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 the 2012/2013 season. (Full brochure. Seattle Times coverage.)
function filter(c) { var rows = document.getElementById(“schedule”).getElementsByTagName(“TR”); for (var i = 0; i != rows.length; i++) { var row = rows[i]; var className = row.className; if (className != “”) { if (c == ‘all’ || className.indexOf(c) >= 0) { row.style.display = “”; } else { row.style.display = “none”; } } } }
Week | Program | Comments | 21 | 13 | 7A 7B |
7C 7D |
7E 7F |
7G | 4A | BS | SU | WG | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
09/20 2012 |
Berlioz: Roman Carnival Overture Martinů: Symphony #6 Fantaises symphoniques Debussy: Nocturnes: Nuages and Fêtes Respighi: Pines of Rome |
Good Nervous Excellent Excellent |
|||||||||||||
10/04 2012 |
Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations Sibelius: Symphony #1 |
Awesome Good Excellent |
|||||||||||||
10/18 2012 |
Beethoven: Coriolan Overture Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante K297b Fujikura: Mina† Haydn: Symphony #103 Drum Roll |
Awesome Excellent Wildcard Awesome |
|
||||||||||||
10/26 | Sonic Evolution | Wildcard | |||||||||||||
11/01 2012 |
Tchaikovsky: The Snow Maiden Suite Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto Prokofiev: Symphony #6 |
Good Awesome Nervous |
|||||||||||||
11/08 2012 |
Adams: Harmonielehre Beethoven: Piano Concerto #5 |
Polarizing Awesome |
|||||||||||||
11/15 2012 |
Brahms: Piano Concerto #2 Dutilleux: The Shadow of Time R. Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel |
Awesome Nervous Good |
|||||||||||||
11/29 2012 |
Berg: Violin Concerto Mahler: Symphony #4 |
Polarizing Polarizing |
|
||||||||||||
01/10 2013 |
Stravinsky: Pulcinella Suite Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto #1 Mozart: Symphony #39 |
Excellent Excellent Awesome |
|
||||||||||||
01/31 | Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony | Polarizing | |||||||||||||
02/07 2013 |
Rossini: William Tell Overture Schumann: Piano Concerto Brahms: Symphony #4 |
Awesome Excellent Awesome |
|||||||||||||
02/14 2013 |
(Rossini: William Tell Overture) Faure: Pelléas et Mélisande Suite Mozart: Piano Concerto #21 Ravel: Shéherazade Szymanowski: Symphony #4 |
Awesome Good Awesome Nervous Nervous |
|
|
|
||||||||||
03/14 2013 |
Tippett: The Midsummer Marriage: Ritual Dances Bruch: Violin Concerto #1 Elgar: Enigma Variations |
Nervous Awesome Excellent |
|
||||||||||||
03/21 2013 |
Mozart: Don Giovanni Overture Britten: Cello Symphony Beethoven: Symphony #5 |
Awesome Nervous Awesome |
|
||||||||||||
03/28 2013 |
Liadov: The Enchanted Lake Kancheli: Styx Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherezade |
Okay Nervous Awesome |
|
||||||||||||
04/13 2013 |
Mozart: Piano Concerto #9 Bruckner: Symphony #4 Romantic |
Awesome Excellent |
|||||||||||||
04/18 2013 |
Antheil: A Jazz Symphony Gruber: Percussion Concerto Rough Music Bernstein: On the Waterfront Suite Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite |
Excellent Okay Good Excellent |
|||||||||||||
04/25 2013 |
Sibelius: Karelia Overture Sibelius: Violin Concerto Zavaro: New Work† Beethoven: Symphony #7 |
Good Awesome Wildcard Awesome |
|
||||||||||||
05/30 2013 |
Smetana: Wallenstein’s Camp Beethoven: Violin Concerto Dvořák: Symphony #6 |
Excellent Awesome Awesome |
|||||||||||||
06/13 | Britten: War Requiem | Nervous | |||||||||||||
06/20 2013 |
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto #1 John Luther Adams: Become Ocean† |
Nervous Okay |
|||||||||||||
06/27 2013 |
Saint-Saëns: Organ Symphony Wagner: Tristan: Prelude and Liebestod Wagner: Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg Music |
Awesome Okay Excellent |
|||||||||||||
Week | Program | Comments | 21 | 13 | 7A 7B |
7C 7D |
7E 7F |
7G | 4A | BS | SU | WG |
Legend:
21 | Masterworks 21-concert series (Choice of Thursdays or Saturdays) |
13 | Masterworks 13-concert series (Choice of Thursdays or Saturdays) |
7A | Masterworks 7-concert series A (Thursdays) |
7B | Masterworks 7-concert series B (Saturdays) |
7C | Masterworks 7-concert series C (Thursdays) |
7D | Masterworks 7-concert series D (Saturdays) |
7E | Masterworks 7-concert series E (Thursdays) |
7F | Masterworks 7-concert series F (Saturdays) |
7G | Masterworks 7-concert series G (Sunday afternoons) |
4A | Masterworks 4-concert series A (Friday afternoons) |
BS | Beyond the Score multimedia lecture-concert (Sunday afternoons) |
SU | Symphony Untuxed (Fridays) |
WG | WolfGang (Various evenings) |
† | Premiere |
For those not familiar with the Seattle Symphony ticket package line-ups: Most of the ticket packages are named Masterworks nX where n is the number is the number of concerts in the package, and the letter indicates which variation. Ticket packages have been combined if they are identical save for the day of the week. For example, 7C and 7D are the same concerts; the only difference is that 7C is for Thursday nights, while 7D is for Saturday nights. The Beyond the Score concerts focus on only one of the pieces. The WolfGang series is available only to members of the WolfGang club.
This chart doesn’t include “one-off” concert series such as the Mainly Mozart or Distinguished Artists series. A “one-off” series is a concert series which shares no concerts with any other series.
Changes from last season:
- The Rush Hour series was redesigned and became the Symphony Untuxed series.
- Symphony Specials was dropped.
- The Baroque & Wine Series and Mainly Mozart concerts still exist, but I dropped them from the table since they are now one-off series.
- WolfGang already existed but I added it to the list now that there’s room for it.
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 my symphony friends. 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.
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. (For example, I know that my friends don’t like minimalism, and I suspect they don’t like serialism, so I rated the Adams and Berg down even though I think they’re quite good. They also don’t like vocal pieces. On the other hand, it turns out that I overcame my Bruckner jinx, so I can at least give the Bruckner a positive score this time. Let’s just hope it’s not the Hass edition.)
- 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).
0 comments