Beethoven's Ninth performance wraps up series for KSO

KNOXVILLE — For Knoxville Symphony Orchestra music director and conductor Lucas Richman, the performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9 in D Minor," Op. 125, which the KSO, joined by the Knoxville Choral Society, will perform Thursday and Friday, April 14 and 15, at the Tennessee Theatre, is a big deal.

A very big deal.

"I've been waiting for this moment for a long time," Richman said. "It's my first time conducting the entire piece."

It's also the end of Richman's Beethoven symphony cycle since it is the last of the nine symphonies he will have performed with the KSO since coming to Knoxville.

Before joining the KSO, Richman was an assistant conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

"Assistant conductors don't get to play the big works like the Beethoven Ninth," Richman said.

Asked what he could bring to a piece of music that almost everyone who goes to orchestra concerts has heard multiple times, Richman responded, "Certainly, we all bring to the table certain performances we've heard and we've played and the history that made it such a defining piece for orchestras for many decades.

"But ultimately, it has to be in the moment, to inspire and to produce, as close as possible, what Beethoven intended. We make a mistake to try to attach any meaning beyond what he wrote.

"So that's why we haven't programmed this in memory or in honor of an event. It's just a big anniversary year for the orchestra and the culmination of my Beethoven cycle."

In an age when music is available from so many sources, from recordings to MP3 downloads, Richman believes the concert hall provides an experience that can't be gotten by any other means.

"There is a sense of community and of sharing at a concert, and there is no substitute for that experience," he said. "Some people come to just have a great sleep. And that's OK, because what a great way to have a great sleep."

Also on this week's pair of concerts will be American composer William Bolcom's "Prometheus," written in 2010, with pianist Jeffry Biegel as soloist.

Commissioned by Biegel, who is as gifted an entrepreneur as he is a pianist, the work was funded in large part by a consortium of orchestras, including the KSO.

It is paired with the Beethoven because Biegel asked Bolcom to write a piece that utilized the same forces for orchestra and chorus as the "Ninth," with the addition of solo piano, just as Beethoven's had done with his own own "Choral Fantasy."

Bolcom's work is based on the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortal humans. Zeus punished him by binding him to a rock and sending an eagle to eat his liver, only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day.

Bolcom equates the myth to our current state of modern man being chained to a rock of technological dependency.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

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