the composer presented not only the Fifth Symphony, but also his Sixth Symphony, the Choral Fantasy, the Fourth Piano Concerto, as well as several movements of the Mass in C and the concert aria “Ah Perfido,” all on the same program. 

Although audience members at the 1808 premiere had to brave the cold of an unheated Theater an der Wien, it will be a pleasantly temperate Tennessee Theatre that greets Beethoven’s Fifth with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert in its 2024-25 season this week. KSO Maestro Aram Demirjian has put together a program of three works that promise to engage the listener in a broad musical conversation ending with Beethoven’s Fifth after an intriguing journey through two contrasting works.

“Beethoven’s Fifth,” offers Demirjian, “is arguably the most well-known, well-loved, ubiquitous piece in the entire symphonic repertoire — and yet it never feels old, tired, or overstated. Quite the contrary  —   it seems to get more exhilarating with every fresh exposure to it. Such is the magic of true masterpieces  —   they contain seemingly endless depths to mine.”

Of course, one of the joys for 21st Century listeners is our opportunity to hear works of vastly contrasting styles and intents, snatched from contemporary performance and music history and juxtaposed with attention to detail. Demirjian is opening the concert with two works that work their way backward through time and musical texture: the 2021 premiered Kauyumari by Gabriela Ortiz and George Gershwin’s Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra. The pianist in the concerto will be the impressive Natasha Paremski, previously a guest pianist with the KSO in a 2019 performance of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto. [read the Arts Knoxville review of Ms. Paremski’s performance.]

Demirjian summed up the concert’s obvious delicious contrasts that await concertgoers.

“In our program this month, you have two composers who re-wrote the rules about what was possible for an orchestra: Beethoven with his literal expansion of the symphony orchestra’s instrumentation and its tonal and dynamic range; and Gershwin infusing the so-called “low” genre of jazz into the most classical of forms, the piano concerto. They’re preceded by an overture by Gabriela Ortiz that is, without question, equal to the other two pieces in its exuberance and originality. It’s a piece rooted in Native Mexican tradition about spiritual transformation and renewal allowing us to access an invisible world in which we can heal the wounds of the soul — a perfect allegory for reentering the world of music, as we are at the beginning of this season.”