Spokane Symphony offers Beethoven double-bill

Sep 29, 2009

For Immediate Release

Contact: Annie Matlow 464-7071

SPOKANE—The Spokane Symphony and Music Director Eckart Preu will present a Beethoven bash of Beethovenian proportions: two overtures and two symphonies on two days – all held together by the composer’s only violin concerto, played by Concertmaster Mateusz Wolski. It will be held at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009, at 3 p.m. Sunday’s performance is also part of the Symphony YES! series for young listeners.

 

Concertgoers can access new Interactive Program Notes, now available for each of the concerts in the Classics series, on the Spokane Symphony website. These notes include audio clips from the music and a pop-up glossary of musical terms to enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the concerts. Notes for Classics 2 can be accessed at http://www.spokanesymphony.org/notes/classics2.htm

 

Saturday’s concert will begin with Leonore Overture No. 3 and conclude with Symphony No.1. Leonore Overture No. 3 is one of four overtures Beethoven composed for his only opera Fidelio. The piece is an instrumental summary of the opera and considerably more dramatic. However, unlike most operatic overtures, this work does not prepare the audience to enter into a story, but tells the story with passion and perfection, making it most at home in the concert hall rather than the stage. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, shows the composer’s indebtedness to his contemporaries, including Haydn, with whom he studied, and Mozart. At the same time, it reveals hints of the greatness of music to come in the composer’s use of melody and in the new form of scherzo. While it is easy to belittle this as simplistic in light of his later work, it should be remembered that many contemporaries hailed the piece as a “masterpiece” full of originality that could “justly be placed next to Mozart's and Haydn's."

 

Sunday’s concert will feature Coriolan Overture and Symphony No. 5.  The Coriolan Overture was based on a tragic play about Coriolan’s resolve to invade Rome and his mother’s pleading to desist. By the time Coriolan thinks better of his attack, it is too late, and he kills himself outside the gates of Rome.  Symphony No. 5 is one of the great works in the orchestra repertoire. The renown opening notes, revolutionary at the time, begins the precise unfolding of this brilliant work, somber and passionate, which culminates in the powerful finale.

 

Both performances will center on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Although Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto, it became one of the most popular. The work also altered the genre, making the concerto more like a symphony and setting the tone for the works of Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Beethoven demands virtuosity from his soloist, something that had become unpopular in Vienna at the time, resulting in changing expectations for both musicians and audiences.

 

The violin solo will be performed by Mateusz Wolski, now in his third year as the Spokane Symphony’s concertmaster. He has had a distinguished career in the United States and abroad. He came to the U.S. from Poland to attend Manhattan School of Music in 1996. It was there, with full scholarship, that he completed his bachelors and masters degrees under the tutelage of Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. An enthusiastic chamber musician, Wolski has appeared in New York City at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, 92nd Street

Y, and the Kosciuszko Foundation. Abroad, his performances have included Wigmore Hall in London and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, as well as numerous engagements throughout Poland, Italy, England and Germany. His performances have been broadcast on WQXR in New York, as well as on Polish National Television. He plays first violin with the Spokane String Quartet.

 

Tickets for either performance are $22, $32, $40, and $44. Tickets are available in advance at the Spokane Symphony Ticket Office, located at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, 1001 W. Sprague, or by calling 509-624-1200. Tickets may also be purchased online at www.spokanesymphony.org Tickets are also available at all TicketsWest outlets or by calling 1-800-325-SEAT. The Sunday performance of this concert is also part of Symphony YES series, with greatly reduced tickets for young people age 8-14 and the adults that accompany them. Symphony YES tickets are only available through the Spokane Symphony Ticket Office.

 

The underwriters for this concert are Don Herek and Family on behalf of Gonzaga University.

 

CALENDAR LISTING:

Beethoven! Classics Concert; Eckart Preu conducts the Spokane Symphony; Mateusz Wolski, violin; Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. in the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox. Tickets are $22 to $44; call the Spokane Symphony Ticket Office at (509) 624-1200 or in person at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, 1001 W. Sprague; tickets are also available at www.spokanesymphony.org and through all TicketsWest outlets or by calling 1-800-325-SEAT.