Mechetti takes musical tour of Fox

Fabio’s back!

No, not the hunky model for the covers of ‘80s romance novels. This Fabio is shorter, lighter and has dark, straight hair.

He has never appeared on the cover of a potboiler, but he is an outstanding orchestral and operatic conductor.

Fabio Mechetti returns this weekend to lead the Spokane Symphony in an all-orchestral program that features Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”) and Paul Richards’ “Trip Hammer.”

Mechetti was the orchestra’s music director from 1993 to 2004. He first came to Spokane as associate conductor to Gunther Schuller in the 1984-85 season, after which he served as associate conductor to Mstislav Rostropovich at the National Symphony for four years.

It was during Mechetti’s tenure that the Spokane Symphony purchased the Fox Theater.

“I have not even been inside yet,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “But I have tried to put together a program that will show what the hall can do.”

The centerpiece of the Saturday and Sunday concerts is a work last heard here under his baton in 1998: Dmitri Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 5.

“When I went to Washington, D.C., and first talked with Rostropovich,” Mechetti says, “I told him that I didn’t much like the music of Shostakovich.

“This was a shock to him: He had been friends with Shostakovich, loved his music and conducted it and played Shostakovich’s cello music everywhere.

“He didn’t kill me,” Mechetti continues, “but he did help me to learn to love Shostakovich … much of it, anyway.

“And the Symphony No. 5 is really one of the great works of the 20th century. I got to know it well because the National Symphony must have played it 10 times a season when I was there, both at its regular concerts and on tour.”

To explore the way the renovated Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox responds to the classical style, Mechetti picked Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony.

“It’s one of the great Mozart symphonies I never conducted in Spokane,” he says.

“It’s very special because it is such a happy piece, written during the happiest period in Mozart’s life. He was on a belated honeymoon with his new wife and they were being treated royally in Linz.”

To open the weekend’s concerts, Mechetti chose Paul Richards’ “Trip Hammer,” a work the conductor premiered with the Jacksonville (Fla.) Symphony in 2002.

“We established a competition there called the ‘Fresh Ink’ series where we perform new music,” he says. “Paul was in his early 30s and taught at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

“That year the competition was judged by the composer Russell Peck and me, and we found it a very exciting piece, full of energy by a young composer who knew how to use the orchestra well.

“Spokane has always been receptive to new music, and I think this will be a great way to open this concert.”

The Brazilian-born Mechetti grew up in Sao Paulo, where his father was an opera conductor. He came to the United States and earned master’s degrees in both conducting and composition at Juilliard.

In addition to his work with the Spokane Symphony, Mechetti was music director of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Symphony for 10 years. He has held the music director position with the Jacksonville Symphony since 1999, an appointment that overlapped his Spokane tenure.

Along with his work in the U.S., Mechetti has conducted orchestras in Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Japan and South America.

He was recently asked to form a new orchestra in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s third largest city. It will play its debut concert in Febrary.

Mechetti is married to the concert pianist Aida Ribiero. They have twin daughters, Carolina and Marina, who will turn 5 in February.

“We came to Spokane early so we could show them their first snow and take them skiing,” he says.

Mechetti will give a pre-concert talk an hour before the Saturday and Sunday performances, discussing the music on the progam.