Spokane Symphony’s Masterworks Primavera gives fresh look to spring and Mendelssohn siblings
As rain showers and warmer weather bring in the spring season, the Spokane Symphony will be doing the same with Masterworks 7: Primavera.
“All the music, I would say, is kind of fresh and uplifting because I feel, at this stage in the Spokane winter, we’re all a bit sick of gray weather and looking forward to something a bit brighter,” said James Lowe, music director and conductor of the symphony.
Book-ending the three-piece repertoire designed to sound light and warm are pieces by one of the most respected sibling duos in classical music – Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. But, this wasn’t always the case.
Growing up in Berlin, the two received immense musical training, and both showed great talent at very young ages. The Mendelssohn siblings were composing by their early teens. The only issue? It was the early 1800s.
“Their father Abraham actually wrote a letter to Fanny saying, ‘Yes, with Felix music is probably going to be a career but for you it will only ever be an ornament,’” Lowe said. “This was something, at the time, just kind of excepted as normal. Women, that’s not the role that they had, they couldn’t have their own careers.”
As Felix spent his life becoming one of the most celebrated composers of his time, Fanny continued to compose (primarily for the piano) but was subjugated to keeping her work private or performing at her own intimate musical salons. Toward the end of her life, Fanny had only just begun publishing her own works before suddenly passing of a stroke at 41.
Well after her death, many of Fanny’s pieces were finally discovered, along with the fact that many pieces from Felix’s youth were most likely actually written by his sister and published in his name.
This weekend, the Spokane Symphony will begin their program by performing the only full orchestral piece Fanny is believed to have ever composed, “Overture in C Major,” as they celebrate an outstanding musician who never lived to see her work performed on such a scale.
“She became, unfortunately, a footnote in musical history as the sister of a famous brother,” Lowe said. “Now her music has really been re-discovered and published … so we can actually now begin to understand and learn more about her output.”
While the second piece in the lineup, Edouard Lalo’s “Symphonie espagnole,” brings a sense of lyrical Spanish flair and the final, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 4 in A Major/Italian,” provides the vibrance of Italy, it is done more in theory than reality.
“Lalo was French, and it’s a very kind of French person’s attitude toward Spain and Mendelssohn was German and obviously the Italian symphony is a very German idea of what Italy is,” Lowe said. “These are kind of Spain and Italy as concepts a bit more than necessarily like the actual geographical place.”
“Symphonie espagnole” will feature the symphony’s concertmaster, Mateusz Wolski, during the piece’s highly demanding, fervent violin solo. Although much technical skill is required to pull off the piece, a fitting sense of personality is also necessary in Lowe’s eyes.
“There’s a lot in his personality that is very outgoing and vibrant, so I think the Lalo is an excellent fit,” Lowe said.