Spokane Symphony Opens Season Friday
Putting together the pieces of a successful symphony concert can be the result of careful planning. Or good luck.
Spokane symphony-goers are not likely to have heard violinist Tamaki Kawakubo, and most will not have heard the music of Dan Welcher. They’ll get the chance as the Spokane Symphony opens its 1997-98 season Friday in the Opera House. Good luck played a role in their selection.
Conductor Fabio Mechetti will open the program with Welcher’s “Bright Wings,” and Kawakubo will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. The orchestra will play Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 to conclude the program.
The concert will be repeated in Coeur d’Alene at a Sunday matinee performance in Boswell Hall on the North Idaho College campus.
Kawakubo grew up in Los Angeles, where she began studying the violin when she was 5. She studied with Robert Lipsett in Los Angeles and later with Dorothy Delay and Masao Kawasaki at the Juilliard School in New York. She currently studies with Zakhar Bron in Spokane’s sister city in Germany, Lubeck.
“It’s good for our audience to have a fresh new face,” Mechetti says of Kawakubo, “someone they have never heard before, someone they can be curious about.”
When conductors look for new talent, the search includes auditions, performances, and recommendations from other conductors or recordings. Concert managers bombard conductors with tapes of their clients, hoping that the playing or singing will lead to an engagement. The tape of Kawakubo’s playing had the desired effect on Mechetti.
“I had never worked with her or heard her play before,” Mechetti says. “Her playing on the tape already showed great technical and musical assurance, and it was probably made when she was only 14 or 15.”
When Kawakubo appears here Friday, she will have just turned 17. At an age when many young people are thinking of SAT scores and prom dates, Kawakubo will have already performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony and the Detroit Symphony. At 14, she played with the Boston Pops in a nationally televised program, and she made a cameo appearance in the film “For the Boys.”
“To begin our season, I always like to find someone young who shows a lot of promise,” Mechetti says.
The Spokane Symphony has a history of providing a showcase for young performers who later become stars - Joshua Bell, Corri Cerovsek and Nadia Solerno-Sonnenberg among them.
Mechetti’s discovery of Welcher’s “Bright Wings” resulted from a lucky coincidence. The work was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and premiered in March 1997.
“I’ve never conducted any of Dan’s music, but I liked it from hearing a couple of CDs,” Mechetti says. “His pieces are very effective. But the reason I got to know this particular piece is a little unusual.
“The person who did the copying of the score and parts for ‘Bright Wings’ is David Ross, a musician in the Syracuse Symphony, which I also conduct. He does professional copying for a lot of well-known composers. When he sees something he especially likes, he shows it to me,” Mechetti says. “Last year, he showed me the score to ‘Bright Wings,’ but he said, ‘You can’t do it this year because Dallas has exclusive performance rights.’ “But this year I can do it,” Mechetti says. “So that is why we’re opening the season with it.”
Welcher - born in Rochester, N.Y., and trained at the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music - currently heads the music composition program at the University of Texas in Austin. His works have been performed by more than 50 orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony.
“‘Bright Wings’ shows a lot of skill in the instrumentation and has a lot of rhythmic excitement,” Mechetti says. “There is nothing outrageous about it, but there are a couple of spots where the orchestra players have to improvise what they play. It’s a great program opener.”
The major orchestral work on this weekend’s Spokane Symphony program is Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.
“I have conducted only one other Dvorak symphony here in Spokane, that was the Seventh,” Mechetti says. “The Eighth is the most Slavic of all the late Dvorak symphonies in its melodies and dance rhythms. It will make a good companion to the Russian feeling of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.”
Mechetti will discuss the music Friday at 7 p.m. in the Opera House auditorium. The symphony will recognize Gladys Brooks, who is retiring after 16 years as organizer of pre-concert lectures, by renaming the series The Spokane SymphonyGladys Brooks Pre-Concert Talks.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: The Spokane Symphony Orchestra will perform Friday at 8 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Boswell Hall in Coeur d’Alene. Tickets for the Spokane performance range from $13.50 to $28.50 and are available at G&B (800) 325-SEAT. Coeur d’Alene tickets are $15.50 and $17.50, available by calling (800) 4CDA-TIX. All tickets are available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200).