The Seattle Symphony’s New Music Director Takes a Bow

I was not surprised to find a packed Benaroya Hall for the March 29 performance by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. With the first appearance this season of the orchestra’s newly appointed music director Xian Zhang conducting the popular Holst’s The Planets, there was certainly going to be a sold-out house. Adding in HD projections of NASA solar system videos to this immensely colorful score increased the visual appeal.

The audience would not be disappointed in this multi-media feast, for it was mostly a delight for the eye and the ear. But it was not the true highlight of the evening. The deeper, more satisfying musical experience was found in the more modest offering of that rarest of things, a saxophone concerto by Billy Childs.

My maternal grandfather was a fine amateur saxophonist whose prized possession was an antique silver C-soprano saxophone that he played with enthusiasm throughout his life. I can only imagine what joy he would have found in the opening and closing moments of Child’s Diaspora, a symphonic poem in concerto form that began and ended with elegant and dazzling and riffs by soloist Steven Banks on his soprano sax.

My grandfather also always believed the sound of the saxophone was akin to the human voice, that it was capable of great narrative expressiveness. That echo of human warmth was very much part of Childs’ piece. It was inspired by three works of black poets – Africa’s Lament by Nayyirah Waheed, If We Must Die by Claude McKay, and And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou – each an inspiring tone poem-like foundation for the work’s three movements.

But one did not need to know the literary sources intimately. Banks’ agile and expert use of jazz rhythm, varied timbre, and wide dynamic range expressed vividly and poignantly the voice of bliss, pain, disappointment, and hope found in the poems in purely musical terms. His pianissimo passages in the opening “Motherland” had a silvery, ethereal quality. The many virtuosic sequences were as spiritually evocative as they were technically exhilarating. Banks’ switching to an alto sax added a dark lamenting character to the central “middle passage” section.

It was the innovative transition to the final movement that was truly inspired. Here Banks weaved his way towards the center of the orchestra where, standing next to the piano, he captured an added warmth from the hall’s acoustics, thus enhancing the mellow solemnity of a hymn-like melody. In an exciting final touch, Banks returned to the soprano sax in the final bars to give the coda a high and bright burst of joy. Both Child and Banks were brought out in the curtain call together to thunderous applause. Here the usual Seattle standing ovation was, for once, immensely well deserved.

Throughout Child’s concerto, conductor Zhang proved a superb accompanist. The balance between soloist and ensemble was uniformly keen. Inner voices in the dense orchestration, especially the piano and xylophone, were always clean, clear, and smoothly integrated. Above all, Zhang’s impressive coordination with Banks’ many intricate entrances were thrilling in its precision.

The real test of Zhang as conductor came in the second half of the program with Gustav Holst’s The Planets. To complicate matters, she had to compete with an elaborate video program of high-def NASA interplanetary images looming on a giant screen over the heads of the orchestra. Like the rest of the audience, I was much entertained by these cleverly choreographed and impeccably timed images first designed — appropriately — for the Houston Symphony. It was to Zhang’s credit that these vivid photos and speculative animations did not reduce the presentation of Holst’s massive, colorful score to mere cinematic underlay.

Zhang’s sharply defined beats, expressive gesturing, and explosive cueing paid dividends in taut ensemble playing, potent headlong drive, and impressive melding of complex orchestral colors. In fact, I was so captivated by her individual interpretive touches that I happily found myself able to ignore the “Star Wars” distractions above and concentrate on the music below.

I did have some quibbles. “Mars” started out with an appropriately grim yet vigorous pace, only to have its war machine bog down in mid-march by an unwritten shift to a slower tempo. “Venus” had lovely, crystalline chordal clarity, but lost some of its impressionistic warmth. The massed string section in “Jupiter’s” grand central hymn displayed a noble Elgarian richness, even if the brass at this point began showing flashes of fatigue. There was a marvelous scherzo bounce to “Uranus,” but hanging the video screen directly in front of the towering pipes muted the impact of Holst’s brilliant organ glissando at its climax.

Yet, these are indeed minor criticisms in a performance that was full of delights and surprises. Holst’s notoriously dense and difficult-to-balance orchestration here sounded lucid and detailed. Joseph Crnko’s concluding off-stage chorus effected the receding, “closing door” fade out to perfection.  And Zhang’s individual touches brought satisfying nuance and elegance to this thrice-familiar score and, to paraphrase Holst’s own words, caused this presentation of The Planets to shine.

By the example of these performances, the future of the Seattle Symphony under Xian Zhang looks bright.