The last time Tucson Symphony Orchestra performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto 21, George Hanson was at the podium and the keyboard.
Hanson, a classically trained pianist, had soloed on Mozart concertos two other times earlier in his tenure, but the 2010 performance to open his 15th season as TSO music director was his biggest challenge.
The 21st is arguably more technically demanding than works by Liszt and Rachmaninoff, composers whose careers were largely made on their piano works. Some pianists and musicologists will point to the 21st’s ornamentation that demands the pianist’s complete attention to detail, and while the work might not match the finger acrobatics required from Liszt and Rachmaninoff, the concerto’s fast runs and intricate passages demand precision and clarity.
This weekend, the TSO revisits the concerto with French pianist David Fray making his Tucson debut in the season-opening “Mozart and Tchaikovsky.” The orchestra, under Music Director José Luis Gomez, performs the concert on Friday, Sept. 27, and Sunday, Sept. 29, at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
Tucson is the third and last city on Fray’s fall U.S. tour with Mozart’s concerto: he played it with the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky early this month and with Savannah (Georgia) Philharmonic last weekend under the baton of University of Arizona alumnus and occasional TSO guest conductor Keitaro Harada.
“Mozart and Tchaikovsky” is bookended by British composer Anna Clyne’s 2015 work “This Midnight Hour,” inspired by poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique,” the Russian composer’s final musical utterance before his death in November 1893, three months after the work’s premiere.
Tucson Symphony Orchestra Music Director José Luis Gomez opens the 2024 season with guest pianist David Fray and Mozart’s Piano Concerto 21.
This is the first time the TSO has performed the Tchaikovsky since spring 2017.
Friday’s concert begins at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday’s begins at 2 p.m. Tickets are $14-$95 through tucsonsymphony.org or by calling 520-882-8585.
Keitaro Harada rehearses with the Tucson Symphony as guest conductor for “Ravel and Dvorak” on Nov. 10 and 12. It was his TSO Classic series debut.
