Cover image: Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello, performing with the Seattle Symphony led by Ruth Reinhardt, conductor (Photo: Brandon Patoc)
Watching young classical musicians as they become not only orchestra members but soloists and conductors in demand is as exciting and gratifying as it is satisfying. In their hands, classical music for the future is anything but dead. To listen to “From the Top” on radio each week is invariably amazing as we hear youngsters from all over the country play with astonishing maturity and musicianship as well as technical excellence and know that many of them will go on to professional careers.
Thursday night at Seattle Symphony we heard two extremely talented young people from Europe: British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, 20 this year, performing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, and the orchestra’s guest conductor, German-born Ruth Reinhardt, who, still in her 20s, has achieved a meteoric rise in a field where many do not arrive as mature conductors until around 40. (Ludovic Morlot became music director of the Seattle Symphony aged 37.) There have been anomalies, of course, such as Sir Simon Rattle, now conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who became conductor of a major British orchestra aged 25 in 1980.
Ruth Reinhardt, conductor, with Seattle Symphony (Photo: Brandon Patoc)
Reinhardt was a conducting fellow here 2015-16 and promptly was appointed assistant conductor for the Dallas Symphony, a tenure just concluded though she has already returned there for a guest appearance.
She conducted “Messiah” here last season, but this is her first appearance on the Symphony’s MasterWorks series and, judging by her dynamic and insightful conducting Thursday, she will be welcome to return again.
The program was wide-ranging: Schumann’s dramatic Overture to Manfred, the late romantic Tchaikovsky work, a classically interpreted Beethoven First Symphony and the contemporary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s short tone poem, “Ciel d’hiver” (“Winter Sky”).
Reinhardt is active on the podium, and deeply expressive of what she wants, her arms eloquent even in the midst of a beat as she shaped the sound she wanted Thursday. She is decisive and clear. Her Manfred, which Schumann composed in 1848-49 brought out the composer’s portrayal of the rebellious hero’s wild emotions and descent into melancholy and death, colorful, animated and theatrical.
Her Beethoven, with a smaller orchestra, made this well-known work feel fresh and sparkling. She captured its energy, eliciting clear articulation and a light touch from the musicians while the last movement came at a speed the old lush ideas of Beethoven (Stokowski era) would never have been able to encompass, but the Seattle Symphony easily could.
In between she programmed the Saariaho work, ten minutes of very slow strings, an otherworldly sound with shifting draperies of muted colors, and the equivalent of shooting stars in accents from piccolo (ably played by Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby), harp, percussion, celesta. It’s not an entirely quiet night Saariaho draws, with ominous weather portending and some denser dissonance. Reinhardt controlled the music admirably, and the compelling result made absorbing listening.
However, many of the audience had come to hear the young cellist, whose name rocketed around the world after he was tapped to perform at British Prince Harry’s and American Meghan Markle’s wedding in May, a ceremony watched by two billion people.
They were not disappointed. Kanneh-Mason won the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 and was already scheduled to appear here before the wedding invitation was known. He is the third in a family of seven, all of whom are gifted musicians, four of them studying on scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
There’s no doubt of his musicianship. Wearing a dashiki and sneakers and playing on a superb Amati cello on loan to him, he drew a tone of depth and beauty from the instrument, with never a scratchy sound, even when the music was quite loud, and exquisite in softer passages. Without looking at his cello, he seemed unerringly to find the right note almost always even at the highest point. His legato playing sounded smooth and luscious, his articulated runs light and clear. His absorbing long cadenza, slow and declamatory in places, introspective at times, went on to thrilling, lively playing and none of it seemed the least problematic for him.
There were a few rare moments when he was very slightly off the note, but this did not detract from the musicality of the whole. Reinhardt and the orchestra supported him closely, and it was easy to hear every note he played, no matter how low on the instrument or how quiet.
He came back to play a Bach encore, the Gigue from Suite No. 5.
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