Review – Page 4 – Gathering Note

RVW’s Job receives Seattle premiere; two orchestras look for conducting leadership

Uncertainty faces at least two of Seattle’s community orchestras this season. The untimely passing of George Shangrow has left Orchestra Seattle hanging on. In spite of the fine music making by the group, Orchestra Seattle was always driven by George’s personality and his own vision for the group. He founded the orchestra. Philharmonia Northwest is another local orchestra which is also experiencing change at the podium.

After years leading the Philharmonia, conductor Roupen Shakarian decided the commute from the islands had become too much. Other projects beckoned. With Orchestra Seattle conductor less, Shakarian has been recruited back to Seattle to fill in at the podium for that orchestra’s partial season. Try as he might, Shakarian can’t seem to get away from having orchestral responsibilities in Seattle.
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Spano and Hamelin charge through Gershwin and Ravel Thursday night

George Gershwin: American revolutionary?

A last minute decision at the Seattle Symphony transformed this week’s subscription concert from ordinary to extraordinary. The program, which features competing halves, was initially arranged with the crowd favorites (Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) falling first, while the lesser known pieces (Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements and Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand) coming after intermission.

The Seattle Symphony’s audience has demonstrated a general distrust of music unknown to them. Last week’s concert is an example. As it was reported on this site by Mr. Campbell and by others I have spoken with since the concert, the orchestra level was only 60% – 70% full. Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony anchored a program of Debussy, Bloch, and a new piece by Aaron Jay Kernis. Only Dvorak’s Seventh comes close to being an immediately familiar piece.

For opening night of this week’s concert, Taper Auditorium was full. I wondered out loud to a few people before the concert if Gershwin and Copland would be enough to dispel any misgivings for Stravinsky and Ravel. “Never underestimate the pull of Rhapsody in Blue,” a long-time observer of the symphony wisely advised. Even if Gershwin could generate a robust audience, there was a risk that after the audience heard Rhapsody and Appalachian Spring there would be an exodus at intermission. This was a genuine risk. It happened last spring for Adams’ Harmonielehre.
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World premiere plus Dvorak’s 7th from SSO

By R.M. Campbell

The Seattle Symphony premiered another work, this time by Aaron Jay Kernis, in the Gund/Simonyi set of commissioned works to celebrate the final year of Gerard Schwarz’s directorship of the orchestra, Thursday night at Benaroya Hall.

Unlike some of its predecessors in the series, Kernis’ “On Wings of Light” is bombastic, urgent, bright. It is over seemingly moments after it starts. If ever a piece was a curtaion-raiser, this is one. Kernis writes in the program that the piece was inspired by words of the 18th-century philospher and scientist Johann Heinrich Lambert: “I take on wings of light and soar through all spaces of the heavens. I never come far enough and the desire always grows in me to go farther.” Perhaps, but I got little sense of wings of light and soaring through the heavens. Rather the work is more like blasting your way to any destination. There may be little poetry or subtlety, but it was fun to be along for the ride.
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Cappella Romana turns to England

By Philippa Kiraly

As a rule we expect Cappella Romana to enlighten and enthrall us with music of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches from the Middle Ages to the present day. For its first concert of this season, it turned to the English church choral tradition of the Renaissance in a fascinating, moving performance directed by a guest conductor from England, Guy Protheroe.

Choosing Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle for the venue Saturday night, a place where the choir has sung before, gave the requisite reverberation to allow the music to bloom, though it made words very hard to distinguish.
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Schwarz opened his farewell season Saturday night

By R.M. Campbell

After nearly three decades of association with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz is saying goodbye. This season will be his last as music director, although he will return to the SSO podium in subsequent seasons as conductor laureate.

