Symphony announces 2008-09 lineup

The Spokane Symphony’s 2008-09 season promises a lineup of big classics, beginning Sept. 13 with Richard Strauss’ “Alpensinfonie” and ending in May with Beethoven’s Ninth.

The schedule announced today in a mailing to symphony subscribers boasts a string of young soloists along with established artists such as baritone Thomas Hampson, flutist James Galway, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and pianist Norman Krieger.

Native son Hampson will be featured in the premiere of a newly commissioned work celebrating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

And the SuperPops series ranges from the mellow music of Henry Mancini to the nimble moves of the Cirque de la Symphonie, with acrobatic performers joining the orchestra onstage.

“It will be really be a season of adventures,” says music director Eckart Preu.

“I have always wanted to do the ‘Alpensinfonie,’ ” he says, “but it’s tremendous piece and calls for I don’t know how many horns, 20 maybe. But we will try to do it with a few less than that.

“And we are going to open our season with it, and doing such a big piece gives a sign for what the season will be like.”

For a visual spectacle, Preu says that the performance of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” next March will feature a video show, timed with the score, that includes NASA pictures of the planets.

“It will give this work even more credibility than it had with only the music alone,” Preu says. “Together they show what the planets and what space represents.”

Since 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, the symphony decided to join in a national observance of the bicentennial with a specially commissioned piece.

“For the Lincoln work we commissioned from Michael Daugherty,” Preu says, “we wanted something that emphasized the human side of Lincoln, not the larger-than-life figure that you hear in Copland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’ – you can’t compete with that.

“So we decided that setting some of Lincoln’s personal letters, maybe some to or from his wife and other people, would give a picture of Lincoln the man, rather than Lincoln the politician,” the conductor says.

“Since it is planned as a piece for baritone and orchestra, who would better than Tom Hampson. And Tom is already very much involved with Michael as the piece is being developed.”

Alongside the standard classics, Preu and Associate Conductor Morihiko Nakahara have scheduled some rarities.

“I am very excited that we will be playing Igor Markevitch’s ‘L’Envol d’Icare,’ ” Preu says of the program for April 4-5, 2009.

“Here was a very great musician who almost stopped composing when he was still in his thirties, and we don’t really know why. He went on to become known as a great conductor.

“We will play Markevitch with Franz Schercker’s Prelude to ‘Die Gezeichneten.’ Neither of these composers is heard often enough.”

One of the other famous classics Preu has programmed is Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (Nov. 22-23), often referred to as “The Great.”

“I wanted to pair that with Beethoven,” Preu says, “so we have Norman Krieger playing the Third Piano Concerto. Then I came across ‘Rendering,’ a work by Luciano Berio in which he uses some fragments Schubert left planning a 10th symphony.

“It is like looking at a mosaic of little pieces of Schubert put together with pieces of Berio. It’s not at all like the completion of unfinished works where some composer attempts to be Schubert.”

In addition to Krieger and Hampson, next season includes the return of cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who last played here in 1999 when she was only 19.

The season’s opening soloist is the young Finnish violinist Elina Elina Vähälä.

The lineup also features Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Montero is noted for playing her own improvisations as well as the classics, so an encore might introduce one of those.

Mateusz Wolski, the symphony’s concertmaster, will join another Polish native, guest conductor Michal Nesterowicz, for a program of music by Polish and Russian composers, including Mieczyslaw Karlowicz’s seldom performed Violin Concerto in A minor.

The SuperPops series opens Sept. 27 with Peter Cetera, former lead singer and bassist for the rock group Chicago.

Other SuperPops concerts will feature the experimental sounds of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and familiar show tunes from the Three Broadway Divas.

The symphony also will present two special, nonsubscription concerts: one featuring Grammy-winner Glennie, who appeared with the orchestra in 2002, and another with the internationally known Galway and his fellow flutist wife, Lady Jeanne Galway.

The holiday season will see Alberta Ballet’s new production of “The Nutcracker,” as well as the traditional pair of Holiday Pops concerts.

The three Casual Classics concerts each will focus on a single composer: Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Orchestra members will again perform three programs of chamber music in the Chamber Soiree Series at the Davenport Hotel.

And the season will include two Family Concerts geared to children and parents, as well as two free-wheeling Symphony on the Edge programs at the Big Easy Concert House.

Preu will conduct most of the season’s Classics concerts, with Nakahara conducting one of the Classics programs and most of the SuperPops series.