All-Russian program no recipe for sameness with Seattle's orchestra, soloist

An "all-Russian program" might sound like a recipe for sameness, but this week's Seattle Symphony program offers three works of sharply different character.

The opening work is Alexander Borodin's Third Symphony, which was left unfinished at the composer's death in 1887. Less often heard than No. 2, it is an equally attractive amalgam of nationalist folk inspiration and romantic warmth.

Closing the program is another last symphony: Shostakovich's 15th. As often with the 20th-century master's works, this is music of teasingly elusive emotional character. There are passages of ardent romantic expression, but the overall tenor of the piece is far removed from romanticism. Between these two neatly contrasted symphonies comes the Violin Concerto of Tchaikovsky, a composer to whom no one would dream of attributing irony or detachment. This is a melodic outpouring of quintessentially romantic character.

Listeners can expect a stunning performance from this week's soloist, who described the composition by phone as "a wonderful piece, with elegance, nobility, and yes, melancholy, but no struggle."

Leonidas Kavakos, 42, is a musician who combines total technical assurance, common enough these days, with an artistic seriousness and integrity that are regrettably rarer. Born in Greece, he still lives there, partly because he considers it crucial to stay in touch with his cultural roots in the face of the globalization of musical styles. "Greece may not have a supreme stature in European musical culture, but it has a culture of its own, a color that's an important part of what one gives to the audience.

"I'm quite unhappy," he says, "with the disappearance of those varied 'schools' that you used to find in the ways of playing the violin — the Russian school, the Belgian school, and so on. These days, playing has become so much a personal race — 'listen to how well I play!' — sadly uniform, commercialized and driven by marketing. I've tried never to have anything to do with that. I don't want just to hear how well someone plays. What I'm looking for is a performance that transforms the information in the score into a personal message — not some generalization, but the beauty of one thing as it is."

Bernard Jacobson: bernardijacobson@comcast.net