The KSO, Geoffrey Gallegos, Music Director and Conductor, closes its 2022-2023 season with music of Mendelssohn, Bruch and Elgar. The program opens with Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Op. 27 which is recalled in a connection with the main and final work on the program, Sir Edward Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme, better known as the Enigma Variations Op. 36. 14 Variations serve as intimate and sometimes sarcastic if not mildly caustic sketches if not portraits of Elgar's close and not so close friends, professional associates, members of the community, an organists bulldog "Dan", his beloved wife Alice and himself in the Finale. Variation 13 alludes to the Mendelssohn with a direct quotation in the solo clarinet depicting the ocean travels of possibly one Lady Mary Lygon, but could also allude to the failed engagement to and departure of Helen Weaver to New Zealand. The enigmatic counter theme is never revealed, and any proposed solutions to the puzzle remained unconfirmed by Elgar which he took to his grave. In between the Mendelssohn and Elgar, the rarely performed Double Concerto for Viola and Clarinet of Max Bruch, featuring Franklin Chang, viola and Sarah Hartglass, clarinet, in this charming, often conversationally intimate, and finally, brilliantly energetic relationship between these imaginatively paired instruments.