Tacoma Symphony showcases harp at Gig Harbor, Rialto Theater concerts

The Tacoma Symphony has started exploring other venues. With the Pantages Theater closing for renovation during the 2018-19 season,ensembles have to figure out where to go for 18 months — and for the symphony, that means trying venues out now. This, month the orchestra brings a subscription concert for the first time to Gig Harbor’s Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, as well as to the Rialto Theater, with a program of Romantic pastoral music and Seattle harp soloist Valerie Muzzolini Gordon.

With several successful (and popular) “Messiah” shows at Chapel Hill already, the church is an obvious choice, though it’s not as acoustically even as the Rialto. But the program — Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 (the “Pastorale”) and Elias Parish Alvars’ Grand Harp Concerto in G minor — suits both.

While Debussy sets his pastoral scene in languid, lush tones and a famous flute solo, and the Beethoven takes the concept into mountains and storms, the Alvars concerto is a different beast. Written in 1842, seven years before the English composer died at age 40, the work is romantic and moody, with abrupt modulations, melodramatic strings and a virtuosic harp part. Alvars, a concert harpist who toured extensively throughout Europe, made the most of the instrument’s then-new double-pedal system and expressive limits in his compositions. As a performer, he was admired: Berlioz called him “the Franz Liszt of the harp” and Liszt himself raved about his “rugged appearance, his gigantic figure … (and) his dreamy eyes expressive of the glowing imagination which lives in his compositions.” Coincidentally, the Tacoma show falls on Alvars’ birthday.

“That concerto is a beautiful piece, and not played very often,” says Gordon, who is principal harp of the Seattle Symphony. Originally from Nice, France, Gordon studied at the Curtis Institute of Music before winning a job with the Seattle orchestra, and is now married to its principal trumpet, David Gordon.

“It was very ground-breaking at the time — only a few harpists could tackle it. It’s fun to play, once you get it under your fingers...there’s a lot of preparation. I think people will like it.”

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 1:26 AM with the headline "Tacoma Symphony showcases harp at Gig Harbor, Rialto Theater concerts."