Spokane Symphony playing weekend concerts in Comstock, Pavillion parks

Every year it’s the same: The Spokane Symphony’s Labor Day weekend concerts open with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and close with P.I. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” The free concerts – one is at Pavillion Park in Liberty Lake, the other Comstock Park on the South Hill – have become a much-anticipated tradition in their 30 years, for both the musicians and the listeners.

“It’s an opportunity to reach people you usually don’t see,” said musical director Eckart Preu. “If you have 6,000 people (at the concert), you know that you’ll have probably 4,000 that usually don’t come to our regular concerts. This is something where the entire family shows up and is going to have a great evening listening to the symphony.”

The program, which is the same both nights, consists mostly of well-known material the symphony has played in previous seasons. You’ll hear a snippet from Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho” score, the overture from the musical “West Side Story,” John Barry’s famous James Bond theme (a foreshadowing of the symphony’s upcoming 007-themed concert) and “The Imperial March” from the “Star Wars” series.

For Spokane Symphony aficionados, there is something of a musical debut here: Violinists Yvette Kraft and Mateusz Wolski will be performing Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins, a piece Preu said the orchestra hasn’t attempted before.

“These concerts are for a very wide range of audiences,” Preu said. “It’s designed to be a mixed bag, so that everybody has something that they recognize.”

But it’s the crowds that turn out every year that make these concerts different from the rest. The symphony occasionally performs outdoor concerts – their annual Soirees on the Edge are generally a big hit – but the Labor Day concerts typically draw the largest audiences.

“If you play a football game in front of 1,000 people, then you go into a stadium of 40,000 people, it’s a huge difference,” Preu said. “The atmosphere is very different when you’re onstage and you look out on this sea of people. It makes a huge impression, and you kind of never really get used to it.”

The new symphony season officially begins Sept. 19, but Preu said he doesn’t consider the Labor Day concerts to be dress rehearsals: These events mark the unofficial beginning of the Spokane Symphony’s 70th season.

“It’s a warm-up, but you can’t really warm up in front of thousands of people,” Preu said. “We’re together for the first time, but we really hit the ground running. … Even though it’s familiar music, it doesn’t mean it’s easy music.”