By Andrew L. Pincus, Special to the Eagle, Monday August 23, 2010

LENOX - In music as in life, victories can be won as much through grace as power.

Ludovic Morlot, a former assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, returned to the Tanglewood podium Friday night in a program of small pieces with a small orchestra. It was a small success only in the sense that in music like this, big is the enemy of small.

Morlot arrived as the recently appointed director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, a sizable plum and his first directorship. Whether by design or coincidence, he followed another former assistant conductor who has turned into a success story, Robert Spano, to the podium.

Where the American Spano went splashy five days earlier in a mostly Gershwin program, Morlot, who is French, struck an intimate tone in a mix of pieces mostly coming out of France. He also drew on the excellencies of two other Tanglewood icons, soprano Dawn Upshaw and composer Osvaldo Golijov.

Upshaw, sounding radiant again after her recent bout with cancer, sang seven of the “Songs of the Auvergne” and Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra. To the country coquetry and humor of the folk song arrangements (by Joseph Canteloube) from the French region, she brought a touching undercurrent of heartbreak. To the dark- hued songs by the Argentine-born Golijov, whose music she has championed, she brought a haunting sense of tragedy.

Golijov’s songs grow in intensity on rehearing. Throbbing accompaniments in the orchestra underlie luminous vocal lines. The long postlude to the first song, a lullaby, seems to overbalance the song itself, but the middle song, ” Moon Colorless,” has a sorrowing, valedictory quality reminiscent of Mahler.

In Mozart’s ” Paris” Symphony, No. 31, Morlot cultivated small- scaled brilliance, though the evening’s autumnal chill crept into the orchestra’s intonation. Ravel’s complete “Mother Goose” suite, on the other hand, was all gossamer and enchantment, right up to Sleeping Beauty’s awakening at the end.

The weekend’s two other concerts also employed chambersized orchestras.

On Saturday night, Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki, making her Tanglewood (but not BSO) debut, provided a reminder of how difficult it is for a new conductor to take a fresh approach to music on Tanglewood’s tight rehearsal schedule.

Malkki, who is nothing if not athletic on the podium, had some interesting ideas about Mendelssohn and Beethoven. For one thing, her tempos were often unusually fast or unusually slow. Everything was firmly in place but with little leeway for nuance, the playing was more by the numbers than illuminating.

Mendelssohn’s ” Midsummer Night’s Dream” Overture was oversized and driven. In Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, the evening’s finale, the extremes of tempo didn’t always mesh but the overall conception - Beethoven in an unpredictable, rollicking mood - came through.

Star violinist Joshua Bell brought his longtime recital partner, pianist Jeremy Denk, with him for a rare performance of a Mendelssohn double concerto in D minor.

If Mendelssohn at 17 created a masterpiece with his Shakespearean overture, Mendelssohn at 14 was still learning his trade in this over-long concerto. It is essentially a duo sonata with the orchestra popping in now and then for a visit.

There are some pretty tunes but not much else happens. Not much happened, that is, except spellbinding displays by the wellmatched soloists. Bell finished off with a sweetly singing solo line in Beethoven’s Romance No. 2, and Malkki had the accompaniments well in hand.

Bell, who helped to attract a large audience, is rightly a Tanglewood regular. By Denk’s feats both here and elsewhere, he proved that he merits a solo trip back in his own right.

On Sunday, another conductor made his debut and another celebrity violinist brought his partner - in this case his violin-ist wife - along for a debut.

The program had to be the strangest of the season: a hodgepodge of Pops nuggets and mismatched classical pieces. At the center was the svelte fiddling of the couple, Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony.

Though not tested by a major work, Costa Rica- born Giancarlo Guerrero, director of the Nashville Symphony, had the BSO playing well on the rainy afternoon. His principal pieces were Pulitzer Prize- winner Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral,” a rapturous evocation of a glass cathedral in the sky, and a “Carmen” suite in a hot-blooded performance.

Lagniappe was Suppe’s oncepopular ” Poet and Peasant” Overture, which had Guerrero swaying to a waltz beat and principal cellist Jules Eskin delivering a classy solo.

Shaham and Anthony tossed off crowd-pleasing razzle-dazzle in three Sarasate showpieces with an orchestral backdrop - one piece for each and one as a duo - and teamed in Bach’s Double Concerto. The concerto performance was more a showcase for buttery-smooth solo work than an advertisement for Bach style.

