Spokane Symphony concludes 80th season with ‘Masterworks 9: To America’
During the final Masterworks concert of the season, the Spokane Symphony will host a special guest and perform a newly commissioned piece.
Music director and conductor James Lowe recalls witnessing the virtuosity of Evren Ozel for the first time. The renowned, award-winning pianist performed with the Spokane String Quartet in late 2023 while Lowe watched in awe.
“I was really impressed with him; not just his technique but his musicality,” Lowe said. “I was really blown away … I thought immediately, ‘We should get him.’ ”
To conclude the Masterworks series and the Spokane Symphony’s 80th season, Lowe wanted to close out with a bang: “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The piece written for orchestra and piano explores the legend of composer and violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was so talented that stories of a deal with the devil began to form.
The piece uses themes from Paganini’s “24 Caprices for Solo Violin” as well as the “Dies Irae” chant and expands upon them for a wide range of variations and emotions – from almost whimsical to evil and twisted.
The piano is diverse, demanding and a true showcase of musical ability when done correctly. When the piece was on Lowe’s mind, he immediately knew Ozel was the man for the job.
“It has, I think, one of the single greatest melodies ever written,” Lowe said. “There’s one amazing moment where Rachmaninoff pulls a genius move where he slows the melody down and turns it upside down, and it’s an even better melody, an even better tune, than it is the right way up.”
The theme of the Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon concerts, “To America,” comes from the composers of each piece in the repertoire. For example, Rachmaninoff was born in Russia but fled to the United States during the Russian Revolution, where he primarily found fame as a pianist rather than as a composer.
Meanwhile, Béla Bartók was born in Hungary but fled to the U.S. during World War II after staying as long as he could before Nazi forces became too grave of a danger. Bartók experienced little success before legendary conductor Serge Koussevitzky commissioned “Concerto for Orchestra” for the Boston Symphony, which will be the final piece performed by the Spokane Symphony.
“It’s a real showcase for every single member of the orchestra,” Lowe said. “It’s a fiendishly difficult piece, and that’s kind of why I wanted to end the season with it, to really illustrate to people here how quite remarkable of an orchestra we have.”
The first piece of each performance, “Between Homelands,” was written by longtime friend of the Spokane Symphony, Sydney Guillaume, who was born in Haiti and resides in Portland. Lowe has long been a fan of Guillaume’s deeply expressive work that blends Haitian and American culture and themes.
“When I was putting this program together, I thought, ‘I would love to commission a work from a living composer to reflect on the same concept,’” Lowe said. “It’s a fantastically expressive, colorful piece, and I think it’s going to fit so beautifully into this program.”