The season begins!
posted 10:09 AM Monday, September 21, 2009
By: Chip Chandler
The Amarillo Symphony kicks off its historic 85th year this weekend with a concert featuring one of the most beloved tributes to the American spirit ever composed.
Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” is the centerpiece of the opening concerts of the Symphony’s “Season of Discovery,” which also features stirring works by Béla Bartók and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Concerts begin at 8 p.m. in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts. Single tickets run from $18 to $56 ($16 for students and seniors), but a limited number of $20 Standby tickets will be available beginning Thursday, Sept. 24. For these limited standby seats, call the Symphony office at 376-8782. Otherwise, patrons can purchase tickets through Panhandletickets through its several outlets, via phone at 378-3096 or its Web site, www.panhandletickets.com.
Titled “Discover Friendship,” the September concerts are a reunion for Music Director & Conductor Kimbo Ishii-Eto and the audience with two of the Symphony’s favorite musicians – Joel Smirnoff and Joan Kwuon. Smirnoff was a finalist alongside Ishii-Eto for the Music Director & Conductor position in the 2006-07 season and was joined by Kwuon, his wife, for a Symphony concert in November 2007.
“I am just so thrilled that Joel and Joan will be returning to Amarillo. We have known each other since our days at Juilliard as students, and we will all make some beautiful music together with our extraordinarily talented Symphony,” Ishii-Eto said.
“What’s wonderful,” Smirnoff said, “is that we have watched each other grow and mature as people and as musicians. It happens together. I know there will be a great deal of laughter and joy in the rehearsals, and the resultant musical collaboration should be one of depth.”
Kwuon will be the featured soloist on Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra, a transitional piece by the composer that is heavily influenced by his great interest in Hungarian dances.
Kwuon and Smirnoff will duet on Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, with Smirnoff playing on viola, his first performance of the piece on that instrument.
Smirnoff will then take the podium to conduct Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, with Ishii-Eto serving as his assistant during rehearsals.
“I will be waiting at his beck and call,” Ishii-Eto said. “It’s going to be terrifically fun, and I think the orchestra and I will learn immensely from Joel.”
Smirnoff calls Dvořák’s symphony “inspired,” but he said it is filled with challenges for the musicians and the conductor.
“We are all quite familiar with the whole piece, and I hope that we will give a performance that will have freshness, insight and power,” Smirnoff said. “There are many favorite moments for me, but perhaps the one that haunts me most is the very last page. Here, what one might call harmonies of ‘trepidation’ gather amid the final sustained arrival at the major key, and then, the final E major chord does not sustain heroically, but retreats into a state of reflection. … The potential for music's subtlest expression is utilized here by this great master.”
