Cover image: The Symphony’s new chairman of the board, Rene Ancinas (left), and new CEO, Krishna Thiagarajan (right) at SSO’s Opening Night 2018-19 (Photo: SSO/Brandon Patoc)
It’s always an occasion when Seattle Symphony opens its season, with a concert followed by a lavish party which goes on into the night. Saturday evening was no exception. The concert at Benaroya Hall began at the early hour of 5 p.m. with as dressy an audience as is ever seen in this city—many attendees in full evening garb, long dresses, sequins and glitter, tuxes. (The SSO’s season proper begins with the first of the MasterWorks series next Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, including the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich.)
Before the performance, a big screen above the stage celebrated the 20th anniversary, almost to the day, of the opening of Benaroya Hall itself, and then celebrated the new, with the introduction to the audience of the new Symphony CEO, Krishna Thiagarajan (pronounced Tee-AH-guh-RAH-juhn) and the new chairman of the board, Rene Ancinas, filling the big shoes of Leslie Chihuly who retired from that position at the end of last season after nine years.
Thiagarajan, who is half German/half Indian, grew up in Germany and held several executive positions in the U.S. before his most recent post as CEO of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Both men gave tribute to Ludovic Morlot, who begins his final season as music director with the SSO, and to those whose vision built Benaroya, a hall renowned among musicians everywhere for its excellent acoustics for music. Both men and their comments—including the announcement that the SSO had won Orchestra of the Year in the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Awards, out of a field of eight international orchestras—were greeted with cheers and applause.
Ludovic Morlot leading the orchestra at the Opening Night Gala 2018-19 (Photo: SSO/Brandon Patoc)
The concert itself included both the familiar and the less so, opening with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration. While the original piano version is an absorbing piece, Ravel’s masterful choices of instruments create colorful images of those pictures: the heraldic trumpet opening, through bass clarinet, horn and saxophone solos, the high winds for children’s chatter, pecking sounds for the chicks in their shells, and the hefty lumbering of the oxcart, the whiny supplicant (shrill trumpet) and pompous moneylender (basses and cellos) in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle, and the rattling conjured image of the witch’s hut dancing on its legs. It was a good choice for highlighting the many skilled soloists of the orchestra and Morlot made the most of it all.
He chose to speak before the second half began, looking a bit emotional as he thanked the Benaroya family especially for the hall, with an acknowledgment of Becky Benaroya who was present in a first tier box. And then he gave another special thanks to the orchestra itself for the inspiration it had given him these past seven years. He himself was greeted with tumultuous applause when he first came on stage, then again for both Mrs. Benaroya and for the orchestra, the members of which applauded equally enthusiastically for him.
Morlot began the second half of the concert with the familiar, very brief, wildly energetic “Sabre Dance” by Khachaturian, and followed that with a much less familiar work by that composer: his only piano concerto, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano, at SSO’s Opening Night Gala 2018-19 (Photo: SSO/Brandon Patoc)
This is a ferociously difficult work, a huge workout for the pianist, full of abrupt mood swings, lightning fast chords in octaves, cross rhythms, with mostly dense orchestration and sudden switches to softer moments of serenity for the piano. Its three movements only rarely went below a forte or slower than warp speed for the pianist, his hands often a blur, even in the ostensibly slower middle movement with its otherworldly sound of a musical saw coming from the middle of the second violins.
It’s a showoff piece which says a great deal for the technical ability and dexterity of the soloist but not much about his innate musicianship. Luckily, Benaroya knows Thibaudet well from his recent year-long residence with the ensemble, and he came back at the end with a sublime encore, Ravel’s gentle, introspective Pavane pour une infante défunte (“Pavane for a Dead Princess”).
This happy and satisfying concert ended the performance part of the evening which then continued elsewhere for patrons, donors, and subscribers.
