A conversation with Seattle
Schwarz has always done well by this composer, and this concert was no exception. It began with October, a 20-minute tone poem on a subject Shostakovich visited more than once in his career, the 1917 Revolution.
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The Seattle Symphony performed two contrasting classical favorites this weekend: Mozart’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Conductor laureate Gerard Schwarz, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, four vocal soloists, and the Seattle Symphony Chorale joined the orchestra for the concert.
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This Thursday, the Seattle Symphony performs Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle featuring by a lavish set created by local glass luminary Dale Chihuly.
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Much of it the work is played at lightning speed. Toradze, like an elderly elf with his frill of white hair around a shining pate, used his whole body in the act of performance. His hands, a blur on the keyboard, were accompanied by his body rising right off his seat, while his feet, both of them, kept the rhythm with stamps and taps, even when the toe was providing the necessary pedalwork.
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Schwarz has been a consummate orchestra builder. He has brought in excellent players, and his programming has been consistently enlightening, adventurous at times without turning off the audience. He hands off to Ludovic Morlot a fine-tuned precision instrument able to do anything Morlot requires of them.
The audience brought him and the soloists back three times. At the last one, when Schwarz signaled the orchestra to rise, concertmaster Maria Larionoff shook her head slightly and the orchestra remained seated, giving the applause to him.
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After 26 years at the musical helm of the Seattle Symphony, music director and conductor Gerard Schwarz steps down in a few weeks. His two concerts this month include the final works from the Gund-Simonyi Farewell Commissions, yet another commission by a group of donors, and Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony as his actual last directoral presence on the podium.
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