The program book noted that one of the Sarasate pieces, “Song of the Nightingale,” was once performed by comedian Jack Benny as soloist with the BSO. Enough said.

Read the review at The Berkshire Eagle

By Matthew Guerrieri, Globe Correspondent  |  August 24, 2010

LENOX -The past weekend at Tanglewood was dedicated to young conductors, familiar soloists, and patches to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s repertoire: Programs were sprinkled with BSO premieres. Some were understandable. Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral” dates only from 2000, and Mendelssohn’s violin-and-piano Concerto is something of a rarity. But Franz von Suppé’s “Poet and Peasant” Overture? That venerable chestnut, it turns out, had never migrated from the Pops library.

Friday night brought back former BSO assistant conductor Ludovic Morlot, soon to take over the Seattle Symphony. The soloist was soprano Dawn Upshaw, in superb voice in “Three Songs” by Osvaldo Golijov: dark, lyrical, long-breathed melodies, suiting her heady clarity and visceral phrasing. (The high, starry benediction of “Lúa descolorida” was especially fine.) In Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne,” Upshaw was perhaps too interpretively generous, over-tinkering her voice to delineate the storytelling; it didn’t always work, but when it did - a yodeling yawn from chest voice into a piping sigh for the spoiled housewife of “Oï, ayaï,” for instance - it was delicious.

Gallic delights framed the concert. Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony, K. 297, is froth, but refined, structured froth, which Morlot particularly broadcasted in the outer movements: full-bodied fizz in the opening, pinpoint carbonation in the finale. Morlot’s conducting was natural and precise, an auto-focus survey of each score. The approach divested Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose” ballet of some dreaminess, but compensated with timbral clarity: Ravel’s colors popped in high definition.

Saturday’s concert featured Susanna Mälkki, conductor of the avant-garde Ensemble Intercontemporain. This program, however, was unabashedly Classical. The first half was Mendelsshohn: the Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (crisp fleetness and roundhouse accents, Shakespeare’s forest a giddy, dangerous place), then the Concerto for Piano and Violin, with violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk. The fun of the piece - which the 14-year-old Mendelssohn wrote for himself and Eduard Rietz - is the precocious composer showing his age: just what a ridiculously talented teenager would fashion for himself and a friend, the deck stacked toward their bountiful solo virtuosity. Bell and Denk were ideal advocates, their considerable technique and intelligent care producing a nonchalant dazzle that would have both impressed and piqued the composer’s elders. (Bell returned for Beethoven’s opus 50 Romance in F minor, weaving a line of consistently fine-spun, silken tone, but intermittently slippery intonation.)

Mälkki’s foundation was a rhythmic energy that constantly percolated underneath the musical surface, producing an unusually fresh rendition of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. Instead of a genial respite between the Third and Fifth Symphonies, this Fourth was their eccentrically thoughtful cousin, Beethoven’s good moods just as unpredictable as his bad ones. The finale was a white-knuckled ride, but one that the orchestra can - and did - pull off. It was a terrific performance.

The Suppé was on Sunday’s program, a Pops-like mélange conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Higdon’s “blue cathedral” was the novelty, a tone poem using exotic instrumental touches (half the orchestra gently jangling Baoding balls was a neat effect) to tweak its skillfully deployed post-modernist, tonal, vaguely cinematic sheen.

Violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, husband and wife, took turns on bonbons by the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, before joining for his lilting “Navarra.” They were a contrast: Anthony bringing an inward refinement to the winsome “Song of the Nightingale,” Shaham tearing through “Zigeunerweisen” with irrepressible flamboyance. If Anthony was determined to bring out the musical core of Sarasate’s fireworks, for Shaham, the fireworks were the core. But it provided textured give-and-take in Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins (BWV 1043), the echoing phrases making real conversation.

Guerrero, the new music director of the Nashville Symphony, was a wildly entertaining presence: a bit of a dancer, a bit of a mime, acting out the music as much as conducting it. It can get him into trouble; the Bach (in which Guerrero seemed to be trying to see just how little actual conducting he could get away with) had passages of awfully loose ensemble. But “Poet and Peasant” had character and energy to burn, as did the Suite from Bizet’s “Carmen.” Guerrero trumped the Sunday rains with his exuberant pursuit of happiness.

