Gerard Schwarz
The Seattle Symphony has new Friday night “Rush Hour” concerts, so our classical schmoozing correspondents made a trip to try it out.
The Benaroya Hall lobby opens at 5:30 p.m. with small plates and drinks from Wolfgang Puck Catering, then an abbreviated, no-intermission concert begins. Tickets start at $14. (The full program, featuring Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, plays tonight at 8 p.m. Here’s The Gathering Note’s review.)
After the first piece–Aaron Jay Kernis’s On Wings of Light, which contains at least three candidate segments for news program themes–conductor Gerard Schwarz swung around to face the audience, prompting a quickly suppressed Wait, he can see us?! reflex.
He had the orchestra give us a brief preview of the Pelléas et Mélisande Suite (his own arrangement), explaining how the choice of instruments gave emotional color to the work (brooding basses, melancholic cellos). He had the orchestra (and audience) clap in cross-rhythm to demonstrate what Dvořák was doing in his symphony. The orchestra, interestingly, are far better clappers.
You wouldn’t know it with his back turned toward you the whole time, but Gerard Schwarz is a really warm, engaging man, and his channeling of Leonard Bernstein prompted an unfamiliar sensation in this context–it was fun. The snippets of music played beforehand act like signposts as you run into them again (Cue SNL skit: “I know you. I know you.”). There’s that ole oboe, you tell yourself smugly.
At 75 minutes, the concert lasts exactly the right time for your limited Friday night mental resources, and releases you with the evening still ahead–or in time to head home for The Good Guys on FOX.