Inspired by Love Program Notes

Concert info: https://philharmonianw.org/concert-1-2025-26/

How did you arrive here today? Perhaps by car, bus, or maybe you walked if you live close enough. But my question runs deeper: what conspired, over time, to allow you to sit in the lovely Shorecrest Performing Arts Center on a fall afternoon to experience vibrant classical music, played by a fine orchestra, with a wonderful soloist, and a remarkable music director? There were many hands at work to bring this concert to you today, including a crack administrative team, hard-working production staff, and, of course, the marvelous musicians of the orchestra who have been rehearsing for weeks. The curation of the repertoire goes back even further as Music Director Michael Wheatley keeps notes on works he is interested in performing with the orchestra, sometimes waiting many years for the right combination of soloists to be available. As an example, today we hear Kevin Puts’ Letters from Georgia, a work Maestro Wheatley first encountered during his doctoral studies at Eastman School of Music in 2016. He’s been waiting many years to find the right time to program the work again.

There is still a deeper insight to mention as to how we all arrived at today’s concert, the opening of Philharmonia Northwest’s 25/26 season. It is the result of a vision by cellist/conductor Frances Walton and a group of Thalia Symphony musicians in 1976, who wanted to explore music from the more intimate repertoire for chamber orchestra. They established the Thalia Chamber Symphony––renamed Philharmonia Northwest in 1986––Seattle’s longest-running chamber orchestra. We are here today because of that vision and this Golden Jubilee season is cause to celebrate.

Jessica Meyer: Turbulent Flames

Similar to my question of how we arrived at today’s concert in general, the same inquiry can be made of the specific musical selections we hear. It is a worthy question to ask why Maestro Wheatley programmed Jessica Meyer’s Turbulent Flames? (Inside scoop: Wheatley has a series of Spotify playlists carefully curated with new and old works he takes under consideration for programming). In this case, Turbulent Flames arises from a “consortium commission” from eight different orchestras, including the local Auburn and Skagit Symphonies, the latter where Maestro Wheatley is also Music Director. This modern take on a commission is the path composer Jessica Meyer took to create Turbulent Flames, which had its world premiere last Fall with Auburn.

The title of the work offers us a framework through which to listen as it sonically depicts the musical sensibilities of flames. “Flames behave in very interesting ways,” Jessica Meyer writes about the piece. “Much like people—just the right trigger, environment, or situation can create vastly different states of being.” The unpredictable nature of flames shows up clearly in this fast-moving work. Pay particular attention to the ways Meyer uses myriad percussion instruments to offset her fiery (I can’t resist the metaphor) string and woodwind writing. Turbulent Flames holds many surprises and moments of tension that resolve in unexpected ways, much like our experience of being transfixed while staring into a campfire.

Kevin Puts: Letters from Georgia

“My first memory is of the brightness of light—light all around.”

From Lovingly, Georgia: the Complete Correspondences of Georgia 

O’Keefe and Anita Pollitzer

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts composed the orchestral song cycle Letters from Georgia in 2016 for a premiere at Eastman School of Music with Renée Flemming as soloist. Functioning as Assistant Conductor for the premiere was Philharmonia Northwest’s Music Director, Michael Wheatley, who was working toward his doctorate at Eastman at the time. “I was so taken by the work, which lovingly sets words from letters O’Keefe sent to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz,” offers Maestro Wheatley. “Puts later turned it into a full oratorio but this is the chamber version, which I love for its sparse use of orchestral colors. Ever since working on Letters from Georgia, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to program it.”

Use of sparse orchestral colors is a perfect approach by composer Puts, who creates a window into vulnerable moments between lovers, setting such tender phrases as in the following from the third song in the cycle, Ache:

“Maybe you don’t know

how mad I seem to be growing—

all of me waiting for you

to touch the center of me

with the center of you—

the reaching of something

in the whole body

for the center of heaven.”

Our soloist today, highly-regarded soprano Keely Futterer, also has a special connection to Letters from Georgia in that she was the understudy for Renée Flemming at the 2016 premiere. Linking back to the question of how we arrive at a concert, we see the threads of today’s performance of Letters from Georgia starting nearly 10 years ago, with today’s theme of love at the center.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

Under Director Wheatley’s leadership, Philharmonia Northwest is in the midst of a Beethoven symphony cycle, which will see all nine symphonies performed over time. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is universally thought of as his “best,” though this may not have always been the case. Early documentation of the orchestral musicians who prepared the symphony for its 1813 premiere remarked on the seemingly haphazard way themes and rhythms dance around in the work, wondering if Beethoven had been drunk during its composition. Such commentary aside, and knowing what we do now about Beethoven’s full output as a composer of symphonies, Symphony No. 7 is indicative of a composer in full command of his materials, able to use the orchestra in ways that may sound spontaneous, but are anything but. There is an optimism and vibrancy across the four movements, notable given they were composed during the turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars; the work was premiered at a charity event for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau, which had taken place earlier that year. Beethoven chose optimism and joy in response to valor.

The structure of the symphony follows standard forms but with long introductions to sections and tacked-on endings (called “codas” in musical parlance) that meander into seemingly unfamiliar territory. These elements give the work what I might refer to as a non-linear path through its many themes, making the sonic journey surprising at times. Regarding orchestral colors, today’s concert will harken back to the premiere of the work with the use of contrabassoons to strengthen and enrich the sound of the basses. While not specifically called for in the original score, one of Beethoven’s letters alludes to this less familiar member of the woodwind family being employed at the first hearing for the same purpose, creating a link between today’s performance and the premiere in 1813.

 

James Falzone

Associate Dean & Professor of Music

Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University