Matthew Guerrieri can be reached at matthewguerrieri@gmail.com

Read the review at Boston.com

Pressure brought out the best in them

By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent  |  August 15, 2010

In 1990, during Robert Spano’s first season as assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony, the orchestra was playing a concert at Carnegie Hall. Music director Seiji Ozawa had ordered that picture-taking be allowed only during the last minute of the performance, and Spano was charged with enforcing that decree. Vigilant in his task, he noticed one zealous photographer going for his camera before the appointed time. So the young conductor crawled over and tackled the rogue photojournalist.

“And I thought, how do you write up this job description?” recalled Spano, now music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. “You know, that’s the ‘other duties as assigned.’ ”

Impersonating a linebacker doesn’t often figure into the responsibilities of an assistant conductor. In fact, the job is usually all preparation and no action. The chief responsibility is to study the music being performed each week, attend rehearsals, and be ready to fill in for an indisposed conductor at short notice. It’s like an advanced seminar in which the exams come unannounced and count for way more than your final grade.

With three musicians who have held the post of BSO assistant conductor leading the orchestra at Tanglewood this month, it’s a good time to consider just what this job is - what it takes to be successful, where it can lead, and what it can teach. Shi-Yeon Sung’s concert last weekend was the final regularly scheduled performance in her assistantship, Spano takes the podium this afternoon, and Ludovic Morlot conducts on Friday.

All three agreed that a great deal of the assistant experience is immersive. “It may be obvious but I’ll say it anyway: The chance to live with a great orchestra is just the best education possible,” said Spano, who served from 1990 to 1993. He came to the BSO from a teaching position at Oberlin College, where he had already impressed with his kinetic, impassioned style. “And also to see so many other conductors - who succeeded and who failed and why, and to hear the orchestra sound change with different conductors.”

“It was my first job,” said Sung, whose tenure as the BSO’s first female assistant conductor began in 2007. “And I had a lot of opportunities [to] watch the conductors and the orchestra and the communication between them. . . . Most of all I learned what [the musicians] need, especially in an orchestra like the BSO, what they expect from the conductor.”

And there is the chance to work closely with a mentor. During one BSO tour, Spano accepted a last-minute offer to conduct a program that included Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Ein Heldenleben” in Toronto. Ozawa began dispensing tips about the piece in his dressing room after a concert, and the impromptu lesson continued in a car on the way to dinner.

“And then, when we got to the restaurant, we sat at the bar before dinner so that we could finish up what he had started to show me,” Spano remembered. “So, my first ‘Heldenleben’ was much better thanks to his insights. I mean, that was really a gift - that kind of teaching from vast experience.”

The BSO’s assistants also get to lead one program of their own creation each season. And there are two of them - most American orchestras have one - which allows the assistants to split the BSO’s repertoire as well as maintain some flexibility for other gigs. “That was very important, because as assistants in Boston, even though we were prepared and all that, we didn’t really have much to conduct,” said Morlot, who took on short-notice gigs in New York and Chicago during his assistantship.

Yet at some point, the call comes - the one that is likely to send a young conductor’s stomach toward his or her shoes. The assistant must step in, sometimes with a few days’ notice, sometimes with a few hours, and lead a concert that is expected to reach lofty artistic standards as a matter of course. Morlot did so three times during his tenure, which ran from 2004 to 2007. One Tanglewood concert included Debussy’s popular but difficult “La Mer,” which he’d never conducted before. “I learned the piece with them,” he said.

“I must say, it was very different from the experience where you build up your program with the artistic administrator and prepare it for three years,” he continued. “But it’s very exciting because the orchestra also behaves very differently. They’re very supportive. Not that they weren’t when I had other opportunities, but suddenly, you feel this amazing pride within the group that wants to make this happen.”

When James Levine had surgery to remove a cancerous kidney in 2008, Sung had to take over two difficult works by Elliott Carter during the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, which was devoted entirely to the composer’s works. Even with a few weeks notice, having to lead Carter’s thorny creations could be an assistant’s ultimate nightmare.

Yet Sung, too, found great support from the orchestra, which had played both works in earlier seasons. “I had some sort of ideas and gave a clear beat,” she said, so “those pieces were not very problematic to prepare or conduct.”

