The Arkansas Symphony takes the stage Saturday and Sunday at Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall for the fifth concert of the orchestra's 2021-22 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks with a conductor who, while she hasn't conducted this band before, is nonetheless familiar with it.
And the concerts will feature the world premiere of "Pasajes" by Cuban-American composer Tania Leon that the orchestra co-commissioned.
Pianist Martina Filjak, who soloed with the orchestra in Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1" in September 2013, will be at the keyboard for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 21." The program also includes Richard Strauss' tone poem "Death and Transfiguration."
Guest conductor Akiko Fujimoto is music director of the Mid-Texas Symphony in Seguin, Texas, and former associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
She is also the wife of the orchestra's former associate conductor, Israel Getzov, now music director of the Conway Symphony and the Little Rock Winds and a faculty member at University of Central Arkansas. Married since 2011, they live in Conway when she is not traveling.
She says she heard the Arkansas Symphony perform while Getzov was still with the orchestra (he played violin when he wasn't conducting) and heard one concert conducted by former Music Director Philip Mann at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center while Robinson Center was under reconstruction. Most recently she dropped in to hear violinist Gil Shaham solo with the orchestra at Robinson in February. ("I did the Brahms [concerto] with Gil in San Antonio," she says, while serving as associate conductor of the San Antonio Symphony from 2012-17.)
Fujimoto, who moved from Tokyo to California as a teenager, studied at Stanford University, Boston University and the Eastman School of Music. She has been guest-conducting several large and medium-size American orchestras, including a recent San Francisco Symphony debut with Florence Price's "Symphony No. 3."
It's her first time to tackle a piece by Leon, she says. "And I'm excited to collaborate with her on the ground. I wish I could do that with Mozart and Strauss, too."
She has had the piece for a couple of weeks — "not a lot [of time] for a piece with the complexity of her music, but we'll get it done."
"We've already had a session on Zoom," Leon says of working with Fujimoto.
Pianist Martina Filjak (left) performs as soloist in Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21.” Composer Tania Leon (right) will be on hand for the world premiere of the ASO-commissioned “Pasajes.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette) Leon confirms she'll be in Little Rock through the rehearsal process and into the following week, when the orchestra's Rockefeller Quartet — Trisha McGovern Freeney and Linnaea Brophy, violins; Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Jacob Wunsch, cello — plays her "Cuarteto No. 2" as part of a River Rhapsodies chamber music concert Tuesday at the Clinton Presidential Center.
"Pasajes" (Spanish for "Passages," pronounced "PASS-a-hes") lasts only 12 minutes, which Leon says meets the criterion expressed in the commission.
The Arkansas Symphony is the lead commissioner, under a grant from New Music USA's "Amplifying Voices" program, "as part of an effort to foster collaboration toward racial and gender equality by supporting and promoting under-represented composers," according to a news release. Sharing the commission: the National Symphony in Washington; the Detroit Symphony; the Orlando (Fla.) Philharmonic; and the Auburn (Wash.) Symphony. But the piece receives its premiere here.
"Death and Transfiguration" usually takes about 20 minutes to perform, making the concerto, which takes about a half-hour, "possibly the longest piece" on the program, Fujimoto says. But when she put the program together — actually about two years ago, but put on hold because of the pandemic — "I didn't know how complicated the Leon piece would be, or how long it would take." Even at its short length, she says, the rehearsal time for the new piece will be "disproportionately needy."
Leon is reluctant to describe the work, saying by doing so "the audience is looking too much" for the music to match the description. This way, she says, "people will listen and experience the piece their way."
But, she says, each "passage" in the piece "is a fresh idea."
"In every piece, regardless of genre, you have poetry in sounds," she adds. "It's like going to a museum and looking at a canvas that you have seen before. This is a new way of painting; like Picasso or Monet, but with a new palette."
Leon also notes the contrast with the other pieces on the program — "different eras, different messages," she explains. "I don't look like Beethoven or Strauss, and I don't want to."
And, she says, the quartet on the Tuesday chamber program "is very different from this piece. It's in a different territory, sonically speaking. The style is very different."
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra
- What: Pianist Martina Filjak solos in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21”; the world premiere of “Pasajes” by composer Tania Leon; Richard Strauss: “Death and Transfiguration.” Guest conductor: Akiko Fujimoto, music director of the Mid-Texas Symphony in Seguin, Texas, and former associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and the San Antonio Symphony.
- When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
- Where: Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock
- Sponsor: National Endowment for the Arts
- Tickets: $16-$72; $10 students and active-duty military; free to students with the purchase of an adult ticket using the Entergy Kids’ Ticket.
- Information: (501) 666-1761, Extension 1; ArkansasSymphony.org
- Etc.: Fujimoto will meet patrons and answer questions, virtually via Zoom, at a brown-bag lunch at noon today. Free; visit arkansassymphony.org/brownbag-fujimoto.
- The concert will be available for streaming to all ticket buyers starting at 7:30 p.m. April 16.