Beethoven’s Triple Lets Local Talent Shine
November seems to be Mechetti Month for the Spokane Symphony. Later in the month, orchestra music director Fabio Mechetti will share the podium with his father, Marcello. And in Friday’s symphony concert, the maestro’s wife, pianist Aida Ribeiro Mechetti, will be one of the soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
The orchestra’s concertmaster, Kelly Farris, and its principal cellist, John Marshall, will be featured along with Aida Mechetti in the Beethoven piece. Fabio Mechetti will open Friday’s program conducting Copland’s “Danzon Cubano” and conclude it with Prokofiev’s Suite from the ballet “Romeo and Juliet.”
Concertos with multiple soloists are the exception, not the rule. “The Beethoven Triple Concerto is unique in many ways,” Aida Mechetti says. “It’s the only one I know with this combination of soloists. It’s not quite chamber music and not quite a normal solo concerto.”
Only experts in musical exotica have heard the triple concertos by Emanuel Moor, Alfredo Cassella or Alexander Tcherepnin.
“In the Beethoven Triple, each of the solo instruments has several different roles to play,” the pianist says. “Sometimes it is as a soloist, sometimes it’s as accompanist, sometimes we play together like chamber music. The big challenge is to get the three instruments to balance in sound quality.”
Beethoven did not make this balancing act easy. He wrote the concerto to show off the talents of his piano pupil, Archduke Rudolf of Austria. But he also wrote a notoriously difficult, high-altitude cello part for Anton Kraft, probably the greatest cellist of Beethoven’s day, and a taxing solo violin part. The Mechettis performed the work together a few seasons ago in Washington, D.C.
“When Fabio wanted to play it here,” Mechetti says, “we were lucky to have some very wonderful soloists right here in the orchestra.”
Farris, the Spokane Symphony’s concertmaster since 1969, is a frequent soloist with the Spokane Symphony. In addition to his work with the symphony, Farris is first violinist in the Spokane String Quartet and professor of music and conductor of the University Orchestra at Eastern Washington University.
Marshall, like Farris, also is a member of the Spokane String Quartet and is a member of the EWU music faculty. Marshall has participated in music festivals in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Aida Mechetti, like her husband, is a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she studied with the legendary pianist Magda Tagliferro.
Her later teachers have included Jacob Lateiner and Thomas Mastroianni. Mechetti has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Heitor Villa-Lobos Prize and the Calouros Cultura Prize.
Verne Windham, former principal horn of the Spokane Symphony and music and arts programming director for KPBX public radio, will discuss the music in a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. in the Opera House auditorium.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: The Spokane Symphony will perform with soloists Aida Mechetti, Kelly Farris and John Marshall at 8 p.m. Friday at the Spokane Opera House. Tickets are $13 to $28, available at the symphony ticket office, G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.