Eugene Symphony and conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong open the orchestra’s 2019-20 season

By Randi Bjornstad

Last year, his second as music director and conductor of the Eugene Symphony, was “my kid in the candy shop season,” Francesco Lecce-Chong says. “I accomplished so many things from my bucket list.”

Francesco Lecce-Chong; photo by Anastasia Chernyavsky

That tally included a variety of unusual performances, among them Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poems of Fire and Ecstasy, and Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire, performed by the Grammy-winning ensemble, Eighth Blackbird.

“It was a remarkable year, all very special to me,” Lecce-Chong said. “This year is when I can feel more confident. I feel like I’m finding my identity as far as how to communicate my ideas and feelings with this orchestra.”

Part of this year’s effort will be to home in on how the audience is an integral part of the concert, he says, “how it shares the space and has an effect on the music as well as the other way around. This season is built around the essence of music, and why someone should go to hear it in person,” rather than just switching on a CD or putting in the earbuds.

It also will feature the Pacific Northwest premiere of a new symphony that is part of a collaboration between the Eugene Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony, where Lecce-Chong also serves as music director and conductor.

“It’s called the First Symphony Project, and it will be performed at the March,” he says. “Every year for four years, we will commission a new symphony. The first one will be performed next March, and it is Matt Browne’s Symphony No. 1.”

The symphony audience will get a sneak listen to the new symphony in October with a snippet from Browne’s composition called Barnstorming Season, about the 1920s stunt pilots who flew around the rural United States, putting on a breathtaking — and dangerous — show of aerial acrobatics for those gathered on the ground below.

“It’s such an amazing piece — it’s so humorous and so much fun,” Lecce-Chong says. “Through the orchestra, you hear the sound of the planes’ engines starting up, and then you hear them as they take off and climb up until they’re above the clouds. The music uses elements of honky-tonk and other tunes from the ’20s, things that the audience will recognize. I think it’s one of the fastest and most energizing seven minutes of music you can hear.”

In addition to presenting such new sounds, this season also includes “hitting some of the big warhorses,” Lecce-Chong says, works such as Peter Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Gustav Mahler’s Titan, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, “to introduce them to our audience or reintroduce them to things that haven’t been done in awhile.”

All this comes just as Lecce-Chong and the symphony have finalized a new contract that runs through the 2022-23 season.

“That is important to me because of the four-year project that we’re undertaking with the new symphonies — it would be good to be here for all of that,” he says with a laugh. “It’s also important to me because I feel that this is a community that really allows younger conductors to try out new things and really develop their potential. I feel that here in Eugene I am able to do everything I hope for and also make a difference for the orchestra and the community.”

The 54th season opens its 2019-20 season with a concert on Thursday, Sept. 26. The monthly main concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Silva Concert Hall at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (Seventh and Willamette streets) in downtown Eugene.

For tickets and information about additional concerts and events, go online to eugenesymphony.org or hultcenter.org

Eugene Symphony 2019-20 regular season concerts