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The Kansas City Symphony’s opening classical concert of the season features the artistry of one of today’s premiere concert violinists, Hilary Hahn. She is now getting up there in years – gosh, she must be pushing thirty – but this writer, and many other classically-minded music fans, were first introduced to her more than a dozen years ago when she was still barely out of training pants.

In 1997 she came out with a recording of Bach solo partitas which was one of the most extraordinary Bach recordings many of us had heard. With precise technique, yet great expressivity, she brought great feeling to these pieces which, in the hands of many lesser players, are just technical exercises to be tossed off without a lot of analysis. Hahn, however, had thought them through carefully, and produced a recording to be treasured and played again and again.

As her concert career progressed, she subsequently recorded Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, and then got gradually more adventuresome with Barber, Meyer, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich. She has won two Grammy awards, and one of them is for her 2008 recording of the violin concertos of Schoenberg and Sibelius. It is the Sibelius which she will bring to Kansas City for the Symphony’s opening concerts.

Despite the oft-repeated claim of classical music comedian Victor Borge that Sibelius is “nobody’s favorite composer” (I once heard him volunteer to shoot anybody who claimed otherwise), the Finnish master has in fact stood the test of time rather well, and now, more than a half century after his death, is steadily rising in esteem.

Sibelius was unfortunate to be a Romantic at heart, living in the wrong age. His contemporaries, like Schoenberg, whose piece is paired with his in Hahn’s recording, were a far more adventuresome lot. But Sibelius was convinced that music was made of melody and harmony, and he stuck with his principles through thick and thin.

While this made him something of an outcast among his contemporary composers of so-called “classical” music, it brought him much love and fame in his homeland.  Nowadays, that fame exists world-wide, and his Violin Concerto is considered one of his masterpieces.

The Symphony’s opening program also features some sumptuous waltzes, Valses nobles et sentimentales, by the French master of orchestration Maurice Ravel, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (another of this writer’s favorite compositions…the last five minutes contains one of great crescendos of all time, ever, period), and a world premiere composition from the pen of Jonathan Leshnoff, which has already been featured on this website with an excellent article by David Peironnet.

Kansas City Symphony
Stravinsky’s Firebird, Plus Sibelius
Friday and Saturday, October 8 and 9, at 8:00 p.m.
Lyric Theatre, 11^th and Central, Downtown Kansas City, MO
and
Sunday, October 10, at 2:00 p.m.
Yardley Hall, Carlsen Center
12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, Kansas
For tickets call 816-471-0400 or online at www.kcsymphony.org.

By Don Dagenais

City Classics Music and Dance Columnist; Classical Contributor

A lifelong classical music fan, Don Dagenais is a frequent preview speaker for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and has taught classical music and opera courses at several Kansas City venues. He has served on the boards of directors of a number of performing arts organizations including the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Lyric Opera Guild, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, Opera Volunteers International, the Civic Opera Theater of Kansas City, Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony, Octarium, and the Friends of the Symphony.  He has been the past president of most of these organizations and is current the president of the Friends of the Symphony. 

Dagenais co-authored a history of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, published on the occasion of its 50th anniversary (2007) and has written books on the histories of both the Lyric Opera Guild and Opera Volunteers International, as well as an introductory book for opera novices (Your Passport to the Opera).  He has received several local and national awards for outstanding volunteer work for the arts, including a lifetime achievement award from The Coterie Theatre in 2000, the Kansas City Musical Club's annual award in 2001, a Partners in Excellence Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2002, a Bravo Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2004 and a community service award from the Daughter of the American Revolution in 2008 honoring him for his community service to the arts.

In addition to his music interests, Don is president of the board of directors for the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater and has served on the boards of The Coterie Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, serving as president of each organization.  He publishes newsletters for seven arts organizations.  When not involved in the performing arts, Don is a senior real estate attorney with Lathrop & Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, where he has practiced law since 1976 after graduating from the Cornell Law School.

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