Memphis Symphony gets cinematic, cosmic for Masterworks opener

Memphis Symphony concert-master Susanna Perry Gilmore performs Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto this weekend.Memphis Symphony Orchestra

The Memphis Symphony Orchestra, fresh from a triumphant collaboration with Playhouse on the Square, goes for a bold but crowd-pleasing Masterworks concert at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts this weekend, the first of the season.

In its ongoing effort to expand the classical experience to other media, the MSO is presenting "Pictures at an Exhibition." It has the familiar Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky's popular composition, but also becomes a visual feast with the accompanying film by astronomer/photographer Jose Francisco Salgado designed to blend cosmic images with the music.

Another significant part of the program is concertmaster Susanna Perry Gilmore's performance of Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto.

Korngold was an Austrian composer who went to Hollywood in the 1930s, lured by the film industry and repelled by the increasing anti-Semitism at home. He scored some Oscar-winning works, securing a cinematic reputation that he couldn't shake off when he later focused on concert compositions.

But he had his champions, including violinist Jascha Heifetz, who premiered the concerto with the St. Louis Symphony in 1947.

Gilmore says Heifetz apparently asked the composer to make it harder ("Thanks a lot, Heifetz!" Gilmore cracks), but the result was that the concerto has become a standard in violin repertoire, although it has rarely been performed in Memphis.

"It has everything going for it: It's beautiful, and as one of my colleagues said, it doesn't make you wait for the great parts," Gilmore says.

She is passionate about giving voice to composers who were affected by the Holocaust. Korngold was displaced by the events in Europe, and had World War II not happened, "he likely would have been the next Mahler," Gilmore says.

But even with the cinema background that fate dealt him looming large, "Korngold's piece stands on its own compositionally," Gilmore says. "It's hard not to fall in love with it."

Also on the program this weekend is Michael Gandolfi's "The Garden of Cosmic Speculation," a 2007 work that musically embraces quarks, black holes and other delights of astronomy.

Memphis Symphony Orchestra: First Tennessee Masterworks Series Concerts

Mei-Ann Chen conducting. 8 p.m. Saturday at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, 255 N. Main; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, 1801 Exeter. There will be a talk by Chen 45 minutes before each concert. Tickets: $15-$78. Call (901) 537-2525, or go to MemphisSymphony.org.

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