The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 75th anniversary at the Tennessee Theatre Thursday night. The celebration was just nine days shy of commemorating the first concert on Nov. 24, 1935.
The celebration was complete with a giant cake and balloons, as well as a well-played musical program.
Almost all of the music on the program was connected to the history of the KSO in some way.
The concert opened with French composer Paul Dukas’ “Fanfare from ‘La Pari’,” terrifically played by the brass section of the orchestra.
The KSO’s third conductor, David Van Vactor, studied with Dukas before coming to Knoxville to found the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Tennessee.
Van Vactor’s own composition, “Recitative and Saltarello,” came next in a solid performance. Sounding much more mainstream than when it was first performed by the KSO during its 50th anniversary celebration, with Van Vactor conducting, “Recitative” illustrated the adage that all music was once new.
David Sartor’s “Metamorphic Fanfare” (Fanfare for a New Millenium), a work commissioned by the KSO in 2000, showed that the somewhat dark, foreboding nature of the piece was more prophetic than it might have originally sounded.
James Carlson’s “Off the Trail in the Smokies,” another KSO commission, featured well-known Knoxville actress Dale Dickey as the narrator for the three poems about hiking in the Smokies, upon which the composition was based.
Dickey’s reading was direct and well-timed to the music, although the timing disrupted the poem as much as it illustrated the phases of the music set to each of the passages.
Janacek’s complex “Sinfonietta,” which featured expanded orchestral forces, was performed by the musicians with the solid, perhaps even commanding, execution.
But the tour-de-force of the evening was a wonderful performance of Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture,” Op 96, which featured brass players at either side of the stage and the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra joining the KSO.
One can imagine what this mass of musicians might produce with Shostakovich’s Symphony #15 or even Mahler’s great Fifth Symphony.
Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.
© 2010, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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