FINNISH CONDUCTOR PIETARI INKINEN JOINS SEATTLE SYMPHONY FOR SIBELIUS’ SYMPHONY NO. 7

Seattle, WA – Guest Conductor Pietari Inkinen leads Seattle Symphony in two performances of Jean Sibelius’ one-movement Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105. The concert also features violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who returns to Seattle with Benjamin Britten’s rarely performed Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 15. The program concludes with Bartók’s popular Concerto for Orchestra. These Wyckoff Masterworks Season concerts take place on Thursday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 30, at 8 p.m. in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall. Tickets are available from $17 to $107. Seattle Symphony will present Pre-concert Talks one hour prior to performance time in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium at Benaroya Hall. These pre-concert events feature leading voices in the local classical music scene, and are free with ticket purchase. Nikolas Caoile, Central Washington University Director of Orchestras, will give a presentation titled “20th Century Masterpieces.” Audiences are invited to stay after the concert on Saturday, April 30, for an Ask the Artist discussion featuring Pietari Inkinen in the Grand Lobby.

Jean Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony is the last, briefest and most unusual of the works for which the composer’s admirers proclaim him the greatest symphonist of the 20th century. It unfolds in a single movement, though with several distinct sections which hint at a traditional opening, a scherzo and a finale. Although this symphony is without the grand gestures of some of Sibelius’ earlier works – notably the composer’s famous tone poem Finlandia — it is assuredly among his most beautiful compositions. The English composer Benjamin Britten was only 26 when he wrote his Violin Concerto, but its music conveys a somber intensity we might expect from a much older artist. Composed in ten months, it is the composer’s only work in this genre. Written late in the composer’s life, Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is as much a symphony as anything else. Its title acknowledges the prominent solo passages for different instruments, and the virtuoso treatment of the orchestra as a whole. It remains Bartók’s popular orchestral composition and one of the most familiar of all his works.