Pushing The Right Buttons Wjuniski, Symphony Explore The Evolution Of Keyboard Music

The Spokane Symphony’s first concert of this season at The Met is titled “A Study in Contrasts,” and it’s built on contrasts of several types.

The works on this program span centuries and style periods, from the baroque to the post-romantic.

And as it follows the evolution of keyboard music, says symphony Music Director Fabio Mechetti, the program explores the contrast between the piano and its instrumental progenitor, the harpsichord.

If you have always thought of the harpsichord as that instrument that is seen but scarcely heard, sitting in the middle of a baroque ensemble, then this is a concert not to miss. Likewise, if you think that harpsichords just go tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, plunk.

Ilton Wjuniski, known to Spokane audiences through the annual Bach Festival, will perform with the Spokane Symphony for the first time. The Brazilian-born Wjuniski is among the most highly regarded harpsichord teachers in France, a specialist in baroque-era performance practices and in Iberian and New World music of the Colonial period. Mechetti calls him “one of the greatest living harpsichord players.”

The Met audiences will have the opportunity to hear Wjuniski playing well outside the familiar Bach box.

An orchestral suite by J.S. Bach, No. 3 in D major, does begin the program. It’s undoubtedly one of the best-known of all Bach’s instrumental works; the “Air” from this suite has probably been in more movies than Meryl Streep. It is also a wonderful example of a stately baroque overture, in which the harpsichord’s role is strictly as accompaniment.

But with the next piece, Haydn’s Concerto for Harpsichord in D Major, the instrument becomes a virtuoso soloist in its own right.

The program leaps into the 20th century for its second half, with works by Bohuslav Martinu and Manuel de Falla. Martinu was born in the Czech Republic in 1890; Falla was born in Spain 14 years earlier. Both migrated to the New World for a time, and yet retained the strong imprint of their native musical traditions. And both experimented with musical genres and instruments from the baroque era, in particular the harpsichord.

Out of Martinu’s experimentation came one of the most delightfully dissonant, quirky, playful pieces in the repertoire: his Concerto for Harpsichord and Small Orchestra. The sounds of Bach’s and Haydn’s eras are present in this piece, but we experience them through a modern lens. The harpsichord is joined by its modern descendant, the piano.

The last work on the program, de Falla’s Ballet Suite, “El Amor Brujo,” features piano and a vocal soloist, but no harpsichord. Linda Caple-Adams will join the symphony musicians for a suite of flamenco and Gypsy-inspired dances and songs.

This sidebar appeared with the story: IN CONCERT Spokane Symphony

With Ilton Wjuniski, harpsichord, and Linda Caple-Adams, alto, Sunday at 3 p.m. and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at The Met. Tickets: $22 to $11, through the symphony box office (624-1200) and G&B (325-SEAT, 1-800-325-SEAT or www.ticketswest.com).