Contrasts Orchestra Explores The Different Sounds Of Keyboard Music, From Harpsichord To Modern Piano

Spokane Symphony with Ilton Wjuniski, harpsichord, and Linda Caple-Adams, alto Sunday, Nov. 5, at The Met

It’s hard to imagine a more diverse group of pieces than the four the Spokane Symphony featured in the opener of its Met concert series on Sunday.

One of the concert’s intentions, according to Music Director Fabio Mechetti, was to explore the contrasting sounds of keyboard music from the harpsichord to the modern piano. Hence, the program’s title: A Study in Contrasts.

The striking thing in Sunday afternoon’s program was the range of musical sounds that it showed a small orchestra is capable of. We also got to hear harpsichordist Ilton Wjuniski front and center on stage, and to experience the versatility of his musicianship.

Since the early ‘90s, Wjuniksi has been a regular guest artist at the Northwest Bach Festival. In Bach’s work, as in all baroque music, the harpsichord is ubiquitous behind the scenes. So it was fitting that the first piece on Sunday’s program was Bach’s Orchestral Suite, No. 3, with the harpsichord played ably in its supporting role by Linda Siverts.

By the time Haydn wrote his D Major Concerto for Harpsichord, the instrument had ceased to be ubiquitous but had become more conspicuous. Today, Mechetti said, Haydn’s harpischord concerto is more often played on the piano. With the work in the hands of Wjuniski, we got to experience the beautiful, graceful Haydn melodies as Mozart would have heard and imitated them.

It seemed to take Wjuniski some time to warm up to his fuchsia-colored harpsichord, though the last movement - a “Hungarian Rondo” - was brilliant. The symphony provided impeccable accompaniment throughout in some of its finest playing of the afternoon.

The two works on the second half of the program were light-years in sound from Bach and Haydn. Martinu’s Harpsichord Concerto and Falla’s Ballet Suite, “El Amor Brujo,” incorporate the sounds of their 20th-century environments. Dissonance and the tinkling-metallic sound of the harpsichord evoke mechanized modernity in Martinu’s concerto. Falla’s suite from the pantomime “Love, the Sorcerer” illustrates a love quadrangle run amok, with fiery dances in the orchestra and painful songs of betrayal sung richly and earthily by alto Linda Caple-Adams.

Mechetti and the orchestra seemed to inhabit this music more comfortably than the Bach that opened the concert. Along with Wjuniski and Caple-Adams, concertmaster Kelly Farris, cellist John Marshall, oboist Keith Thomas and pianist Siverts excelled as soloists.

The not-so-surprising conclusion: The baroque era remains foreign terrain, while the 20th century is home.