The 2022/2023 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance

Raymond Chen

For many years, I’ve 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. We stopped going to the symphony as a group years ago, but I still create this pocket guide out of tradition.

Here’s the at-a-glance season guide for the 2022/2023 season, still with no comments from me because it’s not worth trying to rate every piece to help my friends pick one concert. If you’re my friend and want recommendations, just call. Besides, you can probably preview nearly all of the pieces nowadays (minus the premieres) by searching on YouTube.

• Official brochure
• Press release
• Subscribe

The Seattle Symphony is no stranger to personnel controversies, and Thomas Dausgaard’s surprise resignation at the start of the year is yet another drama to add to the list. The position of music director remains vacant; a series of guest conductors will take the podium for this season’s concerts, with the symphony’s Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot wielding the baton for Opening Night and two additional concerts.

¹ World Premiere
² U.S. Premiere

Insider tip: Click a column header to focus on a specific series. (This feature has been around for several years, actually.)

Legend:

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 of concerts in the package, and the letter indicates the 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.

Notes and changes:

• The number of concerts included in the Watch and Listen series has been cut from 21 to just 10. The Watch and Listen series is complimentary for donors at the Friends level or higher. Technically, you can also buy the series without a membership, but it costs the same, so you may as well get the membership.
• The Octave 9 series of concerts, exploring the combination of music and technology, has added a second performance for each concert.
• The Symphony Untuxed series of reduced-program concerts has been removed from the schedule. The Friday afternoon Masterworks series returns to the schedule, but it contains only 4 concerts instead of 5. The Family Concerts series also returns.
• The 7[AB], 7[CD], and 7[EF] concert series do not overlap, so you can create your own pseudo-series by taking any two of them, or recreate the 21-concert series by taking all three.
• The 13-concert series is the same as the 7[CD] and 7[EF] series combined, minus the June 15 concert.
• The Family Connections program provides free symphony tickets for up to two children with the purchase of an adult ticket. The page still mentions the now-nonexistent Untuxed series, so I’m not sure whether the program is still active.
• A two-concert RachFest performs all four Rachmaninov piano concertos.
• This is the first year of a two-year Prokofiev piano concerto cycle.
• Hilary Hahn’s performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto will contain a new cadenza which she commissioned.
• Over the years, the format of the Seattle Symphony official brochure has gradually gotten closer and closer to the format of this pocket guide. This makes my job both easier and arguably superfluous.

Raymond Chen

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