With Seattle Symphony on the cusp of a new chapter – music director designate Xian Zhang takes the reins in September – this season-closing program offered a vivid snapshot of the ensemble’s artistic breadth. Despite the tumultuousness and uncertainty in recent years, the orchestra is playing with confidence and engagement. Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot’s return to the podium reaffirmed not only familiar strengths in French repertoire but also Seattle Symphony’s versatility, from the brass-centered virtuosity of a Gunther Schuller rarity to the winning lyrical immediacy of a new flute concerto co-commissioned from Allison Loggins-Hull.
Dating from 1949–50, Schuller’s Symphony for Brass and Percussion opened the concert with commanding brass textures but also revealed surprising nuance and invention across its ensemble of horns, trumpets, trombones and a pair of tubas. Ambitiously cast in four movements, the piece at times seems too focused on technical display and bravura effects, though an expressive intensity emerged in the muted chorale of trumpets in the Lento desolato third movement.
Loggins-Hull’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni marked an auspicious Seattle debut for the American flutist-composer, who just wrapped up a prestigious residency with The Cleveland Orchestra. Co-commissioned by Seattle Symphony, this compact concerto reconsiders melodic material from Joni Mitchell’s song My Old Man from the 1971 album Blue through a highly personal lens, uncovering new layers of intimacy and evocative color. Loggins-Hull also pays homage to the famous piano-based rhapsodies of Gershwin and Rachmaninov, infusing the format with cleverly updated populism and buoyant lyricism.
Written for Alex Sopp, flutist with The Knights, Rhapsody proved beautifully suited to the artistry of Demarre McGill, Seattle’s Principal Flute. McGill held the hall in thrall with his silvery phrasing and shimmering tone – agile and beguiling as birdsong fluttered on the breeze. Loggins-Hull peppers Rhapsody with numerous clever references to the flute's orchestral repertoire, artfully weaving the solo line through the shifting timbres of a chamber orchestra. As an encore, McGill offered Fauré’s Fantasie, played with rapturous elegance and charisma.
The second half belonged to Ravel, whose music has long been a Morlot specialty. His reading of Rapsodie espagnole was steeped in subtlety and suspense, from the satin-toned Prélude à la nuit to the sparkling Feria, whose festive impulse showed off the orchestra’s brilliantly detailed articulation and coloristic flair. The conductor, always attentive to nuance, has further refined his grasp of this music, making interpretive points with striking economy and maximal impact. His tenure with the Barcelona Symphony seems to have enriched his insight into Ravel’s stylized evocations of Spanish culture.
More of a curiosity, Sites auriculaires appeared in a new orchestration by Kenneth Hesketh, commissioned by Morlot for Ravel’s 150th anniversary. Written for two pianos early in Ravel’s career, this two-movement suite contains the source for the Habanera that Ravel himself orchestrated as the third panel of Rapsodie espagnole. Hesketh’s orchestral makeover is crafted with skill, but in the context of Ravel’s own alchemical orchestration, it couldn’t help feeling a tad anticlimactic – particularly in the rendering of Entre cloches, whose bell-like sonorities never quite achieved the resonance or spatial allure Ravel explored in the original.
Morlot closed with Boléro, a piece whose over-familiarity tempts overstatement – but not here. Conducting with the same clarity and focus that marked the entire program, he found fresh contours in its deliberate build-up of textures and cumulative logic. His antiphonal placement of two snare drummers – who between them sustained the unrelenting ostinato like a live-wire – gave the rhythm a spatial presence that was teasingly nearly inaudible at first. Each instrumental entry emerged with distinctive personality, all the while playing a part in the conductor’s savvy pacing of a drawn-out, hypnotic crescendo. Without overstatement, Morlot let Ravel’s music speak on its own inexorable terms.
