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Three ivory-ticklers will be ISO guests
Posted: Jan 03, 2008 in Things to do, Music
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Most orchestral programs typically offer only one concerto with a soloist, but the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra will retool that formula this weekend with its all-concerto program devoted to the piano.
For starters, both of the American Pianists Association's 2006 Classical Fellowship Awards winners will be featured. Stephen Beus will take on Franz Liszt's Concerto No. 1, with Spencer Myer performing George Gershwin's Concerto in F.
Then as a finale, Canadian concert artist Jon Kimura Parker will perform an even better-known warhorse, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Concerto No..1.
A Vancouver native who turned 48 on Christmas Day, Parker said he performed as part of a concerto showcase once before, with the Florida Orchestra in Tampa. That happened to be under the direction of Thomas Wilkins, who also will conduct the ISO's concerto concert.
"It's a very interesting type of program," said Parker, who lived in New York City for years before moving to Houston, where he teaches at Rice University.
"A piano concerto is really different from a symphony, although it's constructed in similar ways," Parker said, "but a real piano concerto is also written in a certain way to showcase the piano with orchestra."
Concerning the ISO's choice of concertos, Parker said: "In all three cases, the composers were brilliant pianists who understood how to write a piece that really showcases the piano. That means, in a way, that these concertos are different from Mozart concertos, which are less about display."
Parker, who has focused on performing with orchestras since the 1980s, said that, to play a concerto, "you have to be willing, on top of everything else musically, to have a real desire to project, even in a very big concert hall. In the context of having a full orchestra onstage, it requires a different side of your musical personality."
