SEATTLE — The Seattle Symphony’s Sept. 14 opening-night gala was truly a celebratory affair. Coming just nine days after the long-awaited appointment of the symphony’s new music director, Xian Zhang (current music director of the New Jersey Symphony and conductor emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano), the solidly upbeat evening in Benaroya Hall showcased both the orchestra and its conductor emeritus, Ludovic Morlot, in the best possible light. Morlot was the Seattle Symphony’s director for eight seasons beginning in 2011.
Because the evening was followed by a gala in which food, alcohol, blasting music, and fundraising vied for prominence, the concert was intentionally short and without intermission. None of which stopped an enthusiastic audience from demanding two encores of the soloist, pianist Khatia Buniatishvili.
Morlot crafted the program to demonstrate his enthusiams in multiple areas. From the French repertoire, which he has championed throughout his time in Seattle, came the orchestral version of Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. The concert’s Spanish/Latin theme, reflecting Morlot’s current position as music director of the Barcelona Symphony, also featured a work by Eduard Toldrà, the composer-conductor who founded that orchestra in 1944. Latin tang was also present in the concert’s opening number, Villa-Lobos’ “Toccata: Catira batida” from his Bachianas brasileiras No. 8, as well as Copland’s El Salón México, and the one 21st-century work on the program, Puerto Rico-born Angélica Negrón’s gorgeous Fractal Isles. Morlot dropped the Spanish/Latin theme only in the program’s final and longest work, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
Throughout the evening, one question persisted: Did the surprising lack of color contrasts in the first few works have less to do with Morlot’s conducting than with the position of my seat seven rows back, slightly ahead of where the sound has sufficient space to cohere and bloom? In compositions that require an alchemical mix of personality, energy, and color to propel them over the top, the presentations fell flat. The problems began early on, when Jeffrey Barker’s lovely-toned flute danced far too limply through Villa-Lobos’ orchestration. Too much of the next work on the program, El Salón México, sounded flat-footed — a major detriment in a piece named for a dance hall in Mexico City. This is not to discount how skillfully Morlot built Copland’s music toward its climax, or the stellar contributions of individual soloists, including a gorgeous short solo by principal cellist Efe Baltacigil and thrilling bass-drum attacks by Blaine Inafuku. But each work’s ultimate impact was less than the sum of its parts.
The intent of Negrón’s Fractal Isles, commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra and premiered in 2022 under Teddy Abrams, is to depict an outsiders’ idealized view of Puerto Rico as an exotic, idyllic nation. It’s a romanticized viewpoint, devoid of anything critical. Instead, it abounded in imaginative uses of color and pulsating waves of sound that, together, brought to mind the best the New Age idiom has to offer. The radiant opening invoked images of buzzing cicadas and fireflies dancing through warm tropical evenings as woodwinds pulsated with the sound of a gentle breeze. As the 10-minute piece developed, violins chirped and percussion rang, as if we’d entered a tropical rain forest teaming with life. Negrón’s vibrant music was the revelation of the evening.
Toldrà’s less-than-memorable Empúries paled in contrast to the Ravel masterpiece that followed. With conductor and orchestra firmly on track, Alborada del gracioso exploded with the color and atmosphere that had first emerged in the performance of Fractal Isles.
Morlot and Buniatishvili’s Rhapsody in Blue left a paradoxical impression. Strong on technique — Buniatishvili was breathtaking in Gershwin’s rapid, virtuosic passages and lovely in the slower, softer statements — her playing nonetheless lacked a sufficient dose of the essential New York swing that Bernstein and others brought out in the work. This is not to discount principal clarinet Benjamin Lulich’s ultra-bluesy introduction; his milk-it-for-all-it’s-worth opening glissando seemed to extend farther than the Hudson River. His solo contributed an element of idiomatic lightness, jazziness, and humor that conductor and soloist didn’t always maintain.
Buniatishvili’s swooning solos at times felt more Fred and Ginger Rogers swaying under the palm trees in a back lot in Tinsel Town than authentic Big Apple, which is not to deny the mesmerizing power and seductiveness of her pianism. After two enthusiastically received encores, Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Javanaise” and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, her gracious bows paved the way to party time.
