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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Serge power

Travis Rivers Correspondent

Orchestra conductors often plan programs that honor a composer.

Rarely do they plan programs that honor another conductor – even a dead conductor.

But Eckart Preu has assembled a program celebrating Serge Koussevitzky for this weekend’s Spokane Symphony concerts at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox.

The concerts feature soloist Anna Akiko Meyers performing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The orchestra also will play Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from his opera “Peter Grimes,” and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5.

All three works have a strong association with Koussevitzsky, who led the Boston Symphony from 1924 to 1949.

“For this program, I just was exploring music that really interested me,” Preu says, “and, time after time, the name of Koussevitzky come up as someone who had commissioned or given the first performances of these pieces. So why not see him as the connecting thread between these pieces?”

Koussevitzky conducted the premiere of Prokoviev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and published the piece. He made the first American recording of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and performed the Finnish composer’s works frequently in Boston.

And in 1942, Koussevitzky commissioned the 29-year-old Benjamin Britten to write an opera The result was “Peter Grimes.”

“Koussevitzky’s career reminds us music directors what an important part of our responsibility is – namely, promoting new music by playing it or even commissioning it,” says Preu. “And then, if you have good music worth playing, keeping it alive.”

Many conductors give premieres, and Koussevitzky led more first performances than most of his colleagues. But more important, he gave repeated performances of the music he believed in, season after season.

“The second and the third and the fifth time we hear something, that’s the way we build our knowledge of music – how we educate ourselves,” Preu says. “And that’s Koussevitzky’s legacy for us.”

Violin soloist Meyers is familiar to Spokane audiences from her previous performances with the symphony. She first appeared with the orchestra in 1995, when she was only 25 and near the start of her rapidly blossoming career.

Meyers was born in San Diego, the daughter of a former university present and his wife, a painter. She appeared on the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson when she was 11 and made her New York Philharmonic debut at 12, and her first recording at 18.

She studied with two of the great violin teachers, Josef Gingold at Indiana University and Dorothy Delay at Juilliard. At 23, Meyers was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

In addition to the standard violin repertoire, Meyers has championed the works of such contemporary composers as John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner, Somei Satoh and Ezequiel Vinao – making Meyers a part of the Koussevitzky legacy, too.

Preu will give a pre-concert talk about the music on Saturday and Sunday’s programs an hour before curtain time as part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Lecture series.