There might be tears shed Friday night when French-Canadian pianist Alain Lefèvre plays his encore at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concert.
It will not be a piece by fellow Quebecer André Mathieu, a composer whose works the TSO championed with Lefèvre over the past decade — including in an internationally released recording in 2008.
Instead, Lefèvre, whose relationship with outgoing Conductor George Hanson has stretched better than a dozen years, will perform a piece he has composed for the occasion.
“I’m composing a piece for George that I will offer as a token of my friendship for him and a token of my admiration for him,” Lefèvre said during a phone call from Montreal last week. “It’s going to be very moving. I think there’s going to be a lot of tears.”
The concert kicks off a season-long farewell to Hanson, who will conclude his tenure with the orchestra with two concerts in the 2015-16 season. Hanson said he curated the season to emphasize the milestones he and the orchestra have celebrated over 18 years.
“The entire season is built around the first interval of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Final Quartet in which he says goodbye,” Hanson said, humming the melody — da, dee, doe, dum — that Bernstein references in “On the Town” and Copland pronounced in his “Fanfare for the Common Man” in the fourth movement of his Symphony No. 3. Both works are on the opening concert program and the theme reappears in various works throughout the season, including Mahler’s Third Symphony that the orchestra will perform in March.
“Each program has an overarching connection to the grand farewell, if you will,” Hanson said. “There’s a particular meaning to virtually every piece I chose.”
None of the concerts, perhaps, connects the dots more clearly than this weekend’s. The program bridges major milestones in Hanson’s career to date:
- The Bernstein recalls Hanson’s time as an assistant to the famous conductor when Hanson was starting his career.
- The Gershwin is the same piece Lefèvre played in his first TSO concert in 2004 that launched his relationship with Tucson and led to his critically acclaimed international recording with the TSO of “Andre Mathieu — Concerto No. 4.”
- The Copland takes Hanson back to that somber day in January 2011, days after Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, when he led the TSO in a moving performance of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” at a nationally televised memorial service attended by President Obama.
“It was one of the most important moments along with Alain’s recording … of our work together,” Hanson said. “That was an extraordinary moment, tragic and also powerful.”
Lefèvre said Tucson has become an integral part of his professional life since the 2008 recording. Since Tucson performed the world premiere of the Mathieu Concerto, Lefèvre has taken it around the globe.
“Each time I play this concerto ... the reference for orchestras and conductors and everyone is always the recording we did with Tucson,” he said.
“Tucson did the job that very, very few orchestras today are able to,” he said. “I play with major orchestras around the world, but Tucson is for me still very important. It’s more than a musical relationship; it’s a friendship. Even with the audience. It is very moving for me to be back.”
