Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster William Shaub, host and performer of orchestra’s Concertmaster Series, wrapped up the 2024-25 season of three concerts this week with an eclectic program of works that once again featured showcase pieces for violin and piano followed by a notable ensemble work chosen from the gems of chamber music history.
Review: Guest Conductor Conner Gray Covington Leads KSO in Clyne, Schumann, and Rimsky-Korsakov
The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra turned to Maestro Conner Gray Covington to helm last Thursday and Friday’s Masterworks concert pair. The concert included Anna Clyne’s ‘This Midnight Hour’, Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade.’ Janice Carissa was the pianist in the Schumann concerto.
Review: KSO Joins with Appalachian Ballet for a Superb ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Knowing what we know about Felix Mendelssohn and his artistic attractions and interests, it is exceedingly likely that he would have been superbly delighted with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s adventure into A Midsummer Night’s Dream on this past weekend’s Masterworks concerts. Not only did the evening include Mendelssohn’s amazingly mature A Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture, Op. 21, written when he was 17 years old, but also his Op. 61 incidental music for the play composed 16 years later that includes parts for two sopranos and choirs. Maestro Aram Demirjian didn’t stop there, though, adding excerpted Shakespearean text delivered as a clever narration plus the visual feast of ballet storytelling. The KSO’s partners in all this were Laura Beth Wells as the Narrator, sopranos Jacqueline Brecheen and Tori Franklin, the Webb School of Knoxville Chamber Singers, Pellissippi State Community College Variations, and 27 members of the Appalachian Ballet Company choreographed by Amy Morton Vaughn.
Review: KSO Offers A Mahler Symphony No. 5 of Mythical Proportions
The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra has at last given Knoxville audiences something Mahler to talk about—Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 was the sole work on the weekend’s Masterworks concerts. Judging by the impressive attendance, anticipatory buzz, and post-concert ebullience, the KSO audience was ready for an event—and they got one, thanks to an epic performance by Maestro Aram Demirjian and the orchestra that was sprawling and ultimately triumphant, yet carefully detailed in all the appropriate places.
The KSO This Week: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — Conductor Aram Demirjian “Mahler Symphony No. 5” Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Downtown Knoxville Thursday and Friday evenings, January 16-17, 7:30 PM Tickets and Information It was just one year ago that the Knoxville Symphony…
Review: KSO Kicks Off Christmas Season With Handel’s ‘Messiah’
Of all the creations of music in the “classical” realm, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is the perfect example of a beloved musical work that has survived a multitude of twisted traditions and misunderstandings, not to mention the performance abuse that comes with the well-meant intentions of over-popularity. Completed in 1741 and first performed in April of 1742 in Dublin, Ireland, at Neale’s Music Hall, Handel originally intended his oratorio Messiah for an Easter-time event. Handel also created the work with modest instrumentation, yet by the 1850s, Messiah was receiving lavish productions with huge choruses and orchestras and was often performed as a spectacle for Christmas audiences.
Review: Fire and Ice—KSO Takes A Journey Through Stravinsky, Debussy, and John Williams
In his opening remarks for the audience at the past weekend’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra concerts, conductor Aram Demirjian offered that one would invariably find that the program would be a showcase of sorts for the orchestra’s players, one chock full of impressive moments for a host of individual musicians. That was certainly the case. But in the bigger picture, this was also a program of five very different works that meshed brilliantly with each other, rewarding the audience both musically and intellectually. Demirjian’s programming included two works by Igor Stravinsky, Firebird Suite and the Violin Concerto. Yet, Stravinsky style did not overwhelm. Somehow, John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme,” Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Lera Auerbach’s Icarus, were deliciously purposeful and appropriate as concern companions.
KSO This Week: Demirjian and Violinist William Shaub Prepare a Feast of Stravinsky
This week, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra is offering a veritable feast of Stravinsky, including the Violin Concerto in D with KSO Concertmaster William Shaub as the soloist. Concluding the concert will be Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, a suite of five movements taken from the composer’s score for Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet, The Firebird, for the Ballets Russes. Aram Demirjian conducts.
Review: KSO Brings Back Paul Huang For a Spectacular Tchaikovsky Concerto
It did not require a seer or soothsayer to predict what would happen at the end of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto at this past weekend’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Masterworks concert. Given violinist Paul Huang’s flight of speed, dazzling technique, and breathtaking virtuosic storytelling, it was practically inevitable that the ending would yank the audience out of their seat for a performance-stopping, extended ovation that included cheers and a few bravos.
This Week: KSO Concertmaster Series Leaps Into Autumn — and the Dvořák Piano Quintet No. 2
This week on Wednesday and Thursday at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster William Shaub and his colleagues will be opening the 2024-25 Concertmaster Series with the spirit of early autumn evocatively infused into its programming—an evening…