SEATTLE — The Seattle Symphony welcomed its new music director, Xian Zhang, on Sept. 13 to begin her first “full season,” when she will conduct 10 of its programs. Zhang, who first appeared with the orchestra in 2008, responded to the call with a best-hits program that seemed designed to please an opening-night audience of casually dressed music lovers and black-tie suited donors who, once the others exited the hall, lingered for a sit-down dinner in the lobby.
As if to respond to concerns that her resume is long on orchestral staples and short on new and contemporary works, Zhang opened with Jessie Montgomery’s 2021 “chorale for orchestra,” Hymn for Everyone. Montgomery’s 12-minute work is the first of over 30 works by living composers that the Seattle Symphony’s various ensembles will perform this year. Beginning the evening with a recent work by an African American composer — one whose music often reflects the influence of movements for social and racial equity and justice — seemed an affirmation of what has become an orchestral tradition to precede each concert with an acknowledgment that its home, Benaroya Hall, is built on land stolen from native peoples.
Hymn for Everyone begins on a solemn note, with a tolling bell introducing a sensuous flowing line. The orchestra sounded beautiful, but the music soon morphed into a quasi-processional that was a bit too plodding for a composition designed to affirm and unite. Several thematic transitions occurred during the chorale, but in this account, they didn’t quite gel together into a persuasive whole.
The major work of the evening, Grieg’s justly popular Piano Concerto in A minor, sounded glorious in the hands of pianist Simon Trpčeski and Zhang. The two artists were at one with each other and the romantic idiom, frequently changing tempos with an assured freedom that was second nature in earlier eras of music-making.
Zhang’s pace may have initially felt a mite brisk, but it appeared intended to allow sufficient space for contrast. Supported by conducting that stressed lyricism and grace, Trpčeski scampered delightfully up the keyboard and delivered notes of sparkling brilliance. Switching gears, Zhang did not hesitate to whip things up when appropriate. Trpčeksi’s solo passages were so dramatic and thrilling, and the melding of piano and orchestra so mesmerizing, that the audience burst into applause at movement’s end.
The concerto’s central adagio brought tenderness and grace to the fore. The playing was gorgeous, as conductor and pianist again proved masters of romantic give and take. Principal cellist Efe Baltacigil’s brief solo line stood out for its perfectly judged beauty. At one point, Grieg’s music almost sounded impressionistic, as Trpčeski’s gossamer-light touch invoked images of waterlilies floating freely in a tranquil pond.
Without pause, Zhang transitioned into the final movement, where she and Trpčeski forged the same path to glory. No technical challenge seemed too great for the pianist, who, with the conductor, built to a thrilling conclusion. After the audience demanded multiple curtain calls, Trpčeski responded with an astoundingly forceful yet never noisy rendition of the third movement “Precipitato” from Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7 in B-flat.
After a pause, Zhang continued on a strong note with the most beautifully played, poetic, and fresh account of the overture to Verdi’s La forza del destino I have ever heard. Every line, every entrance was treated as a special event, with contrasts between lighter and heavier passages emphasized in ways that were true to Verdi’s dramatic intent.
If only the final two works on the program had benefited from the same attention. Zhang may have intended her choice of “Šárka,” the third of the six tone poems that comprise Smetana’s Má vlast, as a statement about female empowerment, but her delivery was wayward. Although she expertly conveyed turmoil and strife, she failed to connect the different segments of Smetana’s programmatic tale in a convincing manner. Ultimately, the performance was much ado about far less than what the Bohemian legend of matriarchy and revenge, The Maidens’ War, intends to convey.
Had Zhang ensured that the stirring theme at the heart of Wagner’s Prelude to Act 1 of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg remained dominant throughout the performance, the concert would have ended on a triumphant note. Instead, the string section too often blended with other instruments, subsuming the theme in myriad orchestral detail. The issue began at the start of the overture and continued until near the end, when brass and strings finally performed free of constraint, and the theme emerged in all its beauty.