Spano’s most memorable experience - besides the tackling bit - came in December 1991. He received an early morning call telling him that Ozawa was unable to conduct that morning’s three-hour rehearsal of Strauss’s mammoth “Alpine Symphony.” Then, in the afternoon, he discovered that Ozawa would also miss that evening’s performances of the Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky’s ballet score “Apollo.” Spano had never conducted either work and had no time to rehearse the orchestra at all.

“I met with [concertmaster] Malcolm Lowe and said, ‘I want to do some things differently. Help me figure out what I can get away with and what I’d better keep the same.’ And he was wonderful. He really helped me calculate the extent to which I could influence the performance with so little time.”

How did Spano deal with the pressure of the situation? “This is the reason for gun control,” he said, laughing, “because I think I would’ve shot myself!” Still, he added, “It was a wonderful ride.”

Those who flourish in the odd mixture of endless preparation and sudden action that is the atmosphere of the assistant conductorship often use it as a career springboard. Spano has gone on to become perhaps the most admired American conductor of his generation; he is about to begin his 10th season in Atlanta. Morlot was recently chosen as the next music director of the Seattle Symphony, a post he assumes next year.

Sung will return home to Germany after the Tanglewood season ends; she has guest conducting spots lined up and will serve as associate conductor with the Seoul Philharmonic for part of the season. Given the obvious talent and tightly controlled energy she showed here, though, a more permanent, high-profile position is very likely in the offing. When it comes, she will bring lessons from Levine about what a conductor should be - not only musical but personal.

“I remember when we had the first audition for the assistant position, he just said, ‘The conductor should be a human being,’ ” she said. “I learned from Jimmy not only conducting but also how he communicated with people, how humble he is. If he’s in the room or if he’s on stage, he’s not a very important personality. The music is the most important thing.”

When Morlot was asked what he would bring to Seattle from his Boston experience, he mentioned a bond he developed with the BSO musicians when he realized he didn’t have to work so hard to get what he wanted from them.

“I learned by withdrawing a little bit, somehow, and trusting that they will come to me, read my inside singing,” he explained. “And the smallest thing I would change in myself, they would read it instantly . . . And I think that’s where I felt I could grow more and more, spending time in front of orchestras at this level. It was a luxury that you could completely work on that - not only the music but also on trusting that people will reach what you were really trying to do.”

David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com.

Read the article at Boston.com

Anthony Tommasini

One of the biggest “Who could have imagined?” flashes I have had in a long time came during the concert by the impressive International Contemporary Ensemble on Monday night at the Rose Theater. Here, as a highlight of this summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival, was a top-notch contemporary-music ensemble, under the brilliant direction of the fast-rising French conductor Ludovic Morlot, in a program featuring three audaciously modern scores by three living composers. The hall was packed; the audience gave cheering ovations to each work.

Back in the 1990s, when the festival was an increasingly irrelevant enterprise presenting routine run-throughs of boring programs, who could have imagined that the Mostly Mozart brand would be affixed to such an exhilarating concert?

Louis Langrée, the conductor who became the music director of Mostly Mozart in 2002, and Jane Moss, the artistic director, deserve every bit of praise they have received in recent summers for revitalizing the festival. But the specific credit for Monday’s program goes to the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the curator for Bach and the Polyphonies, the adventurous six-part series that ended with this thoughtful concert.

Using works by Bach as a focus, Mr. Aimard’s programs explored the technique of polyphonic writing by looking backward to the sources of polyphony (or counterpoint) in medieval and Renaissance music and to contemporary practitioners like the three formidable composers presented here: George Benjamin, Harrison Birtwistle and Helmut Lachenmann.

Though counterpoint is a term used all the time in talking about music, many people do not really understand it. It simply refers to music written in multiple, overlapping, independent voices.

Mr. Aimard loves assembling programs that juxtapose new and old music in ways that invite audiences to hear musical commonalities. He began with the short, somber Fantasia VII by Purcell, performed here in an ingenious arrangement by Mr. Benjamin for clarinet, violin, cello and celesta (played by Mr. Aimard). Mr. Benjamin’s recasting of the music highlights the mix of lacy counterpoint and haunting harmonies.

The performance was an ideal setup for the next work, Mr. Benjamin’s 20-minute “Antara.” He composed it in the mid-1980s while working at Ircam, the electronic-music center in Paris, where a band of Andean folk musicians often played in the square outside. Mr. Benjamin was entranced by the sounds of the panpipes. (“Antara” is the Incan name for that folk instrument.)

