One of the most popular composers of all time takes center stage as the orchestra performs Beethoven’s bold and playful Symphony No. 1. Since being named the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year at 17, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has rocketed to the upper echelons of classical music. Like his heroes Jacqueline du Pré and Bob Marley, Kanneh-Mason has a special gift for crossing musical barriers and social divisions with his magnetic artistry. See this artistry at work as he takes on Tchaikovsky’s beloved Rococo Variations.
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Thursday, 18 October, 2018 7:30PM
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Saturday, 20 October, 2018 8:00PM
The bravest artists are willing to stretch and scrabble toward truth and greatness. Brahms, in his First Symphony, crafts an ode to personal freedom, lifting his heavy burden of history and self-doubt. Bartók peers unflinchingly at the seedy underbelly of life in The Miraculous Mandarin, his outrageously colorful story of seduction and treachery. Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova brings total commitment to the music she plays. “The more I know about life,” she declared, “the more I feel, the more I can express.” She directs that awareness toward the clean, austere beauty of Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto.
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Thursday, 1 November, 2018 7:30PM
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Friday, 2 November, 2018 12:00PM
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Saturday, 3 November, 2018 8:00PM
The power of fate collides with the search for happiness in Tchaikovsky’s deeply felt Fourth Symphony. Violinist Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley bring a new work to Seattle, composed for them by Pascal Dusapin. The fanciful title of this double concerto, At Swim-Two-Birds, comes from a subversive Irish novel, but the composer’s sonic tradition is distinctly French, filled with the same joie de vivre that enlivens Debussy’s Petite suite.
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Thursday, 8 November, 2018 7:30PM
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Saturday, 10 November, 2018 8:00PM
Berlioz, the most inventive orchestral composer of his age, poured all the thrill and romance of the Eternal City into his Roman Carnival Overture. Boisterous dance music and swooning love songs bring this raucous festival to life. Where Berlioz piece is boisterous, Prokofiev’s Fifth Piano Concerto is coy like a cat, wriggling out of every preconception and cliché as it charts an original path through the minefield of history. Finally, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a wholly different creature, one with forward drive and a unyielding fidelity. This marvel of symphonic craft submits its bold message with utter frankness, and yet there are always new subtleties waiting to be discovered.
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Thursday, 15 November, 2018 7:30PM
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Saturday, 17 November, 2018 8:00PM
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Sunday, 18 November, 2018 2:00PM
For all the virtuosic summits and grand melodic gestures, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is shockingly intimate, as if we are peering into the private diary of this vulnerable composer. The young Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili holds nothing back as she returns to Seattle to share her courageous interpretations to the deeply emotional music of Rachmaninov. In Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov breathes sensuous new life into the storied pages of One Thousand and One Nights, proving just how vast the world of sound can be in the hands of such an inventive orchestrator.
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Thursday, 29 November, 2018 7:30PM
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Saturday, 1 December, 2018 8:00PM
