Wednesday, July 31, 2013

2013-2014 Masterworks Preview Part II

After an undoubtedly well-deserved Christmas break, the KSO Masterworks series will fire back up again on January 16th and 17th  with a crowd-pleasing program of music by Mozart, Tchaikovski and Johann Strauss. Guest conductor Sean Newhouse will sandwich Strauss’ Overture to Die Fledermaus and the Emperor Waltzes around Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 and Tchaikovski’s Suite from  Sleeping Beauty. The piano soloist for the Mozart will be Louis Schwizgebel.

February’s offerings, on the 20th and 21st, will be our choral concerts, with Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service topping the bill. This musical celebration of the Jewish Saturday morning service was written in, and inspired by, the Alps of Bloch’s native Switzerland on the eve of World War II, in a musical language somewhere between Moussorgsky and Vaughan Williams. Preceding the Bloch will be Richard Yardumian’s Veni, Sancte Spiritus and Paul Hovhaness’ 2nd Symphony, Mysterious Mountain. Although all three of these works were written in a 25-year span of the mid-20th century, there is a common thread of ethereal, gothic beauty which will transcend their composers’ relative obscurity and warm up cold February nights.

What better way to ring in Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday than to bring ALL SIX of his Brandenburg Concerti to the Tennessee Theatre stage! Over a 2-night period, March 20th (# 4, 3, and 1) and his actual birthday, the 21st (# 2, 6 and 5), the KSO will participate in a special Baroque edition of March Madness. Each Brandenburg Concerto has its own special orchestration and soloist configuration, and compositionally they are the quintessential Concerti Grossi which were so often imitated but never equalled. The famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the Partita No. 2 and Chaconne, both orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski, will launch the concert both nights.

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