When I first started attending Knoxville Symphony Orchestra concerts in 1972, the KSO performed at the Civic Auditorium. It was David van Vactor’s final season as conductor. A UT music professor, composer and concert musician in his own right, he had worked hard since 1947 to get a mostly amateur orchestra through any program they played. There were rumblings when he tried to play anything remotely contemporary, or even musically challenging. The KSO also struggled to make financial ends meet.
Following van Vactor, the 24-year-old Hungarian-American conductor, Arpad Joo, took over for five years before the KSO decided it needed to get ready for the opportunities and international exposure of the 1982 World’s Fair.
In 1978, the KSO hired another Hungarian, Zoltán Rozsnyai, conductor, cellist and organist, to get the orchestra up to speed for the fair. European-heritage conductors were everywhere in those days.
Rozsnyai began moving to change the make-up of the orchestra to professionals, with a core group of full-time musicians. To give them more to do and help cover the increased operating budgets, he founded the KSO Chamber Orchestra series, a big hit with pairs of concerts on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons at the Bijou Theatre. The KSO’s main concerts also moved to the Tennessee Theatre.
British conductor Kirk Trevor took over the KSO in 1985. Professionalism continued to increase. But the higher costs saw expenses dip into the red. The KSO Pops series was started to help get back into the black.
The Pops have largely been a hit ever since. Many of the concerts are sold out, especially since current KSO executive director Rachel Ford began programming live orchestra performances of movie scores, with the films playing on a big screen at the Civic Auditorium, which seats a 1,000 more than the Tennessee Theatre.
KSO Principal Quartet members violinist Edward Pulgar, cellist Andy Bryenton and violist Kathryn Gawne playing Mozart at the Q Series concert at the Emporium Building. (Photo submitted)
After Lucas Richman took over the orchestra in 2003, professional standards leaped forward, both in the caliber of musicians in the orchestra and the quality of performances.
Richman changed the family concerts begun under to Trevor to children’s concerts that have continued to grow. At the end of the month, the orchestra will play four concerts to 8,400 school children over three days, the mornings of Oct. 31-Nov. 2.
Under Richman’s leadership, the KSO became one of the best orchestras at its budget level in the country.
The 2011 arrival of concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz, now the concertmaster of the Louisville Orchestra, saw the beginning of Lefkowitz’s very popular Concertmaster Series of chamber concerts. Shortly after, the equally popular Q Series of chamber music concerts featuring the Principal Quartet and the KSO Wind Quintet began.
Present concertmaster William Shaub has continued the series, now performed at the Knoxville Museum of Art, frequently to sold-out audiences.
The Q Series of noon-time concerts moved this season to the Emporium Building at 100 S. Gay Street.
Collectively, the choice of Knoxville Symphony concerts isn’t just the Thursday-Friday Masterworks concerts, with everything else being also-runs. All three of the chamber concert series are every bit as good as the full orchestra concerts. With the Q Series being presented at noon and the Chamber Classics at the Bijou Theatre on Sunday afternoons, there are superior quality performances in the daytime for those who no longer venture out at night.
Rock singers Cassidy Catanzaro, Celisse Henderson and Katrina Rose at the KSO’s Women Rock pops concert at the Tennessee Theatre.
At the first Chamber Classics concert this season, associate concertmaster Gordon Tsai’s virtuosic performance of 18th century French polymath composer George Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ “Violin Concerto No. 9 in G Major” was easily equal to any high-paid guests soloist who has performed on the KSO’s Masterworks concerts.
But don’t miss this week’s pair of Masterworks concerts with guest violinist Robyn Bollinger, who will play Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto In D Major,” Op. 35, one of the most popular in the violin repertoire.
Also on the program is Beethoven’s popular overture, “Egmont Overture,” Op. 84, written as incidental music to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play of that name, along with Shostakovich’s somber “Symphony No. 5,” written in 1937 during Stalin’s intense denouncements of Shostakovich and his music.
The “Fifth” appeared to celebrate Stalin, with its rousing march at the end. Keen listeners will hear sarcasm the Soviet public understood, but that went over the heads of Stalin’s tin-eared bureaucrats.
Tickets for this week’s concerts and all other KSO programs are available by calling the box office at 865-291-3310, or online at www.knoxvillesymphony.org.