He uses two digital keyboards to evoke the panpipes, and the large chamber ensemble includes other dueling pairs of instruments. In this context the work came across as music driven by overlapping, interacting contrapuntal lines. The leap from Purcell to Mr. Benjamin, and back, seemed not that far.

Next came two short pieces from Mr. Birtwistle’s “Bach Measures,” arrangements of eight chorale preludes for organ by Bach, as a mood-setting prelude for Mr. Birtwistle’s complex, arrestingly visceral “Slow Frieze.” In this 1996 work he tries to evoke in music the effect of seeing a series of ancient friezes, bas-relief panels that seem to convey movement as you walk by. Beginning with staggered bursts of chords for a solo piano (played incisively by Jacob Greenberg), the music evolves in chunks of sound that on the surface seem to be static blocks but quiver with activity within.

The third pairing began with Luciano Berio’s arrangement of the final Countrapunctus from Bach’s “Art of the Fugue.” This was Bach’s last work, left incomplete. Most performances just stop cold where Bach’s score breaks off. Berio ends his wondrously colorful arrangement by having the instruments trail off into some realm of the beyond.

This piece served as a prelude for Mr. Lachenmann’s stunning “Mouvement ( — vor der Erstarrung”). The parenthetical phrase translates as “before paralysis” or “before stillness.” This tense, skittish and pointillist piece from the early 1980s is like a series of dialogues in fits and starts for a large ensemble of instruments, grouped by category and separated onstage. The allure of the music comes from the strikingly inventive writing for the instruments, using unconventional techniques like tapping on clarinets and blowing into them without the mouthpieces, and all manner of string glissandos and scratches.

It was recently announced that Mr. Morlot would become the next music director of the Seattle Symphony, starting in 2011, following, as it happens, Gerard Schwarz, formerly a director of the Mostly Mozart Festival during good years and bad. Seattle is getting a first-class musician in this accomplished young conductor.

The Mostly Mozart Festival runs through Saturday; (212) 721-6500; mostlymozart.org

Read the review at NYTimes.com

A fascinating mini-festival materialised within the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center this summer. Bearing a generously vague title, Bach & Polyphonies, it was lovingly – sometimes verbosely – curated by the keyboardist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. He managed to celebrate a changing of the avant-garde at every complex turn.

When the six-programme series ended on Monday at the jazz-oriented Rose Theater, Aimard tried hard to demonstrate epochal relationships. In three cases, he paired a brief modern transcription of a Baroque offering – old music cloaked in wrong-note harmonies – with a progressive adventure. His apologia notwithstanding, the connections seemed tenuous.

Still, the novelties fascinated, even when they threatened to bludgeon the senses. The performances, moreover, were spectacular. With Ludovic Morlot, incipient maestro of the Seattle Symphony, sustaining metronomic precision on the podium, the virtuosic International Contemporary Ensemble made even the roughest places plain.

The festivities began with a clinky reworking of a Purcell fantasia by George Benjamin (born 1960). This led to his own Antara (1987), a raucous yet neatly plotted dialogue between a traditional chamber orchestra and ancient Peruvian panpipes. The pipes, not incidentally, were simulated via digital manipulation.

Harrison Birtwistle (born 1934) was represented with jolly distortions of two Bach chorale-preludes, followed by his own Slow Frieze (1996). A searching exploration of intricately ordered chaos, it shifted textures with minute care and cast a percussive pianist (Jacob Greenberg) as brave protagonist.

After a welcome interval, Luciano Berio’s tart-toned arrangement of the Contrapunctus XIX from Bach’s Kunst der Fuge gave way to Mouvement ( – vor der Erstarrung) (1984) by Helmut Lachenmann (born 1935). The subtitle translates as “before paralysis”, which, according to helpful annotation, relates to “dead movements . . . rhythms displaying an inner paralysis . . . a beetle floundering helplessly on its back”.

Possibly reinforcing the odd insect image, Lachenmann required his performers to play their instruments in unorthodox ways. There was much banging and burping, rubbing and tapping, also unison heavy breathing. The exercise evolved in explosive convolutions and convulsions. It made a mighty noise.

www.lincolncenter.org

Read the review at FT.com

Jet-lagged but unfailingly charming, incoming Seattle Symphony maestro Ludovic Morlot conducted Thursday’s daylong series of media interviews — television, radio, print, Internet — with all the grace of a Mozart symphony.

