Symphony’s passport to Paris

The Spokane Symphony’s “French Connection” Casual Classics concerts celebrate Paris with two performances at the Bing Crosby Theater on Saturday and Sunday.

Never mind that none of the four featured composers – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Maurice Ravel; Joaquin Rodrigo; or Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de St.-Georges – was a born Parisian. Their works on the program all have connections with Paris.

Morihiko Nakahara, the symphony’s associate conductor, will lead the orchestra in Mozart’s Symphony No. 31, St.-Georges’ Symphony No. 2 and Ravel’s “Tombeau de Couperin.”

Guitarist Steven Novacek will join in for Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.”

Nakahara will provide spoken program notes with musical examples from the orchestra.

“I wanted to pay tribute to Paris, which was not only such a cultural center in the time of Mozart and before, but became one again in the 20th century,” Nakahara says.

“It wasn’t just the French composers who were active there but foreigners like Mozart and Haydn, and then later people like Stravinsky and DeFalla.”

Nakahara decided to begin the concert with a 20th-century work that looks backward, and end with an 18th-century piece that looks forward.

“Ravel’s ‘Tombeau de Couperin’ is not so much just a homage to (French composer Francois) Couperin, but also reflects his experience on the battlefield in World War I,” he says.

“And this early symphony by Mozart looks forward by using the largest orchestra he had written for up to this point.”

St.-Georges was born in Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, but was raised in Paris, where he became known as Le Mozart Noir (the Black Mozart) for his musical achievements. He was the first black composer to receive attention in Europe.

Though he was nearly forgotten by the time he died in 1799, his music has recently been revived and a movie, “Le Mozart Noir,” made about his life.

Nakahara found the music of St. Georges through a friend who was teaching one of the composer’s violin concertos.

“He was a really interesting guy, famous not only as a composer and a violinist but as an expert fencing master as well,” the conductor says. “This symphony is like the very early symphonies of Mozart, or maybe a little like Haydn without Haydn’s complexity.”

As for Rodrigo, Nakahara says, “Even though he was born in Spain, he studied composition in Paris. While he was there he wrote this concerto named for the summer palace of Spanish kings, which Rodrigo had never seen since he was blind from childhood.”

Guitarist Novacek, who will perform the Rodrigo concerto, is no stranger to Spokane. Though this weekend’s appearances will mark his debut with the symphony, he has performed twice in past seasons with the Spokane String Quartet.

He teaches classical guitar and lute at the University of Washington and heads the classical guitar program at the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle.

Novacek grew up on surf music and rock ‘n’ roll in southern California and performed as a studio musician from the time he was a teenager. He went on to a bachelor of music degree from the University of California at Northridge and to classical guitar studies with the Australian virtuoso John Williams and with Vince Macaduso.