The annual gala Saturday night at Benaroya Hall, which raises several hundred thousand dollars every fall for the orchestra, was dedicated to Schwarz. The first piece, “The Human Spirit,” was written by him, and the second, a cello concerto written by the SSO composer-in-residence Samuel Jones, was performed by Schwarz’ son Julian. The closing work, a suite taken from Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier,” was arranged by Schwarz. The only piece on the program which did not bear any involvement with Schwarz, except as a conductor, was Mahler’s song cycle “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.”
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Beethoven and Wine festival concludes with the Eighth Symphony and Third Piano Concerto

Beethoven and wine; wine and Beethoven, the Seattle Symphony kicked off the 2010/2011 season with three shorter all-Beethoven concerts preceded by an hour of wine tasting. The Beethoven and Wine festival isn’t new. Last season was its inagueral season. It’s a disappointing world we live in. These days it takes putting “wine” in the title of the program to fill Benaroya to near capacity. Wine and ___ (fill in the blank with a composer or musical period) has proven to be such a successful model that I noticed a new Baroque and wine series has been added to the SSO season. Other orchestras have included wine tasting in their programs as well.
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A remarkable debut with SSO for violinist Augustin Hadelich

By Philippa Kiraly

The Seattle Symphony began its Beethoven and Wine series and its annual season at Benaroya Hall on a high note, with the Seattle Symphony debut of violinist Augustin Hadelich playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and the world premiere of a fine little work by Augusta Read Thomas.

Her composition was the first to be performed of eighteen commissioned from contemporary composers by Agnes Gund and Charles Simonyi to mark the farewell season of artistic director Gerard Schwarz. The list of composers, all working in this country, is a Who’s Who of today’s most respected names in the field Their works will be performed at concerts throughout the season, and this first one will be heard again in each of the remaining Beethoven and Wine concerts, tonight (Thursday) and tomorrow.

Read Thomas describes her five-minute “Of Paradise and Light” as a soulful work of reflection, “as though a sliver of paradise and light came down to shine upon a garden of colorful flowers.” So often a description like this leaves the listener, on hearing the work, wondering just what the composer meant. Not so here. She has captured her words in sound.

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The 2010-2011 concert season opens with I-90 Collective

By Philippa Kiraly

The fall concert season starts with a flurry this year, seemingly in a hurry to get going immediately after Labor Day. The Seattle Symphony has three Beethoven and Wine concerts this week and a gala on Saturday, Cappella Romana gives its first season performance Saturday, and the Early Music Guild got in first with one of its First Tuesday series, the I-90 Collective performing at Trinity Parish Church.

The audience was surprisingly good for an early Tuesday in September and, with its excellent acoustics, the Trinity Parish Hall is becoming known as a fine place to perform.
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An increasingly enlightened audience at Seattle Chamber Music Festival

By Philippa Kiraly

Time was, maybe 17 years ago, when Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival was full of well known classics. We could confidently expect to hear Brahms, Beethoven, and Schumann, Mozart and Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. Sure there was, is, plenty to choose from among much-loved works. Some amongst us grew restless, wanting to be more challenged by the music and have our minds expanded, and SCMS responded by building a program one year full of these more adventurous work. The audience stayed away in droves.

What a change nowadays!
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Seattle Chamber Music Festival enters final week of 2010 season

By R.M. Campbell

Memories can be short and distorted, but it seems to me, as the Seattle Chamber Music Festival enters its final week of the summer, this season has been if not the best than one of the best in its nearly 30-year history.

Two things are certain. The move from the dull acoustics of St. Nicholas Hall at Lakeside to Nordstrom Recital Hall has been an unqualified success, not only in terms of box office but musically, aided in part by the vastly improved acoustical presence of the hall. There is no question Nordstrom can turn shrill in the upper registers, especially the violin, if musicians are not careful. In the early days, they were not and the hall got a bad reputation. But other musicians, more capable and more sensitive, found ways to make the hall what it is today. All concert venues have their individual profiles which musicians must take into account. Festival concerts at Nordstrom had a ring of freshness, vibrancy and clarity they did not have previously. This improved acoustical status seemed to encourage musicians to play even better than they did at Lakeside.
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