The 2009/2010 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance

Raymond Chen

Every year, I put together a little pocket guide to the Seattle Symphony subscription season for my symphony friends to help them decide which ticket package they want. As before, you might find it helpful, you might not, but either way, you’re going to have to suffer through it. Here’s the at-a-glance season guide for Gerard Schwarz’s 25th and penultimate season as the orchestra’s music director.

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Notes:

This chart doesn’t include “one-off” concert series such as the Visiting Orchestras or Distinguished Artists series.

The comments column very crudely categorizes the works to assist my less-classically-aware friends. This is, of course, a highly subjective rating system, but I tried to view each piece from the ears of somebody new. Thus, I rated downward pieces that I personally like but which others might not and rated up pieces that I may not find musically satisfying but which nevertheless tend to be crowd-pleasers. These predictions have, of course, proven wrong in the past. For example, my assessments of Bruckner have always been optimistic. (And I haven’t learned my lesson, because this year, I’m rating the Bruckner Fourth Symphony as Good, because this time I really think they will like it.)

Here’s what the comments mean. Note that they do not indicate whether the piece is significant in a musicological sense; they’re just my guess as to whether my friends are going to like it.

• Awesome: Guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
• Excellent: You will definitely like this piece.
• Good: You will probably like this piece.
• Okay: You may like this piece.
• Nervous: I have a bad feeling about this one.
• Polarizing: Some people will love it; others will hate it.
• Wildcard: I have no idea what will happen.

In many cases, I am not familiar with the piece and am basing my evaluation on what I know about the composer (or am just guessing).

Seattle Symphony notes: Principal Second Violin Elisa Barston had worked under the shadow of heartthrob Joshua Roman, but with Roman’s departure last year, she has inherited the mantle of taking the lead in appealing to the “youth audience.” She’s been given increasingly visible solo performances and even authored an entry on the symphony’s blog. I for one am pleased by her more prominent profile. She always seems to be genuinely enjoying herself when I see her performing.

Update: Minor corrections as noted in comments.

* Update: Changes were made to the subscription schedule for the UBS Masterworks 13 series after the brochures were printed. (Thanks to Greg for pointing it out.) They have been updated in the chart above. Note that five concerts were deleted but six were added, so the Masterworks 13 concert series actually has 14 concerts.

§ Update: Many changes were made to the subscription schedule in July 2009. They have been updated in the chart above. The concert for the week of October 30, 2009 has been cancelled; ticket-holders will be given tickets for the concert on the week of May 6, 2010.

Raymond Chen

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