He will guide the SSO and guest cellist teen prodigy Miriam K. Smith through a program called “Emerging Brilliance” featuring Lowell Liebrmann’s “Three Dances from Frankenstein,” “Saint-Sans Cello Concerto No. 1, in A Minor” and “Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, Th 29 in E minor” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Clark State Performing Arts Center, 300 S. Fountain Ave.
Tickets are available.
Smith was described to Wilson as the next Hilary Hahn and that made him interested in presenting her to the SSO audience.
“Young prodigious talent has always been an important characteristic of our guest artist roster, and the seldom heard ‘Saint Saens Concerto’ will be an outstanding vehicle for her. I predict that one day we will look back on being part of the foundation of a brilliant career,” he said.
Smith, who was matched with the cello by her musician parents at age 4, said she never thought of herself as a child prodigy.
“When you’re a kid, you’re just doing what you do well,” she said.
What she did well was enough to have her playing in front of crowds of up to 40,000 people, and said an audience doesn’t have to be that big as each time she hits a stage it’s special and Springfield will find her performing one of her favorite concertos.
“This has everything you could want in a concerto in 20 minutes, with lots of tricky technical passages,” Smith said.
She turned 18 earlier this month and is in her freshman year at the University of Cincinnati where she’s studying German in hopes of performing steadily in Europe. Her conservatory studies also continue as music will alway be her main focus and career and this is a chance to see an emerging artist on her way up.
The SSO has presented Lowell Liebermann’s music on several occasions to great success, Wilson said and “Frankenstein” seemed like a proper work to program given the season of the year.
“This was commissioned by the Royal Ballet in London and the San Francisco Ballet and I think it stands just as strongly as a purely musical statement. The three dances that we will excerpt are fun and quirky, but also as expressively romantic as you will find in any piece from contemporary times,” said Wilson.
Although he planned this program long before the unrest Springfield has recently had, it’s almost fitting ‘Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5′ is the program’s finale.
“(It) dishes up its share of turmoil reflecting the tempestuous life if the composer, yet it is a great example of passion and compassion being assuaged in the same musical breath. I think it is the perfect piece for our community at this challenging time,” Wilson said.
MORE DETAILS
Tickets range from $15-76 and can be purchased at pac.clarkstate.edu/shows/2024-2025.
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