What began with Beethoven’s most famous work, is ending with his most upbeat symphony.
“Springfield Symphony Orchestra began its 2024-2025 season with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and will end its formal season on Saturday with a performance of what is my favorite work by the composer, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7,” said Paul Lambert, president and CEO of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.
Showtime is 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall.
The final concert of the season, “Variations & Virtuosity,” will feature guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger and guest pianist Natasha Paremski.
“We are really excited to have Marcelo conducting our last program of the season. When his name came up as a possibility, our musicians were really excited about the prospect of his conducting the SSO. He comes from a tremendously talented musical family originally from Brazil and his sister is a violinist who plays with us on a regular basis,” Lambert said.
Lehninger’s roots in Brazil are reflected in his choice of the Ronaldo Miranda’s “Temporal Variations” followed by one of the greatest of the variation structures, Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” one of the great compositions of the classical music literature, played by the evening’s soloist Paremski. The program will conclude with Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7,” a dynamic symphony which he understood to be one of his best compositions.
Lehninger has served as music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony since 2016 and was recently appointed artistic director of the Bellingham Festival of Music, where he inaugurated his annual Conducting Institute, a one-month residency to promising young conductors. Previously, Lehninger served as music director of the New West Symphony in Los Angeles, for which the League of American Orchestras awarded him the Helen H. Thompson Award for Emerging Music Directors. Prior to that, Lehninger served as assistant and then associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
As a guest conductor, Lehninger has led many of the top orchestras in the United States and Europe. He has debuted with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphonies, the Yomirui Nippon Symphony in Tokyo, and the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra in Fukuoka, as well as throughout Brazil and South America as the former music advisor of The Orchestra of the Americas.
Before dedicating his career to conducting, Lehninger studied violin and piano. He holds a master`s degree from the Conductors Institute at New York`s Bard College.
Born in Moscow, the concert’s guest pianist moved to the United States at the age of eight, becoming a U.S. citizen shortly afterwards, and is now based in New York City where she is artistic dfirector of New York Piano Society, a non-profit organization that supports pianists whose professions lie outside of music.
Paremski is a regular return guest of many major orchestras throughout North America. In Europe, she has toured extensively with such orchestras as Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Moscow Philharmonic.
A passionate chamber musician, Paremski is a regular recital partner of Grammy winning cellist Zuill Bailey, with whom she has recorded a number of CDs. Their Britten album on Telarc debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart, remaining there for a number of weeks, in addition to being featured on The New York Times Playlist.
Lambert noted that he is “proud” of the season they just produced.
“It has been a beautiful season for us filled with variation and a variety of music that has just been stunning and the performances remarkable. Some of our patrons have told me that the performances are some of the best concerts they have ever seen,” Lambert said.
“What we have tried to do this season is broaden our offerings and types of music presented to the community. I believe it has been a very exciting season filled with beautiful music during an especially challenging time given what we hear in the news every day. I hope people who came out during our season found healing among the beautiful music. I am convinced more and more how important it is to bring our community together for a few hours of joy,” he added.
Tickets, ranging in price from $25 to $80, are available online at springfieldsymphony.org.
