KSO 2009-2010 Season: A Feast!

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra recently released the schedule of concerts for its 2009-2010 season, and it really looks interesting. Every concert seems to have intriguing elements—there are a lot of works here that I have been dying to hear but don’t get a chance to as often as I’d like. You are probably going to want to catch as many concerts as possible. Just for fun, though, here are a couple of highlights that jumped off the page at me.

In October, don’t miss Stravinsky’s Petrushka (I assume the concert suite); on the same bill is Dvorak’s Golden Spinning Wheel.

On the November Chamber Classics concert at the Bijou, KSO Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum takes the podium for three different Serenades for Strings by Elgar, Josef Suk, and Tchaikovsky.

In January, violinist Rachel Barton Pine returns to Knoxville to perform the Brahms Violin Concerto. Also on that program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. Then at the Chamber Classics concert…Ah, some Haydn at last! That concert will include Haydn’s Symphony No. 16 in B-flat Major. And UT faculty pianist David Northington will be performing a Mozart piano concerto, although which one was not mentioned.

The February Masterworks concert will feature Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I really adore the J.S. Bach secular cantatas—and the March Chamber Classics concert will include the charming Coffee Cantata of Bach as well as a virtually unheard and underplayed work, Pachelbel’s Canon. On the other hand, you may have never heard it performed live… outside of weddings and funerals, that is. The March Masterworks concert should be a real treat—the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Adam Golka, and the Symphony No. 1 from the young Dmitri Shostakovich.

In April, the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society and some great local soloists—what else needs to be said? To conclude the season’s feast, the May Masterworks is a real treat: the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Rachel Lee, violin) and Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome.

However, a word of advice…once you get your KSO schedule brochure for 2009-2010, please try not to drool over the page, as that will make marking off your favorites more difficult.