Symphony gets a bit personal

Classical music, with titles like “sonata” or “symphony,” often gives the appearance of being remote and impersonal, even when those titles are adorned with nicknames or subtitles such as “Moonlight” or “Pathetique.”

“But many times composers were motivated by something that was very personal,” says Eckart Preu, the Spokane Symphony’s music director. “So we have made a concert of works that had something particularly personal behind them, and we’re calling this program ‘This Time It’s Personal.’ ”

The especially personal works Preu has assembled for this weekend’s Casual Classics concert include Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosen,” Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G, Frank Martin’s Ballade for Flute, Piano and Strings, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8. Bruce Bodden will be the soloist in the Mozart and Martin works.

Bodden has been Principal Flute of the Spokane Symphony since 1990. He earned his bachelor’s degree in flute from the Eastman School of Music and studied at Boston University. In addition to playing in the Spokane Symphony, Bodden is on the music faculty at Eastern Washington University, and he coaches the symphony’s Junior Chamber Artists and Young Chamber Players.

This weekend’s program opens with “Metamorphosen” (“Changes”) which Strauss wrote as World War II was ending along with the world of German art and culture Strauss loved. The composer himself wrote that the work “is a reflection of my whole past life” even as the concert halls and opera houses with which Strauss was associated were being obliterated by Allied bombing.

“This was a negative inspiration,” Preu says, “but Strauss takes these terrible events and turns them into something that becomes very beautiful and exuberant and positive. It was a way of lifting himself up out of the Nazi mud. It is not a downer at all, it starts and ends in a thoughtful way, but it is a very hopeful piece.”

Preu has chosen to follow the Strauss with Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G, a work written to order by an amateur flutist who asked the composer to write “three easy little concertos and a pair of quartets for flute.” Mozart was, at the time, much too busy being in love with a young soprano to finish the commission. Besides, the Flute Concerto in G major which he did finish is neither “little” nor “easy.”

“This Mozart concerto is such a great delight and perfect to follow the Strauss,” Preu says. “He does some very neat things, such as replacing the oboes of the orchestra with two flutes in the slow movement.”

Martin’s Ballade for Flute, Piano and String was also a commissioned work. The Swiss composer wrote the Ballade for the 1939 Geneva International Music Competition. All through the 1930s, Martin had been searching for a personal musical language that would allow him to explore the major influences on his musical life – the polyphony of Bach, the tonal colors of Debussy, the rhythmic vitality of jazz, and the musical discipline of Schoenberg.

“Martin has so many colors in this piece,” Preu says, “and the treatment of the flute solo is amazing – taking the flute very low, where it is almost never used in orchestral solo, and then way up into the stratosphere – and the orchestra is very active, too.”

Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. which ends the program, came between two monumental masterpieces, the Seventh and the Ninth. “Like Strauss in the ‘Metamorphosen,’ ” Preu says, “Beethoven puts aside all the negative real circumstances he was living with – his health and his and his family problems and writes something that is very exuberant and wild.

“It shows a different side of Beethoven than the grim guy with the wild hair. We just don’t get all the jokes in the Eighth Symphony.” Preu says, “There are obvious things like imitating the ticking of the metronome in the second movement, but also many, many more subtle things such as the woodwinds or the violas seeming to come in a bar too early. We’ll never find all those jokes! The more I look at this score the more jokes I see.”

As is traditional at the Casual Classics concerts, which will be on Saturdays and Sundays this season instead of Sundays and Tuesdays, Preu will give a short talk about each of the works on the program.