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Making a return appearance with the Bryan Symphony Orchestra at Tennessee Tech University for its season-opening performance Sunday, Oct. 19, is German-born Andreas Klein, who last performed here in November 1996.



Klein, who has been described by The New York Times as "a fascinating artist with all the indispensable qualities: temperament, taste, touch, tone, the four T's of pianism," will play the piano concerto in E-flat by Franz Liszt.



“It’s an emotional piece,” said Klein. “It’s also virtuosic and has a lot of drama, and it is unique in the sense that it’s the very first concerto written where the whole composition is played in one movement. If this were a typical concerto, you would have separate movements, one after the other, but this is played without any break.”



The BSO opens its 46th season with a performance beginning at 3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 19, in Wattenbarger Auditorium on the Tennessee Tech campus. Tickets are in short supply. Call 372-6088 for availability.



“Lizst was the first rock star pianist of classical music and a particularly brilliant weaver of musical ideas, of cyclical compositions,” said BSO Music Director Dan Allcott, who’s beginning his sixth season in Cookeville.



“The whole piece is based on one melodic scene, which is presented in the opening of the piece,” said Klein. “In the piano literature, that makes this piece unique. Lizst was very important in that sense. In this concerto, you hear the same material, the same melody, the same ideas throughout the piece. You have an idea, and you develop it in various ways musically -- you might change the rhythm or tonality or accompaniment – and you then weave it all together in one composition while retaining the same form.”



Klein’s career as a soloist has taken him to London's Wigmore Hall, Berlin's Philharmonic Hall, New York's Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., as well as concert halls in Rome, Milan, Bern, Leipzig and Dresden, Damascus, and Yerevan. He has toured Europe, Russia, the Middle East and throughout the U.S.



A frequent guest on National Public Radio's "Performance Today,” Klein has created a series of short works by composers such as Chopin, Debussy and Stravinsky called “Intermezzo with Andreas Klein,” seen on PBS television stations nationwide. He has recorded seldom-performed works by Busoni, Ginastera and Stravinsky for the discography libraries of the Deutschland Sender and DS Kultur Radio, Berlin, and he can be heard with a variety of composers on PianoDisk CDs.



“I’m thrilled to welcome someone back who became a favorite of our audience when he first appeared here,” said Allcott. “Klein has a carefully cultivated repertoire, and his cosmopolitan experience is going to be a treat for this season’s audience.”



Also on the BSO’s Oct. 19 program is Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s final — and some would say greatest — symphony, the 6th. Subtitled “Pathétique,” which translates from Russian to “full of emotion and suffering,” the symphony premiered on Oct. 28, 1893, just nine days before its author’s untimely death.



“Tchaikovsky said that he loved this work as he never loved any of his other musical offspring,” said Allcott. “This is an autobiographical symphony from a man who felt apart from the world. It’s incredibly emotional, and yet he was known as being non-emotional as a conductor. That’s the dichotomy of it: he writes in such a strong formal way, but this piece is infused with such incredibly intense emotional statements.”



A number of concert-related events have been planned by the Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association for the days leading up the performance:

• Wednesday, Oct. 15: Crossville Preview Luncheon, 11 a.m., Palace Theater. Call 484-6133 for reservations by Monday, Oct. 13. Cost is $10 at the door.
• Wednesday, Oct. 15: “BSO Backstage,” 7:30 p.m., WCTE-TV, Ch. 22 (Cable Ch. 10). Rebroadcasts at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 18.
• Friday, Oct. 17: Symphony Social. 7 p.m., home of Cheryl Ehlert and Sam Sandlin, 120 Southern Wood Ct., Cookeville. Call 372-6088 for reservations and directions by Monday, Oct. 13. Cost is $10; pay at the door.

On concert day itself, Sunday, Oct. 19, TTU faculty member Catherine Godes will give a preview lecture at 2 p.m., in Room 223 of the Bryan Fine Arts Building. Immediately after the concert, a reception will be held in the BFAB lobby. The evening ends with a post-concert dinner at Mauricio's Italian Restaurant, located at 232 N. Peachtree Ave. Call 372-6088 for reservations.



The Bryan Symphony Orchestra, a member of the League of American Orchestras, is the only professional symphony in a rural area of Tennessee. The Oct. 19 performance is sponsored by Luna and Birdwell Investment Group and Streamliner Creative Group.