It’s probably no surprise that the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s rise in performance stature over the last five years or so coincides with the expansion of its public and outreach chamber-music programs. That expansion has been fueled by KSO’s Concertmaster Series, programmed by concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz and performed by him and a varying assortment of his orchestra colleagues. Another part of the expansion was the elevation of the principal woodwind players to core salaried status in 2013, allowing regular performances by KSO’s Woodwind Quintet in the new Q Series. This expansion comes on top of the existing performances by the KSO Principal Quartet which have, for a number of years, held a spot in the orchestra’s Chamber Classics Series.
How does an increased number of small-ensemble performances positively influence a full orchestra of 75 or so? Successful chamber-music performances demand musicality, focus, passion, and collaboration while communicating in relatively close quarters with the audience. These are much the same qualities that seem to have inspired the larger group, and they have made the orchestra an ensemble that visibly enjoys working together.
With the holiday music season now over, last week brought two offerings of chamber music from KSO. First, the Principal Quartet in a Chamber Classics concert at the Bijou Theatre featured notables from the string quartet works of Schubert, Prokofiev, and Brahms. Three days later, the Concertmaster Series, in its current digs at the Knoxville Museum of Art, presented a program that mixed Lefkowitz’s informational and entertaining music chitchat with virtuosic violin pieces and ensemble works with colleagues.
The KSO’s Principal Quartet is now in its fourth season with its current members—associate concertmaster and violinist Gordon Tsai, principal second violin Edward Pulgar, principal violist Kathryn Gawne, and principal cellist Andy Bryenton. Although essentially thrown together by virtue of their orchestra position, this group has grown together as an ensemble, solving problems of energy and balance with deeply satisfying results. On this month’s Sunday afternoon Chamber Classics concert, those ensemble accomplishments were obvious. The quartet skillfully navigated the personality shift from Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, with its clashes of discord and lyricism, to Brahms’ String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, with its enticing textural diversity. In the Brahms, the third Agitato movement, which has the violins and cello playing with muted strings while the viola’s warmth is unrestrained, was truly texturally mesmerizing.
The Concertmaster Series is also in its fourth year, seeing a venue shift two years ago from the warm brick ambiance of Remedy Coffee in the Old City, to the Great Hall at the KMA. Overall, the move has been a positive one, increasing the audience size—and the audience comfort. Unfortunately, the seemingly obvious potential of tying in the museum and visual art to music remains oddly unexplored. Also remaining mysteriously unexplored is some attention to lighting and platforming of the performers to improve ambiance, acoustics, and audience sightlines.
Happily unchanged, though, is Lefkowitz’s engaging repartee with the audience. Last week’s performance opened with Lefkowitz playing the familiar and virtuosic Paganini Caprice No. 24, a solo violin piece that impressed with the agonizingly difficult technique required to play it and the violinist’s ability to transcend that technique for sublime musicality.
Lefkowitz was joined by pianist Kevin Class for the unannounced Paganini Cantabile, followed by Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano from 1917, the composer’s last major work before his death. Impressive here was the duo’s handling of Debussy’s pushing and pulling of the two instruments against each other, creating textures that seem to both coalesce and diverge.
After intermission, Lefkowitz and Class were joined by violist Gawne and cellist Bryenton for Dvorak’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat. The ensemble took the audience on an enjoyable ride that moved from heated drama to lyricism, and from individualism to group sonorities with a progressively Slavic flavor. Despite the fact that all of the players had multiple events in a very busy week, particularly Gawne and Bryenton, this performance was miraculously cohesive and tremendously satisfying.
The Concertmaster Series wraps up in April with a performance of Brahms String Sextet No. 2 in G Major.
Alan Sherrod has been writing about Knoxville’s vibrant classical music scene since 2007. In 2010, he won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts—the Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera—under the auspices of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also operates his own blogs, Classical Journal and Arts Knoxville.
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