by Judy Harrison
Bangor Daily News
September 24, 2024
Piano soloist Jon Kimura Parker wowed the audience Sunday in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concert No. 5 with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at the Collins Center for the Arts. Parker surprised and delighted concertgoers with an encore of Elton John’s song “Bennie and the Jets.” Credit: Courtesy of Tara McMullen
A Canadian-born pianist joined the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at the Collins Center for the Arts on Sunday for a thrilling concert of 19th century music that also offered a couple of surprises.
Soloist Jon Kimura Parker gave a stunning interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 at the first concert of the orchestra’s 129th season. Known for his “charisma, enthusiasm and dynamic performances,” Parker did not disappoint as he beautifully captured each arpeggio, trill and scale of the composer’s innovative concerto.
Beethoven was almost completely deaf when the piece premiered in 1811. It was the only one of his piano concertos that he did not play himself at the first public performance.
The piece was innovative at the time as it begins with “the soloist immediately launching into a cadenza just after one introductory chord from the orchestra,” the program note said. Throughout the concerto, the piano and the orchestra engaged in a kind of call and response more typical in gospel than classical music.
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