As winter’s colder weather approaches, the Greenville Symphony will offer a glimpse of spring with Robert Schumann’s First Symphony and Edvard Grieg’s equally sunny Piano Concerto.
The orchestra’s Nov. 23-24 concerts at the Peace Center continue music director Lee Mills’ season-long theme of optimism and unity.
Spencer Myer is the featured soloist for the Norwegian composer Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
“Every time I come back to the Grieg, I marvel at how terrific it is,” Myer said in recent interview. “It’s very tuneful and features great interplay between the orchestra and soloist.”
Grieg’s only Piano Concerto is a product of youth and happiness, and it overflows with an abundance of rich melody. Only 25 at the time, Grieg wrote the three-movement concerto in a secluded cottage in Denmark in the summer of 1868. The concerto seems to evoke that bucolic setting.
The dramatic first movement is perhaps most familiar to audiences, Myer said, “but the second and third movements are just heaven.”
Mills, for his part, called the concerto “one of the best in the repertoire.”
Myer is a busy concert artist, having performed with such orchestras as the Cleveland Orchestra. He is a frequent chamber musician as well and serves as a professor of music at the renowned Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
‘Spring Symphony’
Schumann’s First Symphony, composed in 1841 during a time of personal and professional happiness for the German composer, is a vibrant and cheerful piece. It even has the nickname “Spring Symphony.”
“It’s such a great piece of music,” Mills said. “Every movement is filled with joy. It inspires the audience to think of spring and things blooming.”
The concerts open with “warp & weft,” a work by Spartanburg-born composer Sarah Gibson, who passed away this past summer at age 38.
“She was a wonderful human being,” Mills said. “This piece refers to the two directions on a loom. I thought it particularly fitting for the program not only because she’s from Spartanburg but also because how strong the textile industry has been in the history of Greenville.”
Mills sees in the work a metaphor for music, binding the community together in a unified and colorful tapestry.
Want to go?
What: Greenville Symphony Orchestra: Grieg’s Piano Concerto
When: Nov. 23, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 24, 3 p.m.
Where: Peace Center, Greenville
Tickets: $20-$79
Info: 864-467-3000 or peacecenter.org
The post Greenville Symphony concerts offer sunny works from Schumann, Grieg appeared first on GREENVILLE JOURNAL.