Big finish for symphony season

The Spokane Symphony wraps up its 69th season this weekend, and the orchestra is going out with some musical fireworks. Titled “Blockbusters,” this Classics program features a trio of pieces that conductor Eckart Preu said could carry entire programs by themselves.

“I wanted to (end) with something that sticks in the mind because summer is a long time without music from the symphony,” Preu said. “I wanted to give three different virtuoso experiences, pieces that I think make a really lasting impact.”

The evening’s program is bookended by pieces – Ottorino Resphigi’s pastoral “Fountains of Rome” and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 – that were chosen by the members of the orchestra.

“It’s basically a showcase for the orchestra,” Preu said. “Every instrument gets to show off and has its own spotlight.”

But perhaps the biggest blockbuster of the bunch is P.I. Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1, which will feature touring Canadian pianist Ian Parker as soloist.

“It’s so arresting from the get-go,” Parker said. “The piece begins with this triumphant (melody), the piano comes in with these huge, crashing harmonies that really showcase the bravura and the grandeur of the piano with the orchestra. … It’s one of those pieces that starts off with joy and happiness and triumph, and it goes through so many exciting elements and comes back to this contagious melody.”

Parker’s parents were both piano teachers, and he started learning the instrument when he was 4 years old. As a student, Parker admits he was reticent to master the Tchaikovsky piece because he felt it was overplayed.

“When you grow up in a piano school house, you hear the same pieces all the time,” he said. “I shied away from it, because I heard so many of my dad’s students playing it. When he said, ‘You should really be playing the Tchaikovsky concerto.’ And when I said, ‘Why do I have to play it? Everybody plays it,’ he said, ‘Because it’ll pay your rent.’”

Parker ended up performing it as a 17-year-old at the inaugural concert of the Michael J. Fox Theatre in Burnaby, British Columbia, and he later added it to his personal repertoire while attending the music school at Juilliard.

“It’s one of those pieces that you live with your whole life,” Parker said. “You work on it really intensely for a few months, then you put it away. When you take it out again, you have a very different outlook on it. … It’s a piece that I’ve revisited so many times, and one that I realize more and more why it’s so great.”

The key to keeping the piece fresh, Parker said, is creating “a higher level of excitement” – staying true to Tchaikovsky’s composition while creating unexpected twists in the music.

“With a piece like this, there are climaxes that people look forward to, and maybe there’s a way that I can build it up in a more surprising manner so that it’s less predictable,” he said. “If I can somehow hold the horses down and then let them go full throttle a bit later, it might give off a bigger climax to this piece people are so familiar with. Up the excitement, up the drama … go against the norm, do something a little different, but still keep it tasteful.”

It’s a fitting way to wrap up this season, which is one of the symphony’s busiest and most versatile in recent memory.

“It was just a ride,” Preu said. “I think the orchestra is playing better than ever, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved together, and we had some absolutely stellar performances.”