Review: Trevors bring energy to KSO concerts

Violinist Chloe Trevor, Kirk Trevor's daughter, will perform with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra on March 24-25.

Viewed from above, the change from “blending in” to “standing out” is just a fine line. But seen head on, the outstanding is elevated above everything else.

When talented 23-year-old violinist Chloe Trevor played Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental “Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra,” Op. 61, with her father, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Music Director Emeritus Kirk Trevor, conducting the KSO, she performed with the all technical virtuosity any soloist would be thrilled to command, but hadn’t quite developed that elusive presence that takes over a stage and separates oneself from all the section violinists behind the soloist.

The distinction became evident when Trevor quietly settled into the back of the second violin section were she played the Prokofiev symphony in the second half.

Trevor has a clean, round, singing tone that was lovely to hear in Beethoven’s themes and melodies and her trills and other ornaments were flawless when she added decorations as the orchestra moved ideas along.

There were especially beautiful moments in the “Larghetto,” second movement, when conductor Trevor shaped the pizzicato stings into a tender background behind violinist Trevor’s singing melody.

But, finally, it was in the third movement cadenza that violinist Trevor played with the robustness that let everyone know she was the Trevor of the moment.

Conducting the KSO for the first time in five years, maestro Trevor still has the trademark of conducting from his feet up, with his body being as important as his baton.

Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Music Director Emeritus Kirk Trevor will return to Knoxville March 24-25.

One could see it in the “Overture to Adventure,” by fellow Englishman, Arnold Bax, with which the concert began.

And there careful management of his orchestral forces as his daughter played the Beethoven concerto.

But the scope of Trevor’s conducting prowess was in full sweep with a powerful performance of Serge Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major,” Op. 100, Prokofiev’s effort to acknowledge the strength and endurance of the Russian people who had been under siege by both the Nazis and the oppression of the Soviet regime.

Speaking to the spirit of the Russian people without enraging the brutal, bureaucratic censors was no easy task, as Shostakovich found out.

But Prokofiev was so deft at it that his symphony won the Stalin Prize and was hailed world-wide.

Trevor’s conducting of the KSO and the powerful conclusion at the end of the fourth movement showed why.

Bravo!

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

© 2011, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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