Conductor laureate Fabio Mechetti returns to lead the Spokane Symphony once more for its third Masterworks program

click to enlarge Conductor laureate Fabio Mechetti returns to lead the Spokane Symphony once more for its third Masterworks program
Jacksonville Symphony photo
Eighteen years after leading the Spokane Symphony, Fabio Mechetti is back with his baton.

The ink on his diploma from the illustrious Juilliard School was barely dry when Fabio Mechetti first set down his suitcase in Spokane. It was 1984, and the aspiring conductor — originally from São Paulo, the enormous cultural capital of Brazil — was starting his first professional gig in an American city he'd only just learned to locate on a map.

But what a time to arrive. Gunther Schuller, a leading international figure in both jazz and classical music, had recently been appointed interim conductor of the Spokane Symphony, which itself was emerging from a turbulent couple of years. Mechetti, though still young, had been chosen to serve as Schuller's assistant and help guide the organization into a crucial transitional period.

Nine years later, Mechetti would return to Spokane, this time to lead the orchestra that he and Schuller had previously set on a new trajectory. He would hold that position of music director, the organization's sixth, for another 11 years, from 1993 to 2004.

Now, another 18 years on, Mechetti is leading the Spokane Symphony once again when he guest conducts the Masterworks concert that bears his name, "Masterworks 3: Fabio." The program features works by the Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes as well as by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

The Gomes piece that opens the program is the overture to the composer's 1870 opera Il Guarany. Although Gomes himself was Brazilian, and the opera (itself based on a novel by a Brazilian author) centers on a romance between an Indigenous Guarani prince and the daughter of a Portuguese nobleman, his musical idiom is still very much rooted in the European tradition.

"In the 19th century, both in Brazil and the U.S., as well as in many other countries, they were trying to imitate their colonizers, in a way," says Mechetti.

"In order for them to be considered emancipated countries, they had to meet the expectations of what 'civilization' was about, which was European culture. This effort was trying to prove that a Brazilian person who was born in the heartland of Brazil could write opera as well as Verdi."

Yet New World composers who still took their cues from Europe, like Gomes, would ultimately pave the way for Brazilian composers like Ernani Braga and Heitor Villa-Lobos, who drew on the region's folk music and incorporated it into their work.

"Even though Brazilian bossa nova is what most people associate with Brazilian music, it would not exist without Villa-Lobos and other Brazilian composers in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s," Mechetti says.

"They were very influential in translating Brazilian ethnic music into classical and then spreading that through music in general."

Gomes' Il Guarany overture is followed by another operatic selection: three excerpts from Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner, whose body of work has become synonymous in the popular imagination with horned helmets and raging supernatural forces, composed the comedic opera after he had already completed two parts of the epic Ring cycle as well as Tristan und Isolde.

"Meistersinger is a very interesting opera in Wagner's production," Mechetti says. "It goes back[ward] in terms of style, in terms of language. When you think that he had done Tristan, which is an adventure in tonality — almost atonality, chromaticism, all these things that led to 20th century music — Meistersinger is very conservative."

"After working so hard to produce The Ring, Tristan, maybe he felt the need to give himself a break and write something a little happier and within the parameters of what the public was used to listening to," he adds.

The Meistersinger piece includes the prelude from the third act, which Mechetti describes as "songful and slow" with "beautiful music for the brass."

"Then there is a dance in the middle, which is the 'Dance of the Apprentices,' that's almost like a waltz," he says. "It preceded the waltz, which still didn't exist in the way we know it today. And that leads to a little bit of the overture at the very end."

This third Masterworks concert closes with a tone poem and one more opera-derived piece, both by Strauss, although their debuts were separated by more than 20 years. The first is about the famous seducer Don Juan; the other is from the comic opera Der Rosenkavalier.

"I chose these two because I love Strauss in general, but these two pieces show two sides of the composer, who was one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived," Mechetti says. "Don Juan is basically a byproduct of that line of chromatic composers since Liszt and Berlioz, who started the idea of program music, or telling stories through music."

"Rosenkavalier, on the other hand, is an opera. It's probably one of the most sensuous pieces of music you're going to hear in your life, and one of the most flamboyant at the same time," he continues. "There's a little bit of every character in the opera in this suite. So you see a composer who was extraordinarily capable of writing symphonic music, operatic music, as well as concertos and chamber music and everything else."

Mechetti acknowledges that the orchestra he led from 1993 to 2004 is much changed, yet he still sees important parallels. He recalls the musicians' willingness to tackle daunting works of the classical canon and their ability to deliver a world-class sound with a fraction of the resources.

"Musically, the Spokane Symphony was where I had the opportunity to try everything for the first time. My first Beethoven symphonies and Mozart and Brahms and Mahler — it was all done in Spokane," he says.

"And not only that, but it was done in a way that created strong relationships and friendships. It was an experience that marked my life both professionally and personally. I have friends to this day from the time I was there." ♦

Masterworks 3: Fabio • Sat, Oct. 22 at 7:30 pm; Sun, Oct. 23 at 3 pm • $19-$68 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanesymphony.org

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that Sao Paulo is the not the political capital of Brazil, but rather a cultural hub, and to correct the total years Mechetti was music director of the Spokane Symphony.
Mark as Favorite

Celebrate EveryBODY Screendance Film Festival @ Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center

Wed., Feb. 12, 6 p.m.
  • or

E.J. Iannelli

E.J. Iannelli has been a contributing writer for the Inlander since 2010. In that time, he's had the opportunity to cover a wide range of topics for the paper (among them steamboating, derelict buildings and creative resiliency during COVID), typically with an emphasis on arts and culture. He also contributes...