MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

February 19, 2026 • 11:40 am 0

Seattle Symphony Announces 2026–27 Season

Xian Zhang with Seattle Symphony musicians; photo by Carlin Ma

Seattle Symphony has just announced its 2026–27 season, the second under music director Xian Zhang.

She describes the year as shaped by “two sources of inspiration… nature and community,” invoking Seattle as “a city embraced by mountains, water and forests.” The rhetoric frames a three-week spring festival devoted to “monumental works” inspired by landscape.

Beyond that framing, the season’s center of gravity lies in the late-Romantic and early 20th-century canon: Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Wagner, Shostakovich and Mahler dominate the symphonic offerings, with Yuja Wang opening the season in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto and appearances by Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, and Itzhak Perlman reinforcing a roster built on established appeal.

Zhang herself will lead twelve programs in all – including Tchaikovsky’s less frequently heard Manfred Symphony – and has cited Seattle artist Dale Chihuly as an influence on the season’s visual identity, another signal of her effort to root the orchestra’s presentation in local culture.

As for contemporary composers, the season includes co-commissions from Joe Pereira (a new concerto for timpani) and Steven Mackey – the latter now a recurring presence in the Symphony’s programming – alongside Samuel Adams, whose No Such Spring receives its Seattle premiere under Ludovic Morlot this fall, with soloist Conor Hanick. I’m especially interested to hear it in Benaroya Hall. Having studied the score around its world premiere by the San Francisco Symphony a few years ago, I know it’s a piece of real substance.

Adams’s presence extends into the Octave 9 series, where Conor Hanick joins percussionist Mari Yoshinaga and a quartet of Symphony musicians for Etudes and Devotions, featuring Adams’s Etudes for Piano and the U.S. premiere of his Devotions for String Quartet and Percussion.

The Elwha River project – a collaboration between flutist Claire Chase and composer Annea Lockwood inspired by the restoration of the Olympic Peninsula river – will be featured in April and stands out immediately to me as one of the season’s most compelling offerings. Adam Tendler’s Inheritances, built from commissions by Laurie Anderson, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Pamela Z, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Devonté Hynes, also looks promising, and a centenary homage to György Kurtág is most welcome. (Why I’ve listed these in reverse chronological order is anyone’s guess.)

The series ranges further, from Pamela Z’s solo work for voice and electronics to a closing appearance by the Brandee Younger Trio (harp, bass, and drums).

The “community” emphasis also extends beyond the stage. The Symphony is set to reopen Benaroya Hall’s renovated public spaces at the start of the season, marking the completion of its Amplify capital campaign. The upgrades – new gathering areas, expanded concessions, and reconfigured lobby spaces — underscore an effort to position the hall as more than a performance venue at the outset of Zhang’s second year.

Music Director Xian Zhang and the Symphonic Series

  • Xian and James Ehnes (September 24, 26 & 27), featuring Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.
  • Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Zarathustra (November 12, 14 & 15), pairing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra.
  • Mozart’s Requiem with Xian (November 19, 21 & 22), presenting a Seattle Symphony co-commission and World Premiere of Joe Pereira’s Timpani Concerto, followed by Mozart’s Requiem with the Seattle Symphony Chorale.
  • Xian and Emanuel Ax (January 28 & 30), featuring Haydn symphonies and Mozart favorites, including his Piano Concerto No. 25.
  • Tchaikovsky’s Manfred with Xian (February 4, 6 & 7), with saxophonist Steven Banks performing a work by Ibert and his own composition, Come As You Are.
  • Xian Conducts the Sounds of Spain (February 11 & 13), spotlighting Lalo, Ginastera and Rimsky-Korsakov while featuring Concertmaster Noah Geller.
  • Xian Conducts Scheherazade (March 11 & 13), featuring Smetana’s The Moldau, Steven Mackey’s Concerto for Orchestra (a Seattle Symphony Co-commission and World Premiere) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
  • Grieg’s Peer Gynt with Xian (April 8 & 10), with music by Vaughan Williams, Webern, Scriabin and Grieg, and featuring Associate Concertmaster Helen Kim.
  • Beethoven’s Pastoral and Gil Shaham (April 15, 17 & 18), pairing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto.
  • Pines & Fountains of Rome with Xian (April 22, 24 & 25), featuring Gabriela Montero’s Piano Concerto No. 1, “Latin” and Respighi’s Roman tone poems.
  • Xian Conducts Brahms (June 17, 18 & 20), encompassing Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 and his Violin Concerto.
  • Wagner’s The Ring Without Words (June 24 & 26), closing the season with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Wagner’s purely symphonic Ring cycle.

Filed under: music news, Seattle Symphony, Xian Zhang, , , , ,

September 5, 2025 • 1:22 am 1

Salonen with the Parisians in Lucerne

Big news this week: just after Esa-Pekka Salonen wrapped up his Lucerne Festival visit with the Orchestre de Paris, it was announced that he has been named the ensemble’s Chief Conductor starting in 2027. Parallel to that, he’ll become the take up the new Creativity and Innovation Chair of the Philharmonie de Paris. Salonen’s collaboration with the orchestra in Lucerne offered a vivid taste of that future partnership in two very different programs last weekend.

In the first, Augustin Hadelich was the soloist in an account of the Brahms concerto notable for its shadowed lyricism and spacious pacing, illuminating the score’s darker hues. Hadelich played his own cadenza and his arrangement of a Carlos Gardel tango as a steam-vent of an encore following such intensity. If Salonen brought structural clarity to the Brahms, the suite from Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that followed surged with dramatic sweep. The episodes seemed to unfold as part of an inexorable tragic arc rather than a set of contrasting miniatures.

