Violinist Lee performs in final Masterworks concert

Violinist Rachel Lee and composer Sergei Prokofiev are matched up for the finale of this season's Knoxville Symphony Orchestra concerts on Thursday and Friday, May 20 and 21, at the Tennessee Theatre.

Lee, who will graduate from Harvard this month with a degree in English Literature, knew she wanted to be a violinist almost from the time she first touched a violin as a 4-year-old.

"I think it's just something in me," she said. "I've always been serious about things. I guess it's a combination of a perfectionist mentality and a love of performing."

Lee will play Prokofiev's "Concerto No. 2 in G Minor for Violin and Orchestra," Op. 63, written in 1935.

The middle child and only girl, Lee was born in Chicago, but moved to New York when she was 8 to begin serious violin studies. She has been performing the Prokofiev since she was 13.

Prokofiev, who had a love/hate relationship with the Soviet Union, had been living in Paris, but was making the transition back to permanent residency in Moscow when he received the commission to write a piece for the French-Belgian violinist Robert Soetens.

"I think there is a give and take between and violin and orchestra that makes it very chamber music-like. The orchestra is very important in this piece, especially in the 1st and 3rd movements," she said.

Much darker than Prokofiev's first violin concert, it moves back and forth from being lyrical to being dark and sarcastic, especially in the second movement.

"There are wonderful harmonic changes that move into different directions," Lee said. "The colors in the orchestra are very beautiful."

Opening the concerts will be the "Mother Goose Suite" by Maurice Ravel, who had to be bribed to practice the piano as a child.

Written as five settings of a friend's children's favorite fairy tales, it was originally composed for piano four-hands and later orchestrated by Ravel. Shortly after its premiere in 1912, additional sections were added and used as the score for a ballet.

Completing this pair of concerts will be two symphonic tone poems by Ottorino Respighi, "Fountains of Rome," written in 1916, and "Pines of Rome," written in 1924.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

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