Russian piano virtuoso Daniil Trifonov to play with Kansas City Symphony

Like his fellow Russian pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev, Daniil Trifonov is also a composer, a real rarity among today’s hyper-specialized classical virtuosos.

Trifonov will perform his own Piano Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony in a program called “Vivid Autumn” Nov. 18, 19 and 20. Michael Stern also will conduct music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms.

Trifonov has won a slew of awards, including first prize at the 13th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and first prize, gold medal, and grand prix at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The 25-year-old pianist is a bona fide sensation.

“The guy is a phenomenon,” Kansas City Symphony artistic director Michael Stern said. “He’s extraordinary. His ability at the keyboard is pretty stupefying.”

The concerto Trifonov will perform with the Kansas City Symphony is lush and romantic but also has moments of bracing modernism.

“He’s written a concerto which not only hangs together, but is beautiful,” Stern said. “The complexity of the first movement is incredible, and the final movement is pretty hair-raising, too. But, for me, the second movement is so beautiful. It sounds like an original voice. There is some Rachmaninoff and some Scriabin and some Prokofiev influence, but how could there not be? He’s steeped in that music and plays it incredibly well.”

Trifonov’s concerto is surrounded by other powerful works. The concert will open with the “Egmont” Overture from Beethoven’s complete incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play “Egmont.” The play, about a Dutch nobleman who leads his people in resistance to oppressive Spanish invaders, brought out the fist-shaking best in Beethoven.

“The idea that Beethoven should have stood up, aware of the world, and made a case that music can reflect a higher principle, a higher ideal, that was kind of new,” Stern said. “The winds of change are coming and Napoleon is the great hope and then the great disappointment, and Beethoven recognizes this evolution of thinking. The idea that men should create their own societies, the whole idea of self-determination was a new idea. The music that he writes is celebrating this idea of resistance and asserting political identity.”

The second half of the concert is devoted to Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, a work Stern describes as “sun-drenched.” The work easily conjures images of golden sunlight streaming through brilliantly colored leaves.

“The last movement is one of the most optimistic and also heroic things that he ever wrote,” Stern said. “There’s often a kind of heaviness in Brahms. This is very buoyant Brahms.”

8 p.m. Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 and 2 p.m. Nov. 20. Helzberg Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. $23-$88. 816-471-0400 or www.kcsymphony.org.

‘Monks Singing Pagans’

The Friends of Chamber Music will present the superb early music group Sequentia in a concert with perhaps the most intriguing name of the year Friday at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral.

“Monks Singing Pagans: Medieval Songs of Gods, Heroes and Strong Women” will explore music that straddles pagan and Christian Europe. Medieval monks are most often associated with Gregorian chant, but singer and harpist Benjamin Bagby will draw on his research to show that the monastic repertoire also included songs with pre-Christian themes. The program will include hymns in praise of pagan deities from Woden to Hercules and songs from “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius.

8 p.m. Nov. 18. Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, $35. 816-561-9999 or www.chambermusic.org.

Jan Kraybill organ recital

Organ aficionados have been eagerly awaiting Jan Kraybill’s first organ recital at Westport Presbyterian Church.

Kraybill, principal organist for the international headquarters of Community of Christ and conservator of Helzberg Hall’s Casavant organ, is sure to bring out all the colors and possibilities of Westport’s Martin Pasi instrument. The free lunchtime concert on Friday is titled “Inspired” and is part of the church’s Brown Bag series. (The church has been rebuilt since a 2011 fire.)

“I had the dubious distinction of being the last organist to play Westport Pres’s organ before the fire,” Kraybill said. “I was shocked to see the news and photos from that horrible night, and, like everyone else, I wondered if this congregation would be able to recover and rebuild. That’s what led me to the title of this program. I’m so happy to help celebrate their return to their beautiful new sanctuary.”

Kraybill will put the organ through its paces with music by Johann Sebastian Bach and composers from the 17th to the 20th centuries who were “inspired” by Bach.

12:10 p.m. Nov. 18. Westport Presbyterian Church, 201 Westport Rd. Free. www.westportpresbyterian.org.

St. Cecilia Music Festival

St. Cecilia, a 2nd century martyr and patron saint of music, has inspired countless paintings of her playing the organ, and innumerable odes by composers from Henry Purcell to Benjamin Britten.

She’s also the inspiration behind the St. Cecilia Music Festival Sunday, Nov. 13, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Every year the Sunday before the feast of St. Cecilia, Marie Pearson, organist and music director for the cathedral, invites some of the area’s finest Catholic choirs for a celebration of sacred music.

This year, the St. Therese Adult and Treble Choirs, St. Piux X High School Sarton Singers and Nativity of Mary, Holy Trinity Honor Choir will join Pearson’s Cathedral Celebration Choir and Schola Cantorum for everything from Gregorian chant and polyphony to beloved American hymns.

3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13. Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, 416 W. 12th. Free. For more information, visit www.kcgolddome.org.

This story was originally published November 9, 2016 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Russian piano virtuoso Daniil Trifonov to play with Kansas City Symphony."