His second evening with the Paris musicians revealed a touch more humor alongside the testosterone of ‘Don Juan’. But all that Straussian horn-iness set the stage for the much-anticipated world premiere of Salonen’s own Horn Concerto written for Berliner Philharmoniker principal Stefan Dohr. It’s a big piece, heroic in its way and abounding in the composer’s deep knowledge of the literature across music history, especially Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruckner (Salonen also trained as a horn player). He colorfully remarked that these moments from the musical past ‘appear and disappear like fish coming to the surface to catch an insect before diving to the depths of the sea again’.

The concerto teems with exposed solo passages that seem to test the limits of breath and control — not to mention imagination, indispensable to giving expressive shape to Salonen’s fertile ideas. Around the horn, the orchestra cast a kaleidoscope of refined colors. The concerto will travel widely in the coming months, so I hope to get a chance for more encounters.

Horn sounds resounded still again, sublimely, in the Sibelius Fifth. Salonen’s control of the art of transition, with subtly judged but dramatically thrilling accelerando, was a marvel. For all the monumentality of the closing chords, I fancied amid their awe an echo of mortality, like the trees being felled at the end of ‘The Cherry Orchard’. But the solace of Sibelius’s glorious Swan Theme circled in the mind’s ear as the swans on Lake Lucerne outside the KKL glided serenely by in serene silence.

Filed under: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lucerne Festival, music news, Sibelius, , , , ,

February 1, 2025 • 12:30 pm Comments Off on Ludovic Morlot’s Month in Seattle

Ludovic Morlot’s Month in Seattle

Ludovic Morlot’s return to Seattle Symphony during the first month of this already profoundly troubled year has been a balm, offering some reassuring proofs of music’s ability to uplift in times  of uncertainty and upheaval. Earlier in January, he led members of Seattle Symphony  at Seattle Opera in an immersive account of the second part of Les Troyens, the grandest and yet most personal of Berlioz’s masterpieces at Seattle Opera. 

Even without full staging, this performance of the “Carthage” part of the epic opera was spellbinding from start to finish. Incredibly, Seattle Symphony’s conductor emeritus insisted on continuing with the engagement despite losing his home and entire musical archive to the recent wildfires in the LA region.

The connection they made with Berlioz’s multi-dimensional score turned out to be the perfect preparation for this weekend’s all-French program back in the concert hall. Fauré’s Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande instantly brought back treasured memories of Morlot’s early years with the orchestra. (They recorded it on their all-Fauré album on Seattle Symphony’s in-house record label in 2014.) 

Morlot also reminded us of his commitment to contemporary composers. It’s always a risk-taking venture, but one that during his tenure resulted in some wonderful new music by John Luther Adams, for example. He led pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and principal harp Valerie Muzzolini in the world premiere of Hanoï Songs, a duo concerto commissioned from French composer Benjamin Attahir that strives for a Ravelesque combination of fantasy and meticulous clarity.

The best part of the program was the all-Ravel second half. Introduction and Allegro, written as a showpiece for the double-action pedal harp, benefited from Morlot’s gently fluctuating sonic choreography, subtly balancing ensemble and soloist. Muzzolini, now fully in the spotlight, played with luminous charm. 

Morlot then led the orchestra in the complete Mother Goose — not just the suite but the expanded ballet score that Ravel fleshed out with connecting material to create a more coherent sense of narrative. It was sheer bliss to experience how deftly Morlot conjured each atmosphere, leaning into exquisite sound colors that were both transparent and intricate while articulating the score’s rhythmic subtleties with grace. The musicians played with rapt attention and obvious enjoyment.

Much more than an endearing string of fairy-tales, Morlot’s Mother Goose conveyed an opera’s worth of emotions, along with a sense of tonal refinement that has deepened and matured. The concluding “Enchanted Garden” at times even radiated an almost “Parsifal”-like serenity that, for some precious minutes, kept the chaos outside at bay.

Filed under: Berlioz, Ludovic Morlot, Maurice Ravel, review, Seattle Symphony, , , , ,

October 9, 2024 • 11:07 pm Comments Off on Philharmonia Northwest Opens Its Season with “Origin Story”

Philharmonia Northwest Opens Its Season with “Origin Story”

Seattle Symphony violinist Elisa Barston (l) and soprano Ellaina Lewis (r), featured soloists in Philharmonia Northwest’s inaugural concert of the season

Seattle-based Philharmonia Northwest opens its season — and introduces its new music director, Michael Wheatley — on Sunday 13 October with a program titled Origin Story. The concert takes place at 2pm at the Shorecrest Performing Arts Center.

Wheatley has chosen four works central to his musical identity, beginning with Wojciech Kilar’s celebration of the folk traditions of Poland’s Tatra Mountains in Orawa. Seattle Symphony violinist Elisa Barston will be the soloist in Dvořák’s Romance in F minor and Ravel’s dazzling Tzigane. 

The second half of the program will present soprano Ellaina Lewis in her Philharmonia Northwest debut as the soloist in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, the last of the so-called Wunderhorn symphonies. Lewis, who is known locally for her appearances in Seattle Opera’s Blue and Porgy and Bess.

Following the concert, Michael Wheatley will appear in a Q&A talk-back with the audience.

Tickets here.

Filed under: Mahler, music news, , , ,

Archive

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.