Season Opens On ‘Bright Wings,’ Stylish Violin Solo

Spokane Symphony Orchestra Friday, Sept. 19, Spokane Opera House

The Spokane Symphony opened its 1997-98 season Friday with a burst of orchestral color with Dan Welcher’s “Bright Wings.” Later in the program, the brilliant violin playing of Tamaki Kawakubo in the Tchaikovsky Concerto and impressive orchestral playing in Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 made for an impressive start for the season.

Conductor Fabio Mechetti chose a brand-new work by an American composer as the prelude to an otherwise all-Slavic program. Premiered by the Dallas Symphony last spring, Welcher’s “Bright Wings” alternated sections glittering with flashes of brass and percussion with periods of unearthly quiet, of sustained high strings and suspended over wide-striding clarinet and flute melodies. These, along with an impressive brass chorale, showed off the orchestra’s players in a spectacular way.

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto received a beautifully stylish performance from the 17-year-old Kawakubo. Here is a young violinist who performed a familiar masterpiece with extraordinary distinction, one that combined freshness and experience.

Kawakubo, born in Los Angeles, received most of her training in the U.S. though she is currently studying with Zakhar Bron, an outstanding Russian teacher. Her playing encompassed a meltingly beautiful tone in lyric moments and a bold vigor and crystal clarity in the concerto’s virtuosic passages. She was unafraid to play really softly, but the sound still had lovely substance. And her technical prowess lent a cliff-hanging excitement to the finale.

A trademark was the teasing way Kawakubo had of holding back just slightly before the orchestra entered after her solos. When that effect was taken up by oboist Keith Thomas in his entry in the finale, he was rewarded by a smile of recognition from Kawakubo. Her attention to Mechetti and the orchestral musicians made solo and accompaniment a true collaboration. The orchestra playing was first class.

Beyond tonal warmth, beyond fabulous technique and the individual interpretive touches, Kawakubo projected the music that lay behind the notes on the page. Her skill and deep musical involvement make Kawakubo’s a career to watch.

Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 concluded Friday’s program. No one evokes a clearer, fresher picture of the countryside and of country fold singing and dancing as Dvorak does. Mechetti and the orchestra highlighted one beautiful detail after another in Dvorak’s picture: the solo flute in a child-like dance around the violas’ first-movement folk song, the tender violin solo in the adagio, the reedy spookiness of the march that intrudes in the finale … the list goes delightfully on and on.

After four years under Mechetti’s leadership, the orchestra’s playing showed a keener edge than I usually expect in the opening concert of the season. Persistent but solvable problems remain: some imprecise attacks in the brass - particularly noticeable in the finale of the Dvorak symphony - and uncertain intonation in the woodwinds - most evident in slow, quiet spots in the Tchaikovsky and Dvorak pieces. Of course, larger string sections would be an improvement, too. Those things aside, Friday’s performance promised a year of musical excitement and fine playing.

, DataTimes