The Akron Symphony begins its new season on Saturday evening, September 11, with an 8:00 concert recognizing the special resonance of that day. As Music Director Christopher Wilkins noted in his September podcast, "We can't perform on September 11th without acknowledging the significance of that date. I actually welcome it. I think that music is a needed avenue for expressing our feelings about something so important. In the face of tragedy and loss, music is always there. The pieces we have put together for opening night all speak of trying to build meaning out of conflict, out of tragedy, out of loss".

 

Wilkins has chosen to mark the occasion with Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem and Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus with the Akron Symphony Chorus, prepared by its new director, Maria Sensi Sellner. The concert culminates in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, the composer's response to his official savaging in the Soviet newspaper Pravda over his previous symphony and a recent opera. Wilkins notes that the work is full of hidden code that could not have been apparent at the time. "...It begins with storm and stress and difficulty, presenting a problem to be worked out. Over the course of the symphony, those ideas are wrestled with from different vantage points, until at the end a kind of apotheosis takes place, a breakthrough. Shostakovich deliberately wrote it in such a way that the Soviet authorities could interpret that as being pro-Soviet." Listen to the whole podcast here.

 

The orchestra will continue its season with concerts on October 16 ("Early Romantics": Berlioz' Roman Carnival Overture, Dance of the Sylphs & Hungarian March, Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 1 with Kristina Belisle Jones & Schumann's Symphony No. 2), and November 6 ("Romantic Rhapsody": Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music with the Symphony Chorus, Enesco's Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 & Borodin's Polovetsian Dances).

 

In the new calendar year, eighth blackbird will appear with the Orchestra in a avian-themed program including the Akron premiere of a consortium commissioned new work, Jennifer Higdon's On a Wire, Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending with violinist Alan Bodman, Stella Sung's The Phoenix Rising, Michael Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

 

On March 5, it's all Rachmaninoff, including the Vocalise, Symphonic Dances and the Second Piano Concerto with 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition winner Martina Filjak as soloist.

 

The Gershwins' American opera Porgy and Bess will take the E.J. Thomas Hall stage on April 16 in a staged production directed by Frank McClain, starring Alvy Powell and Marquita Lister and sponsored by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. A special chorus of forty African American singers is being auditioned for the occasion.

 

The classical season concludes on May 14, when guest conductor David Lockington leads the Orchestra and Chorus in Mozart's Requiem in a concert also including Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia and Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

 

Other Akron Symphony performances include three pops concerts on November 13 (music of Richard Rodgers), December 17 (Holiday Pops with guest conductor Carl Topilow) and February 12 (Michael Cavanaugh in Concert featuring music by Billy Joel and others).

 

The annual Gospel Meets Symphony concert with the Symphony's Gospel Chorus is scheduled for February 5, and the Akron Symphony Chorus will give a special concert on Sunday afternoon, March 27.

 

Newly appointed assistant conductor Levi Hammer will conduct the Akron Youth Symphony in concerts on November 7, February 6 and May 22.

 

All performances (except the Symphony Chorus' March 27 concert at St. Sebastian Church) will take place in E.J. Thomas Hall at the University of Akron, a mere 45-minute trip down I-77 from central Cleveland. Season and individual concert tickets can be purchased by calling 330-535-8131 or visiting the ASO web site.