It’s clear that his “people skills” will be a considerable asset to the French-born Morlot’s first job as music director (which he starts in 2011), a position in which making music will not be the only part of the job as this city’s musical figurehead.

Morlot, 36, who was recently named successor to Gerard Schwarz when the latter’s tenure ends next year, will move here from Lyon, France, with his wife, Ghizlane, and two young daughters, Nora and Iman, before taking up his new baton. For much of his career, he has been a visiting conductor to some of the world’s top orchestras. Now Morlot is ready to settle down here.

Why Seattle, and why now?

“I felt an instant rapport with this orchestra,” he explains of his two previous guest-conducting visits to the Seattle Symphony (in October 2009 and in April). “And I feel I am ready to be a music director. I now have enough repertoire to be confident about communicating my ideas in all kinds of music, from classical to new works. I’ve done life on the road for a few years, and while it is very fulfilling to conduct the Chicago Symphony and other great orchestras, I’m ready to really build something together with this orchestra. I want to build up the kind of sound I would like to hear.”

The Seattle Symphony’s potential, Morlot says, is “outstanding. Conducting is really a way of life, not just a job, and you share everything with these people. For me, the bonus is that this is a great city to live in, and a great environment for the family.”

It’s not going to be such a wrench, moving the family from France: Morlot jokes that of the four family members, his English is possibly the worst. (It’s extremely fluent, by the way.) His second daughter was born in Boston, during his tenure as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony; both girls are enrolled in an international school and are “completely bilingual,” as is his wife, who has worked as a translator.

Not surprisingly, it’s a music-loving family: Last year, while Morlot conducted the dress rehearsal of a Juilliard Orchestra concert at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the girls were still enjoying the music in the balcony after three hours of rehearsing.

Morlot says his “dream season” for the Seattle Symphony is still in the planning stages. It’s overwhelming, he says, to realize that he can program whatever he wants.

There will be French music, of course: “It’s part of my heritage and I am often asked to conduct French works. But not too much! I have many favorites, from the classical composers to new music. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven make the orchestra better, because you are naked on the stage — it’s easier to be more hidden in a Mahler or Shostakovich symphony. But this orchestra is so versatile that there will be a great deal of variety in the programming.”

What needs fixing?

“Well, this is not a critical comment, but I hope I can bring a little more warmth to the sound. And it is possibly missing a little power — this might be a seating issue. There are many things we can explore; ultimately, we are making chamber music together.”

Morlot isn’t worried about the extramusical aspects of his job.

“I want to be focused on the music; everything is in service of that,” he explains. “We have a great [administrative] team working here. I am not worried about the other challenges; for me the greatest challenge is standing in front of the orchestra with an open score and deciding exactly what you want to do with it.

“If you care for music like I do, you can’t sleep peacefully if you don’t connect with the community and do something for education. I will try to extend the existing links with school and bring the orchestra to the communities.”

And his message to Seattle? Come on down!

“Even with my back to the audience, I can feel their great energy,” he says of Benaroya Hall performances. “It’s a fascinating spectacle to look at these players and what they can do with their instruments … and to listen!”

Melinda Bargreen also reviews concerts for classical KING-FM (98.1). She can be reached at mbargreen@aol.com.

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Assumes Music Director Post in 2011–2012 Season

Gerard Schwarz Becomes Conductor Laureate in 2011–2012

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Seattle, WA – Seattle Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors Chair Leslie Jackson Chihuly and Interim Executive Director Mark McCampbell announced today that French conductor Ludovic Morlot has been named Music Director Designate, beginning in the 2010–2011 season, to assume the role of Music Director at the beginning of the 2011–2012 season with an initial six-year contract. Seattle Symphony’s current Music Director Gerard Schwarz, who has held that role since 1985, will assume the title of Conductor Laureate after his final season in 2010–2011.

“I am thrilled and grateful to be given this wonderful opportunity to lead the Seattle Symphony into a new era,” remarked Morlot. “I am eager to share many musical moments and emotions with the Orchestra and its faithful audience, and to meet new concertgoers in the beautiful Benaroya Hall. My family and I feel privileged that we will soon become part of the Seattle community.”

