Pianist Jon Kimura Parker is going back to his musical roots -- and routes -- when he solos in the Piano Concerto in a minor by Edvard Grieg this weekend with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Philip Mann.
The pair of Masterworks Concerts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, Maumelle High School, 100 Victory Lane, kick off the orchestra's 2015-16 season, its 50th.
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra
7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, Maumelle Performing Arts Center, Maumelle High School, 100 Victory Lane, Maumelle. Jon Kimura Parker, piano; Philip Mann conducts. Edvard Grieg: Piano Concerto in a minor, op.16; Felix Mendelssohn: The Hebrides, op.26 (aka Fingal’s Cave); Alexander Borodin: Symphony No. 2 in b minor. Concert Conversations one hour before each Masterworks concert, open to all concert ticket holders.
Sponsors: Metal Recycling Corp.; Masterworks Series sponsored by the Stella Boyle Smith Trust
Tickets: $19-$58, $10 for students and active-duty military, free to the Sunday matinee for K-12 students with the purchase of an adult ticket.
(501) 666-1761, Extension 100
"It goes actually more way back than just about any other concerto," Parker says. "I grew up in Vancouver, Canada -- I actually happen to be in Vancouver right now, coincidentally -- and the first time I played with an orchestra and got paid to do it was in March 1980 with the Vancouver Symphony, and I was playing the Grieg [concerto].
"That is an astoundingly long time ago, I'm afraid to say."
He has played it a few times since, of course.
"I just played it with the New York Philharmonic over the summer in Vail, which seems to be a good warmup for coming to Little Rock," he says. The conductor was Bramwell Tovey, the Vancouver Symphony's current music director. Parker, Tovey and that orchestra played the concerto during a U.S. West Coast tour about three years ago.
"It's a concerto I come back to very, very often, not just for sentimental reasons, as having played it when I was 20 years old, but I love the piece," he says.
"And it's one of those pieces, like [Beethoven's] 'Moonlight' Sonata, that has gone through differences of opinions over the years in the 'serious musical community,' because it is a piece that's immediately engaging, which many people love. It's brilliantly written; it strikes just the right balance between lyrical melodic beauty and big, exciting octave passages and crashing cadenzas."
All of which, unfortunately, makes the piece suspect for snobby musical elites, he says.
"It's structurally fairly simple, and I think that's one of the things that makes it so engaging. One of the things that the musical elites love to look for is complex structure; it's one of the reasons Beethoven endures to this day. You can never stop trying to figure out the architectural genius of his music. And there's always something new.
"And that's not the kind of a piece that the Grieg [concerto] is. The structure is really basic sonata form and variation form and dance form. It's so well done. And it lies very well under the fingers; it's practically written for a pianist to play."
That also makes it ideal for young pianists, he says.
"It doesn't require particularly a sort of maturity of outlook, in the way the Beethoven Fourth Concerto requires. It's a very different animal. And yet I would say my interpretation of it has grown and changed over the years. I think I went through a more self-indulgent stage with it, and I feel now I enjoy it exactly for what it is. I just love playing it."
The program will also include the op.26 concert overture that Felix Mendelssohn alternately called Fingal's Cave and The Hebrides (the former is the name of a grotto he explored while on a vacation to the latter-named Scottish isles), and the Symphony No. 2 in b minor by Alexander Borodin.
Parker, who has been a guest artist with many of the world's premier orchestras, played Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's pyrotechnical Piano Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra and then-Music Director David Itkin in February 2005 at Little Rock's Robinson Center Music Hall.
...
Parker, also this year's Richard Sheppard Arnold Artist of Distinction, will stick around a few more days for the opening concert in the orchestra's 2015-16 River Rhapsodies chamber music concert season, 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Great Hall at the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.
He'll join four of the orchestra's woodwind principals -- Leanna Booze, oboe; Kelly Johnson, clarinet; Susan Bell Leon, bassoon; and David Renfro, horn -- to play Ludwig van Beethoven's Quintet in E-flat major for piano and winds, op.16. And he'll also play the Fantasy on Wizard of Oz by William Hirtz, which the composer arranged from piano duet for solo piano at Parker's request.
The Rockefeller Quartet (Katherine Williamson and Trisha McGovern, violins; Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Aaron Ludwig, cello) will play Borodin's String Quartet No. 2 in D major.
Tickets are $23, $10 for students and active-duty military. Call (501) 666-1761, Extension 100, or visit ArkansasSymphony.org.
Weekend on 09/24/2015