The Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra begins their 2022-23 season with Maestro Linus Lerner on the podium, kicking off a season of musical serendipity. The program features the overture to Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville along with two classic works by Tchaikovsky. Guest soloist Steven Moeckel joins the orchestra for the Russian composer’s iconic Violin Concerto in D Major.
Violinist Moeckel is no stranger to Arizona, having served as concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2008. He is currently concertmaster of the Phoenix Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera. The musical prodigy was born in Germany and began his career, first as violinist, then performing at the age of eleven as principal soprano soloist for the renowned Vienna Boys Choir. This will be Steven Moeckel’s first time since 2006 performing with SASO.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was working through depression after the failure of his marriage while composing Violin Concerto in D major. After reconnecting with his composition pupil, violinist Iosif Kotek, Tchaikovsky regained his inspiration and completed the work within a month. The composer wrote to his patroness, “It has a lot of freshness, lightness, of piquant rhythms, of beautiful and excellently harmonized melodies.” The concerto premiered in Vienna on December 4, 1881.
The program opens with Gioachino Rossini’s overture to the Barber of Seville, widely considered one the greatest comic operas ever written. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, in which the composer broke with classical musical forms so as to allow expression of his intense emotions, will end the first concert in SASO’s serendipitously themed season.