During Morlot’s first season as Music Director in 2011–2012, he will conduct a minimum of eight weeks during the regular concert season. He will conduct a minimum of 13 weeks each season through the end of his initial contract in 2017.

When the then-35-year-old Morlot made his debut with the Seattle Symphony in October 2009, The Seattle Times’ Melinda Bargreen praised his “quick, snappy gestures and mercurial intensity [that] seemed to energize the orchestra.” He was re-engaged later this season, when a schedule change prevented Roberto Abbado from appearing with the Symphony. However, travel disruptions caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland forced Morlot to miss two rehearsals and change the program on short notice. Under these challenging circumstances he delivered strong and exciting performances that underscored his remarkable poise, artistic presence and leadership qualities. The Music Director Search Committee then voted unanimously to recommend Mr. Morlot to the Board.

Last April was not the first time that stepping in for another conductor has enhanced Morlot’s reputation. In 2006, he made unexpected debuts with both the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra to replace Christoph von Dohnányi and Riccardo Muti, respectively. Of his New York debut—which included Elliott Carter’s challenging Allegro Scorrevole—New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini acclaimed, “He conducted the entire program with fluid yet unostentatious technique, palpable confidence and appealing energy. Mr. Morlot elicited a colorful, persuasive and breathless performance from the Philharmonic players.” The accolades that followed these concerts were echoed in subsequent appearances with other major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Ensemble Intercontemporain, among others. The Guardian said of Morlot’s 2009 BBC Philharmonic debut: “Every so often in the musical world, a comparatively unknown quantity comes along and takes everyone’s breath away. Such was the case last week, when Ludovic Morlot—French-born, British-trained and better known in the US—made his debut with the BBC Philharmonic.”

The Music Director Search Committee was guided by Interim Executive Director Mark McCampbell and Board of Directors Chair Leslie Jackson Chihuly. Of the final decision, Chihuly states, “A year into our search for a new Music Director, we are thrilled to announce the appointment of Maestro Ludovic Morlot. We believe he will provide the exciting artistic leadership that Seattle Symphony needs in order to build on the growth this orchestra has enjoyed during Gerard Schwarz’s 26-year tenure, and that Mr. Morlot’s leadership will further secure our place as one of the great orchestras of the world.” McCampbell further adds, “I am pleased to have a role in bringing the young and dynamic Morlot to Seattle. I greatly appreciate the diligent work of the search committee in coming to this decision and applaud the efforts of our supportive Board.”

The 13-member search committee was chaired by former Washington First Lady and longtime Seattle Symphony Board member Nancy B. Evans, who says of the search process, “Leading our search committee over the past year was a rewarding experience. We met many excellent candidates and are delighted that our unanimous first choice is Ludovic Morlot. He embodies our essential criteria: passion for artistic excellence, an appreciation for the importance of community and audience, and the ability to represent Seattle Symphony internationally.” Timothy Hale, violist and Chair of the Seattle Symphony and Opera Players’ Organization added, “It is an honor to welcome Ludovic Morlot to our Symphony family. He possesses stunning talent along with charisma and intelligence that are sure to propel Seattle Symphony to new musical heights. We see a bright and exciting future with an enhanced national and international presence and continued artistic growth here on stage at Benaroya Hall.”

Highlights of Morlot’s 2010–2011 season include debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Czech Philharmonic, NDR Hamburg, Orchestra de la Monnaie in Brussels, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He also leads performances of Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le toit and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at Opéra National de Lyon and Opéra Comique in Paris. Morlot also returns to the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, among others.

Morlot will succeed Music Director Gerard Schwarz, whose 26-year tenure has seen impressive growth in the caliber and prominence of the orchestra and cultural landscape of Seattle. Maestro Schwarz expresses his best hopes for his successor, saying, “I wish Mr. Morlot tremendous success. I hope that this wonderful Orchestra and community will bring him the joy that they have brought me.”

Schwarz and the Symphony have collaborated on more than 125 recording projects and received twelve Grammy nominations. They have also garnered six ASCAP Awards for Adventuresome Programming in recognition of his efforts to champion the music of living composers and American composers in particular. Besides the growth of the orchestra, perhaps Maestro Schwarz’s greatest achievement on behalf of Seattle Symphony was his vision to create a great concert hall for the citizens of Seattle.

