By Alan Sherrod You didn’t have to be a music history nerd to enjoy yesterday’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Chamber Classics concert “A Touch of France”. But if you did self-identify that way, you were probably in a state of…
Review: KSO’s Season Opener Finds Warmth and Sparkle in Brahms and Rachmaninoff
The arriving audience for the weekend’s concerts by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in the Tennessee Theatre were greeted with glasses of champagne, no doubt to add a bit sparkle and lightness to the usual anxious expectations of season-opening concerts. For those who had missed the real season-opener for the orchestra, the production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with the Clarence Brown Theatre, the bubbly reinforcement may have been necessary. However, those who had already been dazzled by Candide arrived warmed up and ready for the season.
After a performance of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Starburst, the pianist Joyce Yang joined the orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with the second half taken up by Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
KSO This Week: Pianist Joyce Yang, “Brahms and Rachmaninoff”
There have been some notable anniversaries in the music world of 2018, among them Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, for which there have been global celebrations of his music. It was also composer Charles Gounod’s 200th birthday, and the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Gustav Holst’s The Planets. And—although you probably won’t find it on any national lists—2018 was the 75th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s last public performance in Knoxville, on February 17, 1943.
The KSO’s opening Masterworks concert of the season features works by Jonathan Leshnoff, the Piano Concerto No. 2 of Rachmaninoff, and Brahms Symphony No. 1.
Review: CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’ – The Best of Dazzling Possibilities
By Alan Sherrod For the last year or so, productions of Leonard Bernstein’s comic operetta Candide have been popping up all over the globe, from Europe to South America, thanks in large part to the encouragement and celebration surrounding…
Preview: Collaboration Key To CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’
By Alan Sherrod It’s a bit ironic that Voltaire’s Candide, a novella that satirizes the 18th Century philosophy of optimism and its inevitable disillusionment, has required plenty of optimism and perseverance from those that have sought to turn it…
KSO To Perform at Washington, DC, Kennedy Center During SHIFT Festival 2020
The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will find itself in lofty company in 2020. The orchestra was one of four orchestras selected to perform a concert during the third SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, performances that will take place at the Kennedy…
Review: KSO Ends 2017-18 Season With Some Excitement and Risk-Taking
Perhaps it’s the warm weather, or perhaps it’s the seasonal idea of commencement—an ending that’s also a beginning. Whatever the impetus, the final concerts of the season for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra each May always seem to evoke a mix of heart-tugging nostalgia and optimism for what the future may bring. On those final May concerts this past weekend, however, those usual emotions were joined by something new, a curious, but restrained sense of excitement and anticipation similar to what one feels when embarking on an adventure.
KSO This Week: A Feast of American Composers to End the Season
I have to admit that prior to February 2017 my knowledge of Florence Price and her music was that of her name on a list of American women composers. In my shaky defense to never having heard a live performance of her music until then, or even a recording, I can say that I wasn’t totally alone even among those who write about the subject.
Review: KSO Indulges in a Lusty ‘Carmina Burana’
The KSO performance put the spotlight on what is important in the piece: a relatively simple musical language that wallows in the indulgent fantasies of spring, charms and satisfies the listener musically, and supports the bawdy and poetic spirit of the Medieval texts.
Preview: KSO, Knoxville Choral Society, and Soloists Take on ‘Carmina Burana’ This Week
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Masterworks: “Carmina Burana” Conductor: Aram Demirjian Gustav Mahler: Blumine Kurt Weill: Suite from Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) Carl Orff: Carmina Burana Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Downtown Knoxville Thursday and Friday, March 15 and 16, 7:30…