The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra opens its new season Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Miller Auditorium, with a program featuring a rarely heard overture, a Mozart favorite and a Stravinsky ballet score whose ending the audience will choose. Music director Julian Kuerti and president and CEO Amy Williams preview the program with Cara Lieurance.
The evening begins with a season-opening tradition: "The Star-Spangled Banner" followed by "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Next comes the Overture to The Song of Hiawatha by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a British composer of African descent. The work was a sensation in its day. "It's beautifully lush and romantic," Kuerti says, adding that the orchestra's harpist thanked him for programming what she called one of the finest harp parts in the repertoire.
Violinist Alexi Kenney is the soloist in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major. Kuerti calls the concerto "a bright, open, unapologetic example of Mozart's great string writing and his violin writing." Kenney is equally at home in Baroque and experimental music. He will play one familiar cadenza and one he wrote himself.
The program closes with Stravinsky's Petrushka. In the ballet, a magician at a Russian Shrovetide Fair brings three puppets to life, and one of them, Petrushka, falls hopelessly in love with a ballerina. "What Stravinsky does, which I think is brilliant, is he starts to blend the borders of reality and fiction," Kuerti says. Supertitles tell the story as the music plays. Stravinsky wrote two endings, the original ballet version and a shorter one from his later revision. Kuerti lets the audience pick between them, possibly by applause. KSO pianist Reiko Yamada plays the work's prominent piano part.
This is Williams's first opening night with the KSO. "It's the welcome back for the orchestras, the welcome back for the community," she says.
A pre-concert talk begins at 6:30 p.m. After the performance, Kuerti, Kenney and Yamada take audience questions in the grand tier. A football game is also on campus Saturday, so Williams advises arriving early. Tickets and season packages are available at kalamazoosymphony.com, including for Itzhak Perlman's appearance in April.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.