Ludovic Morlot

36-year-old French conductor Ludovic Morlot is quickly establishing a strong reputation as one of the leading conductors of his generation. Already in great demand in North America and Europe, he has been recognized by The Telegraph as “a conductor [who] is constantly looking to the musical inside, to a world behind the notes.” The Chicago Tribune further commended his performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for being “crisp, taut and stylish thanks to [his] considerable podium skills.”

In addition to Morlot’s 2010–2011 engagements noted earlier, highlights of his 2009–2010 season in North America included return engagements with the Chicago Symphony and Boston Symphony, as well as debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, National Symphony (Washington, D.C.), and the symphony orchestras of Seattle, Cincinnati and Atlanta, among others. In Europe, he returned to the Rotterdam Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Ensemble Intercontemporain, which he conducts regularly, and made debuts with the Oslo Philharmonic and Danish National Radio Symphony. Other highlights of the season included his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in London and on tour in Germany with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, as well as an engagement with the Tokyo Philharmonic.

Committed to working with young people, Morlot recently led the Netherlands Youth Orchestra on a European tour, which included a concert in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

Recent notable engagements include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Tonhalle Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Seoul Philharmonic. He has collaborated with many distinguished soloists including Christian Tetzlaff, Gil Shaham, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Renaud Capuçon, Lynn Harrell, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Emanuel Ax and Jessye Norman.

Morlot has maintained a close working relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2001, when he was the Seiji Ozawa Fellowship Conductor at the Tanglewood Music Center. He was subsequently appointed Assistant Conductor for the orchestra and their Music Director James Levine (2004–2007), and has conducted the orchestra in many public concerts both in Boston and at Tanglewood. He also served as conductor in residence with the Orchestre National de Lyon under David Robertson (2002–2004).

Trained as a violinist, Morlot studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London and then at the Royal College of Music as a recipient of the Norman del Mar Conducting Fellowship. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2007 in recognition of his significant contribution to music. Morlot and his family live in Lyon, France, and will make their future home in Seattle.

About Seattle Symphony

Seattle Symphony, presenting its 108th season in 2010–2011, has been under the artistic leadership of Music Director Gerard Schwarz since 1985. In 1998, the Orchestra began performing in the acoustically superb Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle. The Symphony is internationally recognized for its adventurous programming of contemporary works, its devotion to the classics, and its extensive recording history. Seattle Symphony has made more than 125 recordings, garnered 12 Grammy nominations and won two Emmy Awards. From September through July, the Symphony is heard live by more than 315,000 people. For more information on Seattle Symphony, www.seattlesymphony.org.

About Benaroya Hall

Benaroya Hall, home of Seattle Symphony, opened its doors to the public in 1998 as the first facility in Seattle designed exclusively for concert performance. Located on an entire city block in downtown Seattle, the Hall serves as a focal point of the city’s urban core. Today, the concert hall is integral to the health of Seattle’s downtown district – and has revitalized the area, drawing new restaurants and shops to the immediate vicinity of the hall where vacant, run-down buildings had been before. Benaroya Hall has two spaces for musical performances—the 2,500-seat S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium and the 540- seat Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall—and an underground parking garage. Following Benaroya Hall’s phenomenal success, several other cities followed suit with concert halls of their own, creating an American concert hall “boom.” Benaroya Hall has received numerous awards, including a 2001 American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Honor Award for outstanding architecture. For additional information, including event listings and public tour schedules, please visit www.benaroyahall.org.

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Ludovic Morlot’s Official Website: http://www.ludovicmorlot.com/

About Benaroya Hall

Elizabeth Ferlic, Associate Director of Public Relations, (206) 215-4714 elizabeth.ferlic@seattlesymphony.org

Rosalie Contreras, Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Customer Care, (206) 215-4782 rosalie.contreras@seattlesymphony.org

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By DANIEL J. WAKIN

The road to conducting fame can follow many routes but usually has one or two crucial elements: a lucky last-minute substitution at a major orchestra; an influential mentor; reasonable doses of talent and charisma. All of those came together for the young Frenchman Ludovic Morlot, who will become the next music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

It’s official: The Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s baton will be passed to a 36-year-old French maestro, Ludovic Morlot, when Gerard Schwarz steps down from the music directorship a year from now. Morlot assumes the title of “music director designate” this fall.

By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times