Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot returns for a program featuring three orchestral works from three different centuries that continue our season-long exploration of the natural world. British composer Frank Bridge brings a dissonant, fluttering zest to his 1920s-era Enter Spring, an ecstatic reawakening of the English countryside with all its color and birdsong. Pianist and contemporary music advocate Conor Hanick performs Samuel Adams’ No Such Spring piano concerto, a work that dramatizes spring’s violent conflicts as much as its flowering beauty. And Robert Schumann’s jubilant, Romantic Symphony No. 1, “Spring,” was written in the middle of winter, evoking anticipation for the turning of the season and reveling in the fleeting blooms that finally burst forth.
The Seattle Symphony Chorale joins Xian and the orchestra for Mozart’s majestic Requiem, moving from fiery to fragile, from towering drama to heartache and tenderness. Though the work was left incomplete when he died, the compositional sketches Mozart made were faithfully completed posthumously. The resulting work is a showpiece for chorus and soloists that has been featured in film soundtracks ranging from Amadeus to The Big Lebowski. Opening the concert, our very own Principal Timpani Eric Schweikert takes center stage for the world premiere and Seattle Symphony co-commission of a Timpani Concerto by acclaimed percussionist Joseph Pereira.
Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony is an epic “Symphony in Four Scenes” based on a Gothic poem by Lord Byron. Tchaikovsky broodingly dramatizes Manfred’s guilty torment over an unnamed sin. In an attempt to forget his past, Manfred seeks solace in nature, wandering the Swiss Alps, witnessing the majesty of the mountain landscapes and meeting its inhabitants, mortal and imagined. Will these visions help him to find peace? A paean to individualism and a rarely performed masterpiece full of drama and emotional turbulence, the Manfred is one of Tchaikovsky’s most awe-inspiring works. In contrast are two shorter pieces featuring brilliant saxophonist Steven Banks, who first made his Seattle Symphony debut in 2025 with Xian conducting. Banks reunites with Xian and the orchestra to perform Ibert’s sprightly 1935 Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and Banks’ own composition, Come As You Are, a moving ode to family, spirituality and Black sacred music.
Orchestral virtuosity abounds in this expressive program conducted by Music Director Xian Zhang. To begin, The Moldau finds Bedřich Smetana capturing the beauty of his native Czech countryside and culture in a sonic voyage along the Moldau River. Then, GRAMMY-winning, rock-informed composer Steven Mackey’s new Concerto for Orchestra showcases the power of the Seattle Symphony from one corner of the stage to the other. Finally, in Scheherazade, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov utilizes the concertmaster’s violin as an evocative and stirring narrator while the orchestra whirls through tales of romance, betrayal, adventure and tragedy, all inspired by folklore from One Thousand and One Nights.
In the second weekend of our Nature in Music Festival, our musical tour takes us into the countryside. Composers have often found inspiration in nature and one of the great outdoor musical portraits is Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, which depicts an idyllic day in the countryside. Beethoven gives us one of his most buoyant melodies in the first movement, then takes us along a babbling brook, recreates bird songs, depicts a rollicking peasant dance and the fright of a thunderstorm before ending the work with the calm of a Shepherd’s Song of Thanksgiving. GRAMMY-winning soloist Gil Shaham opens the program with Antonín Dvořák’s seldom-played Violin Concerto, a model of the composer’s Slavic period and a work of subtle sensuality.
Two British stars — conductor Alexander Shelley and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor — return to the Seattle Symphony for a program of moody, triumphal magnificence. Grosvenor plays Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, a darkly Romantic piece that marked a resounding and much-needed success for the composer after the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony. Shelley then conducts Sibelius’ dramatic Second Symphony, long associated with Finland's struggle for independence from Russia but also for its composer, a “confession of the soul.” The evening opens with contemporary Canadian Indigenous (Métis) composer Ian Cusson’s musical depiction of Haruki Murakami’s mystical, alternate history sci-fi novel, 1Q84.
If you prefer to experience Richard Wagner's epic music in appetizing bites at the concert hall rather than as a full course meal at the opera house, the Seattle Symphony offers The Ring Without Words, an arrangement of the operatic tetralogy for orchestra alone. Distilling 18 hours of music into a digestible 60 minutes, this chronological adventure includes such highlights as the Ride of the Valkyries, Wotan’s Farewell, Siegfried's Funeral March, Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene and Forest Murmurs. Viewed as a symphonic journey stripped of any literary program, the music expresses the nuance and power of Wagner as an orchestrator. Soloist George Li balances the program with the one-movement Piano Concerto No. 2 by Franz Liszt, a close friend and advocate of Wagner. Together, these two composers helped shape the "music of the future."
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